Page 98 of Dylan
“Don’t stop fucking me, Dyl. Harder, baby. Harder,” she keens.
I throw my head back, not releasing her arms and pound harder. I’m doing the right thing. We’re made for each other. She’ll forgive me.
It all has to be okay. I can’t live without her. This shit can’t come back to burn me.
CHAPTER 35
Real Pressure
Detective Strong
“Detective, good to see you.”
I nod, not in the mood for this shit, as I stand in the middle of the commissioner’s ball, looking around at all these suits who puff their chests out like they’re the ones out in the streets keeping our city safe. Fundraising and smiling as if any of the ticket money goes where it belongs. They all make me sick.
Half of them don’t know a thing about what we face out there, but their pockets are lined with our blood, sweat, and tears. Meanwhile, even with overtime, most cops are struggling to make ends meet without having to work under the table.
I’ve watched good guys become the real monsters out there because this shit puts them in a squeeze. Exhaustion, bills piling up, their own neighborhood turning bad or outpricing them. Too worried about home to be able to make sound decisions on the job.
But at the end of the day, I’m a detective and I’m here to smile and dance for these assholes to raise money for our department and whatever other departments they’ve lied to this year. The right connections will at least get you in the right position to get ahead an inch.
“We need to talk,” Baker whispers as he walks by me and takes a drink from the passing tray the waiter is carrying.
I grab a glass too and follow him a few steps away out of the earshot of anyone else. Vargus is already waiting for us with a tense expression on his face.
I do my best to hold on to the tight smile I’m forcing. Shit has been getting weird, and I don’t know how much longer these boys will last under the pressure.
We thought we would have a bag coming in from Hanson and his boys a long time ago. However, there is always something that comes up to block our pursuit. At times, it feels like our superiors might be onto us.
Although I doubt it. My boys play things smart, unlike some of the other crews in the PD. We all came up together and know the rules. We’ve studied how things work on both sides, and we keep our noses clean for the most part.
I know Baker has a problem with the booger sugar, but he’s functioning. It’s never gotten in the way of work or business. Not until that night that kid got the best of him and stabbed him.
However, in the end, we thought that was going to work to our advantage. It almost did. We were just about to break the kid before someone up top sprung him.
“What the fuck is going on? None of this is a coincidence. We need to find out where this shit is coming from and stop it,” Baker bites out.
“Calm down. We don’t know that this is coming from anywhere,” I snap.
“The fuck we don’t. My wife’s restaurant got shut down and she lost her liquor license just out of the blue. You know how hard it is to get one of those in the city.
“I don’t know if we’ll ever get it back. That’s the bread and butter of that place. My kid’s day care was shut down for a week and when it reopened, Lou was no longer on the roster. Come on, man,” Vargus hisses.
“Right, and my fiancée lost her job in the clerk’s office without any provocation. Her mother has been getting tickets left and right and I was told the system is down whenever I try to clear them for her, but I watched Jones clear some shit for his niece with no problem.
“You said yourself that fancy school that offered your boy a scholarship suddenly reneged for no fucking reason. Yeah, none of it seemed to connect, but when you look at it all collectively, we have a fucking problem, Strong.” Baker seethes.
“For now, let’s keep our heads on a swivel. We’ll be careful about business for a bit. See if the pressure backs off.”
“Motherfucker. Is that …”
I turn to follow Baker’s gaze. My mouth falls open as I find what he’s glaring at. It all clicks into place.
I think we just found our answer. As the commissioner raises his glass in a toast with these motherfuckers, I know we have. This shit is about to get real.
Son of a bitch.
Dylan
