Chapter 1

Eleven thirty on a Monday evening.

Rain hammered in sideways against my apartment windows, hammered in like a boxer throwing a flurry of haymakers, one after the other without any pause. Coming in hard, so hard I could hear winter pounding against the glass through the triple glazing, glittering blackness, wet and mean, cold and violent as a nightclub bouncer breaking up a drunken brawl.

A good night to be catching up on sleep, and I was.

Clubbing? Nah, forget it. I was in bed.

Already half asleep.

Alone.

I could’ve gone out. Could’ve gone to one of the clubs I hung out in when I had the time, knocked back a few shots, looked around for someone I’d like to pick up or be picked up by. Didn’t feel like it. Been there too many times looking for something I hadn’t found in a long while, ‘n these days, those casual pickups weren’t doing anything for me.

Besides, I’d been working too hard lately, burning the midnight oil, chasing dead end leads down blind back-alleys that led me nowhere. Until today, at least, and today hadn’t been what you’d call a good day at all. Bit of a fuckin’ disappointment actually. Nope, today hadn’t been a good day, but it’d been a long day that started with bad news and got worse, ‘n I needed my sleep.

Bad news?

One of my dudes, one of the guys I did regular business with, he’d been taken out in the early hours of the morning. I’d had an appointment with him first thing, to pay the deposit on a girl, ‘n one of the dudes that worked for him’d met me instead. Gave me the bad news. ‘Ol Charlie’d been slapped down like a tilapia outta the fish tank at the local Chinese supermarket.

The chicks in ‘ol Charlie’s stable, they’d wanted Chinese takeout around three am, after their last johns finished up. ‘Ol Charlie, he was a nice guy mosta the time, took good care of his girls as long as they worked hard, ‘n these ones had. He’d gone to the takeout round the corner from the apartment he was using to run his stable from. A coupla’ dozen orders of Sweet ‘n Sour Pork, General Tao Chicken, and Yang Chow Fried Rice. His girls were all real fuckin’ hungry.

Their johns had worked them real hard.

He’d pushed ahead of a dozen customers lined up at that takeout joint ‘n waiting their turn. The counter girl sweet-talked him into joining the end of the line. His turn came just before closing time, just after the pork and chicken both ran out. She’d smiled as she told him, ‘n ‘ol Charlie, he’d sniffed a little of the white nose powder by then. He’d taken that smile the wrong way.

He’d punched the counter girl so hard her nose broke and her ears bled. Her dad’d shot ol’ Charlie down as he climbed over the counter, hyped up ‘n foaming, coz he wanted his girls’ fuckin’ Chinese takeout. Put three rounds into him and blew him off the counter, back across the sidewalk and into the street. He’d bled out in the gutter ‘n his girls’d had to settle for leftover pizza from the fridge. I was gonna miss ‘ol Charlie, but I knew Robbie. Knew he knew the business. He could step into ‘ol Charlie’s shoes and we’d kinda had a chat, ‘n I’d told Robbie I’d let Greg know about the change in management, agreed it’d be business as usual, and I’d put the deposit down.

Another girl I was gonna pick up in a coupla months’ time ‘n take home.

That was the bad news.

You wanna know how it could get worse?

Wasted hours trying to negotiate with that new guy who hadn’t wanted to do business with me. Marcellus, his handle was. I’d heard rumors he’d started up weeks ago. Turned out he had a girl who was on my list, and I’d finally tracked him down coz I really wanted a chat with him, and I wanted that girl even more. I’d been paid the deposit on her, which meant that one way or the other, Marcellus and me, we were gonna do business.

We’d talked, and those talks hadn’t gone the way I liked, which was a real shame. He’d got real nasty about it in the end, told me there was no fuckin’ way he was cutting a deal with me. He’d terminated the negotiations ‘n he’d told me to fuck off. Hadn’t been too fuckin’ polite about it either. Guess he hadn’t clicked as to quite what that meant for him, coz I was getting that girl back. One way or the other.

Turned out to be the other, fuck it.

Honestly, I’d far rather he’d taken up my offer.

