My face said uninterested. “If they can keep their pussies from crying, sure. I’m not the one prone to these emotional outbursts. If you noticed, I didn’t throw the first punch.”

He clearly wasn’t happy today. The stress lines on his face had gotten deeper. I wagered that being an employee here under constant pressure and threats would age a man faster than milk left on the counter. “Brent...” he sighed.

“Yeah, yeah.” I waved him off. “Don’t fret, coach. I’ll leave. I’m sure I’m due for another earful here soon. You can tell everyone I was kicked out of practice again.”

He didn’t argue.

That’s how things always happened for me. Cops tried not to arrest me despite my scenes being public and sometimes caught on tape. The school let me skirt by with less-than-ideal grades. Fear of the Vaughn name was everywhere.

I flipped my phone out of my bag right on cue.

“Yes, sir?”

“Stop fighting at baseball practice where people have cameras.”

“Yes, sir.”

The irritation at me being a disappointment was loud in his silence. “Report to work later. You have things to do. Try not to need me to bail your ass out.”

Click.

My next move was texting Reaper. He never liked working with the other guys we had on the top cleaning crew.

Here we go to work again, I thought.

And, of course, he just responded with a picture of a cat wielding a knife. He was not normal.

​Chapter 14

Brent

“Nice face.”

“I hide mine so you don’t feel so bad about yours.”

“One of these days my grandfather will give me the green light to shoot you.”

“He already gave me one for you, but I felt too bad about how ugly you are.”

From the intel he gathered about Jason Haines, we found ourselves staking out a warehouse on orders from the Dictator. Why he sent me out like a henchman would forever irk me.

What we knew was that Jason Haines was planning something. What that something was? Either I was kept out of those conversations, or we just didn’t know. The rules of the game changed consistently, and it was a struggle to keep up with.

We sat out there for hours looking for signs of anything. It was basically like watching paint dry in a refrigerator.

Reaper shoved something into my ribs. “Mint?”

“No, and keep your voice down.”

“Your breath smells bad.”

An SUV pulled into the lot and two men with briefcases shuffled out. I focused the rangefinder on what they were carrying—locked cases that most likely held money, drugs, or goods unable to be traded in the daylight. Trench coats and locked cases at one in the morning? Yeah, nefarious.

“Code combos to get into the cases. Two out and one driver.”

Reaper yawned in response.