The Man: a dark romance story

Part Seven

PETER:

The Las Vegas job took longer than I was expecting because nothing could go right when I fucking needed it to.

Leigh Stokes was a slippery motherfucker. He was never in the same place twice in a row, which made his movements difficult to track; the handful of times I did manage to find him, he was always accompanied by a band of armed thugs, even at his home outside of Vegas.

He had a preference for doing business under the protection of the most crowded places of the strip, with police presence and CCTV as far as the eye can see. It was too risky to try and take him out there, even if I did have a clear shot on him. Too...not fucking worth my time.

I tracked him for over a month with very few promising leads for something that should have taken two weeks, maybe three, if I was being generous.

I should have asked for more money, but I suppose I'm partly at fault for not doing my due diligence before accepting the job.

Every day that passed where his brain was still inside of his skull made my trigger finger itch just a little bit more.

The fucker was smarter than he looked, I'll give him that. As the most prominent distributor of drugs and weapons from Vegas to L.A., he knew everyone was gunning for him—pun intended—and was ever vigilant with his head on a constant swivel.

But targets always slip up eventually and make errors in judgment. He did just that when I caught him unguarded in an alleyway behind one of the smaller casinos just east of the strip, getting a blow job from a hooker who clearly didn't want to be there.

He backhanded her when her teeth accidentally grazed his shriveled, minuscule dick, the strike far harder than I expected it to be—even if there were a small chance it was consensual, it clearly wasn't, based on her immediate response afterward.

The sight of it made the muscles in my jaw constrict, bringing me back to the night my father touched mí madre—mí corazón—for the very last time. Not only did I put a bullet through my father's head that night, I put several more, just to be certain he would never touch her again.

I knew I would picture his face as Leigh was drawing his last breaths.

My mother abhorred violence and did her best to keep me at arm's length from her brother, Luis, as much as possible. She was ever cognizant of his lifestyle, which had been handed down to him by their father, mí abuelo. She saw the good in me and never wanted me to stray down the same dark and lonely path as Luis and my grandfather.

Regardless of her personal bias, the night that I took my father's life, Luis was the first person she called to help us dispose of the piece of shit.

"Shut up, you goddamn cunt," Leigh growled when the hooker screamed from being struck, her head rocked back from the force of it. "And don't bite it again," he said when he shoved it back in.

I palmed the Springfield XD-M in my hand, aware of the fact that the shot would not only reveal my location to her, but my identity, as well. But knowing this could be the last chance I had for a while to complete the job, I raised the gun to eye level, steadying it to aim before I took the shot.

The bullet hit true and Leigh's rotund frame went limp in the blink of an eye, his legs buckling beneath him as he collapsed to the ground below.

I was hoping the hooker wouldn't scream and she thankfully didn't, her jaw gaping with disbelief and horror as she attempted to process what had just happened. It reminded me of the first time I laid my eyes on Jessica at the gas station in Texas, although Jessica's initial response was more akin to that of relief than horrified stupor.