What Marcellus didn’t know until it was way too late for him, what no-one usually knew until it was far too late for them, was that underneath that petite, polite, and yeah, still hot looking if I say it myself, facade, I’d kinda discovered over the last coupla years that really, I was a ruthless bitch with a twisted mind who could look into the abyss and smile. So yeah, well, I’d smiled and I’d shrugged and I’d nodded when Marcellus told me to fuck off, and then I’d looked into the fuckin’ abyss, ‘n right about then I’d stopped negotiating.

Thing was, I hadn’t liked Marcellus from the moment we met. Call me colored or something, but I hadn’t negotiated that hard, ‘n lying in bed, I kinda figured I’d wanted it to go down the way it had. It’d been his eyes and his lips. He had red lips. Thin red lips, paper-thin lips. Red, like someone had cut his throat with a razor-sharp knife and moved the cut upwards. That, and his eyes. They’d had no fuckin’ expression in them. Looking into his eyes, they were like dull black glass. Lifeless. Soulless. Empty.

A quick look at Marcellus and you’d think he was just your average pimp running his stable of girls, but when you looked again, looked closely, you got an eyeful of those razor-thin lips. When you got to his eyes, you knew this was one evil mother, and in the end it wasn’t the lips, it was the eyes that did it. Figured his girls had it bad enough without seeing eyes like that looking into theirs every fuckin’ day. Creeped me out, ‘n I hated to think what it did to them.

That was just the fuckin’ eyes.

I’d taken one last look at those lips, ‘n I’d stopped negotiating.

It was always a pain in the ass doing deliveries to that gourmet pet food business I dealt with now and then. Only when I really had to, of course. I sometimes had to, and I had today. When we got down to that serious talking, turned out Marcellus was a startup, a one man shop and there wasn’t anyone to step into his shoes. It was kinda disappointing really, and I’d told him that after I’d got everything I needed outta him, including where he stashed his girls.

He’d sorta changed his ideas about doing business after we started having a real conversation, but like I’d said to him, by then it was a bit late for that change of heart. I hated to see that steady income stream just vanish, but needs must and everything, and with all the bits he was missing by then, coz he’d been a hard nut to crack, even with a 9mm hole or two from when I’d taken him down, questions woulda been asked.

Coupla 9mm holes?

You think that’d kill the dude? Nah. I’d winged him, not terminated him. One through a knee to bring him down, the other in the guts, and I was that good a shot. A knee? You think a knee’s hard to hit? Well, you’re right, but it’s easier from behind at point blank range when they’re not looking, and the dude hadn’t been because he didn’t take me seriously.

Just coz I was five three and petite. Fucking idiot. Size doesn’t matter when you gotta 9mm Browning Hi-Power in your hand, not that he’d known I was carrying but fuck, you don’t assume, not in his business. Not in mine, either.

Gut shot the dude as he went down ‘n he was fucked. Took his piece away. Zip-tied him. Plugged the hole in his gut with a tampon so he didn’t bleed out too fast, some duct tape to keep it in and some more to hold his knee together, a quick hit for the shock, and we were good for a long chat. He’d lasted long enough for my questions, but nah, he wasn’t gonna last long enough for anyone else’s. Questions being asked, by the kinda people that woulda been asking him those questions after I was done with the dude, that’d kinda screw with my business, so yeah, well, he was disappearing.

Nobody’d miss the fucker, except maybe his clients and they’d find a replacement soon enough. They always did.

“Man up, Marcellus, don’t be a wuss,” I’d told him after I’d got what I needed, busy duct taping him back into silence after I’d hammered a ball-gag in to shut him the fuck up, coz all the whining and pleading, along with the screams and the sobbing, was getting kinda annoying. “Ya had your chance to do business with me, and we coulda all made out like bandits, but oh no, you didn’t want to. So bite me.”

Not that he could. He’d had those 9mm holes to start with, coz when push came to shove, a taser was a bit of a risk. If it didn’t take him down, I’d have been kinda fucked. He was a big guy. In the kinda businesses I dealt with, a lot of them were big guys, so I’d plugged him right up front instead, the way I usually did when things headed south. Took the fight outta them right away.

