“For shit’s sake, man.” John laughs. “You need to get your ass out from behind your sniper scope. You ain’t been doing any of the hard shit for too long.”
“Dude, I did a face peel with Simon. That’s earned me some get out of jail free cards.” James laughs.
“It’s going to take a couple of minutes to get it set up. Air compressor still good, Simon?” Jude asks.
“It should be,” Simon says from where he’s perched beside Lucifer.
Walking over to the toolbox, I pull out a bucket of metal rivets. They’re almost like nails, except these go into sheet metal. I should be able to use them pretty well with our dickhead.
Anton is fidgeting nervously when I walk back over to him.
Holding a rivet to his shoulder, I smirk at him. “This is about to get real painful, man. Painful, and I’m going to completely ruin all your fucking ink. That’s the one thing I feel bad about. All that ink work getting fucked up beyond repair.”
A bloody wad of spit lands on my chest and Anton tries to stare at me with defiance. It’s not really defiance, though. There’s too much fear behind it.
This motherfucker has something in him.
He hasn’t spilled all the magical beans yet… but he’s going to.
Jude walks by me with the rivet gun in his hand. His eyes are bright with an almost maniacal glee.
Holding the gun out for me to take, he asks, “Where ya starting first?”
“I’m gonna go with the hand first,” I say as I look to Anton’s hand.
“You must stop,” Anton garbles out from his bloody mouth and nose.
Spittle flies everywhere as he shakes his head at us.
“Get his pants off completely for me,” I say as I hold the rivet gun in one hand and grab Anton’s hand with the other.
I hold his hand firmly down.
“What are we going to do below the waist?” Jude asks.
“Shin bones, kneecaps, and I’ll probably rivet the ballsack to the table,” I say with a grin then squeeze the trigger of the gun.
There’s a loud popping sound right before Anton screams.
The rivet hit right through one of his hand bones, and I bet that hurt like a motherfucker.
* * *
Russians, Yakuza, and out of all the fucking things I didn’t think would be included, the fucking Irish.
Anton spilled the beans once we shaved off all the toes on his left foot and two from his right. Not sure he why the fuck he waited so damn long. We kept going though. I wanted to know his sister’s middle name and when she lost her fucking cherry to his uncle.
From what he got out of him, the Irish were paid to blow up the bar and Cherry’s house. They used some former Polish military to do it. The hit on Simon definitely was the Yakuza from everything Simon got off the guys, but Anton and his boys weren’t a part of that and they’re not cozying up with the Yakuza.
Seems there’s a bunch of bad blood there we could take advantage of.
Lucifer and Simon say that the Russians have been trying to call a ceasefire and even denied the bombings, but we just found out why. They did it through the Irish for plausible deniability. The Irish are working with them for a reason we haven’t figured out yet.
But one thing we do know, there’s going to be a wedding tomorrow afternoon and we’re going to be attending. Some guy named Alexei is marrying the Irish boss’s daughter.
I’ve got a headache that feels like it’s going to fucking split my fucking skull in half. I’m not entirely sure what the fuck I stepped on, but I’m willing to bet it’s a fucking landmine.
Walking toward the exit of the building, I ask the guys, “Any of ya’ll got a light?”
“Thought you would have quit smoking in the pen,” John says to me as he digs into his pocket.
Taking the zippo from his hand, I say, “I did. But I still gotta roast that Russian fuck’s body.”
“Ah.” He points to a black pickup truck out in the parking lot. “That’s your new ride, picked her out myself.”
Looking at the big, hefty black pickup truck with tinted windows, I grin. “Good, I wasn’t looking forward to having Simon taxi my ass everywhere.”
“I’d rather slit your throat,” Simon says from behind me.
Shouldering the corpse we wrapped inside a plastic sheet, I smile at Johnathan. “I appreciate it.”
“You gonna need any help with the body?” he asks as he moves too slowly beside me.
I heard a little about the stomach wound he took from some battle on a landing strip, and I can tell he isn’t up to helping me even if he wants to.
“Nah, brother, I got it,” I say to him.
“Gentlemen,” Lucifer says. “Let’s get together tomorrow night at seven. Bring the family. Lily is planning a large dinner for us all. With the wedding in the early afternoon, we should have plenty of time to clean up and deal with any issues that might arise.”