Page 5 of Revenge At Raleigh High
Beloved Friend.
Talented Sportsman.
RAPIST
Mallory Hawthorne’s a fucking amateur. She thinks no one knows that she’s the one who sneaks into the Raleigh Gardens of Rest every Tuesday night and scrawls the wordmurdereronto Leon Wickman’s headstone. While red spray paint might look rather dramatic, it does come off with a stiff brush, soap, and a little elbow grease.
I, on the other hand, have thought this through long and hard. There’s no way in hell anyone’s washingthisaway.
TEXT MESSAGE RECEIVED:
+1(564) 987 3491: your not gonna make it to graduation, silver. your gonna wind up wishing youd never been fucking born.
2
ALEX
I’ve done some pretty shady things in the past. Up until now, I’ve never fucking killed anyone before, though. In my hand, the gun Monty pressed into my chest as I left the Rock an hour ago feels like a ticking time bomb. It’s a thing of beauty, all sleek lines and cold, unforgiving black steel, but I fucking hate the thing. I want nothing to do with it.
Some people might assume my hatred of guns comes from my recent brush with death in the Raleigh High School library. At night, when I’m alone in the trailer, I sometimes find myself pressing my fingertips into the neat, violet scar I earned myself that day, flinching, my body jolting with the memory of the burning metal hitting my chest. I still feel that same breathless, creeping cold, seeping through my veins when I close my eyes sometimes, too. However, that isn’t the reason why I have to grind my teeth together, battling to keep my arm steady as I aim the gun at the back of Peter Westbrook’s head tonight.
No.
I hate guns because of what happened the day I came home from school, a skinny six-year-old with both front teeth missing, and I found my mother lying in a pool of her own blood with half her fucking head blown off. Compared to that memory, the knee-jerk recall of the moment six weeks ago when Kacey Winters shot her ex-boyfriend and inadvertently hit me in the process, is a walk in the fucking park.
“Listen, man. I don’t know what Monty told you, but I don’t owe him shit,” Westbrook grouses. He doesn’t seem all that bothered by the fact that I’m pointing a gun at the back of his head. He seems a little bored. Clearly, he doesn’t think I’m going to shoot him, but he did drop reluctantly down to his knees when I barked out the command ten minutes ago. “He placed an order. He got what he paid for. Five cases. I know Monty’s not too shit-hot with math, but this is simple fucking kindergarten stuff, kid.One, two, three, four, five.” He shrugs, sighing under his breath. “Maybe the stupid bastard should stick to slinging shots and shooting porno down in that basement of his. You can tell him from me, he’s not very good at—”
The butt of the gun makes a dull cracking sound as I bring it down on the back of Westbrook’s head. I could have split his fucking skull open with such a heavy monster of a weapon but I’ve opted for mild concussion instead. “What’s the point in opening your mouth, Pete, if all you do is lie? I don’t have a clue what Monty ordered. All I know is that he’s missing a black duffel bag. I don’t know what’s inside the bag, and I don’t wanna know, either. I was told to come here and collect it…and I was told to make life really uncomfortable for you if you didn’t hand it over.”
A thin stream of blood runs down the back of Westbrook’s neck, leeching into the white fabric of his collared shirt. I can’t stop staring at the redness of it. The man turns his head ever so slightly, his face in profile, a knowing, smug smile pulling his mouth up at the corner. “And how the hell are you planning on doing that?” Clearly, he thinks I’m wet behind the ears. Inexperienced. So green that I’ll hesitate the second things begin to get violent. Over the past month, Monty’s tasked me with all kinds of fucked up assignments, though. I’ve been recovering from a goddamn gunshot wound, aching every time I twist without thinking, but my boss at the Rock hasn’t given me much of a break. Seems like I’ve been getting my hands dirty every other fucking day. If I have to make Westbrook hurt so I can get the fuck out of here and back to Silver, then I won’t fucking hesitate.
There isn’t much I wouldn’t do in order to get back to Silver.
Casually leaning back against Westbrook’s desk, I consider how best to deal with the lying sack of shit. Monty’s careful with his words to the point of paranoia. He’s nevertoldme to break anyone’s bones. He’s never commanded me to put someone in the hospital directly, but his intentions are always very clear. If I don’t come back from Bellingham with this black duffel bag, Monty expects me to wreak havoc here tonight. He’ll be sorely disappointed if I leave this guy standing.
I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’m going to have to lay into Westbrook, when he disrupts my thoughts. “You’re the Moretti kid, aren’t you?” he says. “Jack’s boy.”
The fact that he’s used my father’s nickname doesn’t really mean much. Giacomo’s hardly a common name around these parts; most people were more comfortable referring to him as Jack. It doesn’t mean he knew him. I still hesitate, though. My father fled Washington State so long ago that itisunusual to come across anyone who remembers him. Hearing him mentioned here, in this dark, seedy office, with its lacquered wood paneling and its plush cream carpet underfoot feels...just fucking…wrong. “Your Pop never liked Monty,” Westbrook says mildly. “He’d probably spit teeth if he knew that limp-dicked bastard had laid a claim on you.”
“Shut the fuck up, Pete. My father’s irrelevant. Do you have the bag or not?”
Smiling, Westbrook lets his head hang loose, his chin resting against his chest. He’s in his forties—a well-dressed, well-made, solid looking dude with hands the size of fucking shovels. I think he used to be a bare-knuckle boxer back in the day. He certainly made a lot of his money placing bets in rigged fights. “I’m curious. Has Monty ever explainedwhyhe took you in, Moretti?” he asks.
I clench my jaw, grinding my teeth together. “The bag. Tell me if you’ve got it, or I’m gonna fucking rip your arms out of joint.”
“He used to do runs for Monty, y’know. Your old man. Just like you are now. Though Jack was a little more convincing when he showed up on a guy’s doorstep with a mind to threaten him. It was his eyes. So fucking dark and soulless. There was something primitive about ol’ Jackie boy. When you looked athimand he looked back atyou, you lost all hope. You saw right away that he wasn’t like other men. He operated on a level that the rest of us have evolved away from. Sex. Food. Money. Power. Those were the only things that mattered to Jack. The bare essentials required for survival. There was no appealing to his empathy. No sense of injustice. He didn’t possess either. There was only the bottom line for Jack. God help you if you ended up on his shit list.”
I was five when my father bailed. Old enough to have a few memories of the man stored away in the back of my mind, but young enough that the edges of those memories seem soft and blurry, like they might not even be real, or perhaps I imagined them. I remember feeling glued to the floor when the sick fuck was mad at me, though. I remember panic crawling insidiously up the back of my neck every time he raised his fist to strike me…because I knew with a concrete certainty that he was going to follow through.
Westbrook’s barking up the wrong fucking tree if he thinks bringing up my father is going to endear him to me. If anything, he’s making this situation much,muchworse. “You got kids?” I ask, my voice as stiff as my posture.
Westbrook laughs. “If I say yes, are you going to spare me the torture of this bullshit interrogation?”
“Answer the question.”
“Yeah, I got kids. Three. Two boys and a girl.”
“Nice. You beat ‘em? Abandon ‘em? You raise your fist to their mother?”
