The Innocent (A 'Finder' Fanfiction)

Shadow of Pluto - 24 - Alex

Almost, he pressed the bell button into the plastic frame. He could hear the ringing above in the tourist apartment, yet that did not make him stop. He kept pushing and pushing and pushing again, until he almost missed the buzzing that opened the door.

Shoving it open, he rushed inside, stormed up the steps and threw his brother out of the way to enter the flat he had settled in for his unplanned vacation.

"You have something to drink?", Alex winced at him in Russian. His mind was filled with white little dots that sizzled in his brain. He thought he was about to pass out and collapsed voluntarily down on the sofa.

Aaron handed him a long drink glass full of vodka a moment later, which Alex drowned to the half with one gulp.

"Fuck!", be bellowed then.

"Anything you feel you want to tell me?", Aaron asked. He had sat on the low TV table and watched his brother, a malicious and gleeful grin on his face.

That expression Alex was sure he was able to ruin: "I asked for your fucking request! You better don't expect to see your pussy-replacement ever again!", he shouted at the other.

Indeed, Aaron's visage became hart and icy at once. He stood up the next moment, his fingers curled into fists, and Alex was about to start to laugh because this was the only fun he had had for a day. Then his brother's right hit him on the temple, and he collapsed onto the sofa for real.

It took him nearly two hours to regain consciousness, and when he did, his whole skull hurt like hell and his vision was a bit off. He sat up with some trouble to find his balance but managed with some help by the backrest. Then he looked around the room with his unsteady gaze and found his brother at the small, round, plastic dining table, eating some noodle soup that only required hot water to be poured over it.

"Fuck you!", he spat at the other, astounded how much he sounded like a Russian doing so.

"I think you fucked yourself in playing with the wrong people", Aaron snarled back, hardly taking his attention from the noodles. "So, tell me what happened, or must I beat it out of you?"

"Yeah!", Alex growled and spat onto the floor. "As if you can", he added, but with the glimpse, which his twin shot him, he knew he could. His hand reached to his back where the holster of his gun was ... It still was there. But the gun was not. And definitely now he saw it on the dining table.

"Don't test me", Aaron stated, drinking out of the steaming pot.

Alex swung his legs off the couch and leaned down over his knees. The glass of vodka was still there, still half full, and he drowned the rest of it.

"Richard is here", he snarled after that. In the corner of his eye, he noticed that his brother was looking over. His attention had fixed after all on the other man. Alex clapped a hand onto his mouth to rub away the burning of the alcohol.

"He took that Akihito game not too greatly. He liked it in a way ... because he likes the outcome. But he did not like what we had planned ...", he knew that he was not explaining well, but his mind was a mess currently, courtesy of his brother's fist.

"I told him that that fucking cunt would never have managed to kill his son. Not in a thousand years. But it would have been so much fun, if Ryuichi had smashed him off him and had broken his neck doing so. Of if he had ripped the knife from his hand and had pushed it to the cunt's chest again and again." He made a fist in the air and moved it forth and backwards fiercely with bared teeth, as if he was indeed committing a murder by knife.

"And he said: 'Yes, all very well. That would have been nice, but what if ...?' And I said: 'there haven't been any what 'if's''. That stupid fucking little whore would never have been able to kill his fucking son! But if Ryuichi had murdered his toy boy instead, that would have broken him for sure. He would have crawled home to kiss his father's feet."

By now, Aaron watched him very quietly. His staring made Alex twitch. He hid his face behind his hands and shook his head, which still hurt – thanks, brother!

"So, now he's going in there as well. I mean ... he was supposed to at some point, but actually, I thought I would have a bit more time. I wanted to see Ryuichi Asami fucking break, and I would have. I would have had him sob into my lap within a week if only I had the time!"

At the end the screamed, stood up and punched the wall. That hurt like hell also. He screamed again, this time not only in rage but also in agony.

Aaron was looking at him, leaning the scarred side of his face into his propped-up hand. But no matter how much he wanted to feign carelessness, his darkened eyes betrayed him.

"What about Ara ... Akihito?", he asked after Alex had thrown himself down onto the sofa again to blow air at his knuckles.

"I don't know!", the other exclaimed. "When I asked him, he said I sounded as if I wanted to renegotiate our deal and that he disliked people who did that. I am to get what he promised. You and your men will get your payment from me. That is all I can tell you now."

Aaron's eyes turned narrow. "How did you ask him?", he inquired icily.

"How? How do you think? Sitting on his fucking Yacht somewhere out on the ocean in the middle of the night, all alone. I told him that if he did not need the boy any more anyway and therefore wanted to toss him away, then why not let me have him? I told him that some of my men had had enjoyed him a lot and would want some more time with him if possible. And that I would make sure no one would ever see or hear from the cunt again."

"And what did he say?"

Alex grabbed the glass and hurled it across the room at his brother. It hit a kitchen cabinet just above the man, bursting into a hundred glistening shrapnel. Aaron was on him a second later, tore him to the ground and punched him in the face a second time. Then a third.

Alex spit out blood when the other let go of him.

"What did he say?", Aaron asked again, hissing.

With a sneer, Alex opened his eyes and looked up. He lay between the sofa and the TV table, with one of his brother's foot pressed onto his chest.

"He said he very likely needed him to keep his son at bay."

"Ah", the other said from above, his gray eyes nearly white in cold rage. He pressed his foot down harder and Alex grabbed it, when he felt his breath forced out of his lungs. "So, it would be for your benefit still, right? You have been promised Richard's support to take over any businesses of Asami you'd have an interest in. But those would only be available if the bastard stayed here and became his father's lapdog."

"I asked him! What more do you want?" It was hard to breathe, even harder still to speak. "Get off!", he hardly managed to wince.

"Why? Give me one good reason not to crush your chest and watch you suffocate?"

"Because –", he shrieked, when Aaron pressed his foot down even harder. "–because ... you won't get him back without me."

Then the pressure was released.