Some of those guys I dealt with, they thought they were tough, but when push came to shove, coupla 9mm lead pills took the tough right outta them, and after that there were quite a few tried and trusted techniques that got results real quick. Using the secateurs and some iodine and a nail file on the stumps generally worked. Smash a few teeth and file the stumps, that kinda worked well too once the nerve endings were exposed, and if that didn’t get results, a ¼” bit through the kneecap always worked, although sometimes you had to drill through a time or two more.

Slowly.

Honest to god, wish they’d just go with the flow, coz that burning bone smell always made me wanna puke. Didn’t mind the screams, the earplugs filtered those. Nope, it was the smell. Burning bone, piss, shit, coz they all crapped themselves, and that undertone of blood and adrenaline. You just hadda get used to it. Anyhow, going off topic on detail there, but by the time we were done chatting, no way ‘ol Marcellus was gonna bite me.

I’d knocked a lot of his teeth out with a hammer up front. Amazing what a girl can carry in her handbag, ‘n you really don’t wanna see inside mine, coz if you do, you’re likely gonna be introduced to how those contents ‘re used.

You don’t want that.

Marcellus sure found that out.

He was a tough guy. He’d kinda spat blood and tooth fragments at me. “You know what I’m gonna do to you after this, Kwon, you bitch? Gonna beat your teeth out, piss in your mouth, suck your eyeballs outta your face ‘n fucking kick you in the stomach until your grandchildren abort, and then you’re gonna fucking die, you fucking bitch. You ain’t getting even one of my hoes. Bitch.”

Dude hadn’t quite figured out that I wasn’t like any other ex-cop he’d run into, ‘n that he was already dead and I was getting all his fuckin’ hoes. That, ‘n every fuckin’ thing else he had. He just hadn’t realized that when he spat all that out, but he kinda started to get the idea that we should be talking when I’d taken his other kneecap out with my little Black and Decker. Well, made a few holes, anyhow, kinda like Gruyere. Squirt a little acid that I just happened to have lying around for these intimate moments into the holes and he was fucking screaming to talk while his kneecap smoked.

Actually, he’d babbled.

Babbled as fast as he could with no fucking front teeth, but I’d have to remember to recharge my little Black and Decker. Going through bone a few times kinda drains the battery and it was only a small one. Clean it, too. Nothing worse than pulling the drill outta my toolbag to fix a loose screw in the kitchen or something, ‘n finding I’d forgotten to clean it.

Did that once, and now I was kinda religious about cleaning my tools.

Anyhow, we’d kinda breezed past that reluctance on his part to talk business pretty darn quickly once we got down to discussing things at the sharp end of my little Black and Decker. I’d gotten all his banking details and cash on hand outta him on top of the girl. Truth be told, by the time I cleaned out those bank accounts of his ‘n lifted that stash of cash he’d held out on telling me about for an hour or so, I’d be making way and the fuck more than I would’ve on the girl, but the girls like her, they were a repeat business.

Taking Marcellus down was a one-shot deal, and okay, those one shot deals paid, but nowhere near as well as an arrangement on repeats. Not over the long haul.

Guess I was pretty fucked off when I gave him that last goodbye.

His piece was shit, a crappy old Springfield, frigging barrel had rust, ‘n that was gonna get dumped before I made it home, ‘n not in the trash. Down a stormwater drain or something. Not even worth the time it’d take to move it on, and I did know a coupla dudes that moved shit like that, but fuck it. Not this junk. There was enough fentanyl in a baggie in that pocket inside his leather jacket to take care of half of the strung-out addicts inside a five mile radius. Guess he had a side-hustle going on.

Hated that shit, and yeah, well, down the stormwater drain and fuck it. If anybody touched that water, they were gonna die anyhow. I’d ‘a made him swallow it, but I didn’t want to fuck up those pet cats and dogs. He saw the tarp liner when I dragged him over, and he kinda tried not to go in, but he wasn’t in any position to turn me down as I pushed and heaved him in and patted his shoulder.