Page 13 of Everything Under the Sun

Wolf stood from the table and stepped into Rafe’s personal space. Rafe raised his boxy chin.

“But if he fucks up,” Wolf warned in a lowered voice, “you’ll be held responsible. Now tell me, Rafe: you’ve replaced yourself, but who will replace Derringer over there?” His eyes moved slightly right, indicating the dead man still lying on the floor at the other end of the table.

“Any child, or woman, in the city can replace him. Sir.” Rafe remained solid, his shoulders straight and rigid; a thick vein twitched in his head, making the tiny hairs left on his shaved scalp appear to move.

Wolf’s lips lengthened slowly into a grin. “You’re a bastard,” he said. “Speaking of which, how is your newborn son?”

“Which one?” Rafe said with a grin of his own.

Wolf turned to the other men with expectation, and everyone rose from the massive table in unison, the scraping of wooden legs moved roughly across the floor as they pushed themselves out of their chairs. It was time for Wolf and Rafe to talk privately, as was the routine after every meeting.

I was among the last to approach the exit when Rafe stopped me.

“Report to me first thing in the morning,” he ordered.

“Yes, sir.” I nodded, turned on my black military boots and followed the last man out, which was Edgar.

The door closed, leaving the tyrant and his number one henchman to their devious discussions.

As I made my way down the hall toward the stairwell door, I thought heavily about what Wolf had said: “I can’t even say that I’ve killed eighteen men with my bare hands in one day” and my teeth clenched behind my rigid jaw.

I remembered it like it was yesterday, that brutal, bloodthirsty murdering spree one cold, dark night in November five years ago. But I wasn’t proud of it—it was the second worst day of my life, and I knew I’d always be haunted by it until the day I joined those men in Hell.

“Congratulations,” I heard a voice say from the door of the stairwell.

It was Edgar, holding the door open for me.

I hated the piece of shit—most of the men did, but unlike everybody else, I didn’t pretend to like him.

I said nothing in response, and I stepped through the doorway out ahead of Edgar. The door closed with a bang, echoing down the concrete stairs that descended more than thirty floors. The other men were well ahead of us, their voices carried, followed by shadows moving along the candlelit walls.

“If you need an advisor—”

“I don’t,” I cut in curtly.

Thirty floors was a long way down—I thought I might have to kill Edgar, too, before making it halfway.

Ten floors and Edgar had talked mostly about who he despised among the other men, who were not worthy to be in Wolf’s army, who he thought better to replace them, how he was an asset to Wolf, yet he couldn’t explain why exactly because what he did for Wolf was “private”—what he did was his dirty work, I knew. And so he continued to talk, and I went on wanting to wring his goddamned neck. Instead, I filed every word away in the part of my mind labeled: I Don’t Give a Shit But It Might be Useful Later.

By fifteen floors, Edgar could hardly catch his breath. But somehow, he managed—to my disappointment—to keep up and run his mouth down twenty-five floors where we ran into a few of the other men who had stopped on the stairs to chat.

“Think you can handle it?” one man said as I pushed my way through them; he smiled, revealing the ridicule behind the question.

I stopped on the same step and looked right into his face, challenging him.

The man put up his hands in surrender, and he laughed. “Hey, man, no harm,” he said. “I was just talkin’ about the women.”

“What about them?” I said, indifferently—on the outside I was indifferent, but on the inside, I was raging.

The man dropped his hands back at his sides, but the smile never left his face.

“I’d love to be in your shoes right now, is all,” he clarified.

The other four men standing around, nodded and grinned, expressing their agreement.

“You have any idea where I am on the list?” another man asked.

“I haven’t seen it yet,” I answered flatly.

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