The Seven Deadly Sinners

2

"Well where the hell did you find him, Axel?" I said into my phone. I was driving home after locking up the salon and filing the day's paperwork.

"I don't remember. I just... I know him. I don't know for how long, I don't know where I met him, I don't know how I know him. Just that his name is Wrath," said Axel.

"His name isn't fucking Wrath. Or Satan. Or any other bullshit name. It's Colby. He's just some guy. And why didn't you make him pay?" I asked.

"What do you mean?" asked Axel.

"The bullets. I know they aren't cheap and they're dangerous to get. Why didn't you make him pay for them?"

"Oh, because he didn't owe me anything," Axel said.

"Right. And that's what he said to your face. Except you didn't seem to agree with that idea until after he told you that, considering that you did ask him for money," I replied.

"He just... he didn't owe me anything. That's all I know. It makes sense, though. I believe him, he's right," said Axel. It didn't make sense. Not at all. And Axel was not a stupid guy. There was something else going on here. Something about Colby and the way those eyes shifted, the way he seemed to have controlled the conversation with Axel and be taken aback when I didn't immediately agree with what he'd said about me.

If Axel didn't know what happened and couldn't explain it, then it was going to be one hell of a challenge to find someone who could. But the dirtiest work is the most rewarding, and it was almost hard for me to not keep thinking about Colby, so I decided I'd be the one to figure out the answers.

"Just send me the damn address, man," I said into the phone before hanging up.

What was it with Colby? Why could I literally not get him out of my head? It was like our souls had known each other centuries ago and had finally reconnected, like my mind was laced with memories of him that were just barely out of reach. I didn't know why. And I hate not knowing. And the way he'd said, 'it was nice to finally meet you'. Like he'd heard about me millions of times before without my having any knowledge of him. That irked me a little bit.

Men don't ever have this effect on me. I tend to stay away from any sort of romantic relationships, and barely even have any friendships except for the ones I had with Trixie and Axel. You know, after we'd all gotten used to the awkward hierarchy we'd found ourselves tangled in.

But I was at the top now. Axel was one step below, and Trixie below him. The three of us ran this town. Every prostitute, every shooting, every robbery, every drug deal. We were either the ones who authorized it or the ones killing whoever tried to commit a crime on our turf without our permission. LA is a big, dark city. There's a hell of a lot of things that go down around here, and at least one of the three of us knew about every incident or plan.

Which is why it was so weird that Colby seemed to have that effect on Axel. Axel was a top dog, didn't let anyone mess with him, always stood his ground. Didn't have a soft spot for anyone other than Trix and me. And no one ever stayed on my mind like this. Even sexy, confident strangers. I do have to say, the mystery behind Colby was alluring. Like I needed to know more about him. I had a feeling that he felt the same way, because inviting someone like me to any kind of event was a bold move. I'm the crime boss. I've got my fair share of enemies. But I don't usually handle the dirty work on my own and I stay relatively clear of the public's eye, which is why I chose a unique name. I decided on Saturn because it was sort of ironic since my actual name was Jupiter, and so that there would be a name associated with all of the power these people knew I possessed without interfering with my personal life.

I really did love my actual name, though. Jupiter. It had the strangest story behind it. I was born with bright red hair. Not ginger or orange or anything, red. Bright red, like the color of a stoplight. I used to dye it black, but it seemed like the red was somehow always still visible through the dye. I'd had it professionally dyed and bleached, but the red glow never left. The hairdressers at the place I used to go get my hair done were fascinated by it. They'd leave the red in bleach for an entire hour and they'd come back to find it was simply a little less vibrant and not damaged at all. Even if I did manage to contain the hair's color, it'd be back to its original state in less than a week. Baffled the hell out of anyone who saw it for themselves.

My dad was an astronomer and Jupiter was his favorite planet. They didn't want to name me Mars or Mercury, and Venus was my older sister's name, so they went with Jupiter. Neptune was my younger brother. I used to joke that if they had another kid they'd have to name it Uranus to keep up with the theme.

I pulled up to my house at about 9:30. It was a nice house. A really nice house. Brand new, super modern, seven bedrooms. I lived alone, but had three people's names on the deposit so there wouldn't be any suspicions raised as to why a young woman like me would be living alone in such an expensive LA house when I only had one small source of taxable income. To the state, my job was a coffee shop manager. I'd worked out a deal with a local coffee shop after I heard that one of them was planning on jumping Axel at their next meet up. I'd told the actual manager, Jax, that either he puts me into the system and pays me regular wages like any other manager or he gets a knife to the throat. Of course, I'd had to actually hold said knife up to his throat to get him to believe me.

So I was technically just a coffee shop manager living in a house with a few friends. That's all I was to the state, and I worked very hard to keep it that way. I didn't have to put up much of a visible front, either. I looked like some grunge alt college kid.

I had the weird hair but it just looked like it was so painfully, obviously dyed that no one would suspect anything unusual about me. I also had a fair share of inked skin. My right arm had a snake that started on my wrist and wrapped up my arm, finishing with the head on the front of my shoulder. My left arm had the same concept, except it was a stem with thorns and a rose at the top. The sides of all my fingers except for my thumbs each had one of the eight planets on them. My left ankle had a colored tattoo of Saturn on it, Jupiter on my right. The rest of my tattoos were plain black ink. I also had a total of 13 ear piercings, identical on each side except for the industrial I had on my left ear. I also had a standard nose piercing, along with my bellybutton.

I looked like the cliché hot bad girl in an action movie. And I basically was one, too. I mostly worked with big, angry men and I didn't appear intimidating at all. I'm 5'3, 120 pounds. You'd never point me out as the boss of something so physically demanding and violent. But that was perfect, because it allowed the factor of surprise. It was so incredibly easy to distract people, make them think I was something I wasn't. I could get almost any guy to come with me wherever I wanted in order to isolate them from their counterparts. No one viewed me as a threat. So when a pretty little girl asks them to come upstairs with her at a party, the last thing they expect is for them to end up with a gun pushed against their temple until they do whatever she wants.

I never abused my power, though. Never hurt people for the hell of it or went out of my way to make someone's life miserable if it wasn't for the sake of a business deal or revenge. I wasn't trying to be the bad guy. But when you're the boss, you have to remind people why it's you instead of them every so often. Have to put people in their place.

Tonight, however, business and pleasure would be mixed. I would 100% be taking advantage of the disparity between who I looked like and who I actually was. I walked into my room and opened up my closet, brainstorming the vibe I wanted to give off tonight.