It took me a couple of weeks—hell, I’d say a few months—to actually find out where she lived.
Shit, this is a whole new thing for me. Back in college, I used to do this thing where if some motherfucker was talking trash behind his keyboard, I’d just pop up at his house. You get what I’m saying? I don’t fuck with all that internet rah-rah shit. If you talk this fucking hard over the goddamn computer screen, let’s see if you can actually beat my ass. That’s the type of timing I was on. I never liked that Call of Duty lobby bullshit talking they did back in the day—I'll pull up at your place, and we can box on the street. I was good at fighting people before all of this.
But now? I could work my fingers raw and barely find anything on the public web. People must have gotten a lot smarter, using services like Incogni to keep their private information completely wiped from the public search engines. I looked through these expensive private data packs I bought, but I couldn’t find shit on Jasmine. Not even an old credit card statement.
FUCK!
the voice in my head growled, pacing around my brain.
This shit got so hard. How the fuck are we supposed to find her?
But then, it hit me. I hadn’t checked the police database.
I’m not talking about the public, court-record bullshit either. I’m talking about their actual private investigative database. Honestly, I wasn’t too scared of hacking into a local PD's network. They’re not the FBI or something. Those local cyber-units barely know how to uphold the Constitution, let alone know how to stop a decent grey-hat hacker from getting into their shit. So, no biggie getting in, on God.
Once I bypassed their local servers and got inside, I looked up Nathan’s active homicide case file.
Huh...
the voice whispered, suddenly going completely quiet.
Seeing this again is kind of fucked. Hell, I forgot about the security camera footage.
I hit play on the raw video file.
In the video, I didn’t even give him a chance to say anything. I just pointed my .45 straight at his dome and—
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
Until I took him down. Down, down, down. I put him right into the ground.
I stopped the video, staring at the frozen screen.
…This shouldn’t be funny... I just made a pretty fucked up Chainsaw Man Song joke... He didn’t deserve that even though he is an asshole.
I paused the video, staring blankly at the frozen screen.
...This shouldn’t be funny,
I thought, my chest tightening.
I literally just made a pretty fucked-up joke using that new Chainsaw Man song. “Bang, bang, bang, ’til I take you down, down, down, down, and put you in the ground.”
I shook my head, shutting down the media player. He didn’t deserve that. Even if the nigga was a complete asshole, watching myself put five holes in his chest shouldn’t be making me hum some viral internet track.
I sat back in my chair, staring into the quiet darkness of the safehouse.
But as I dug deeper into Nathan’s case file, looking through his family’s assets and estate records, I finally found her.
She was living completely out of state.
Nathan’s family had her tucked away in a massive, secluded mansion, miles away from the nearest city. It was the perfect spot to hide her from the world. But that was going to make approaching her incredibly difficult. A place like that was bound to have tight private security. The second I showed my face on that driveway, those guards would have me surrounded and sent packing before I could even open my mouth.
I needed a different angle. I had to formulate a plan.
I picked up my burner and dialed Pedro’s secure line. When his lieutenant picked up, I laid out exactly what I needed. I told them I had a solid plan to get my first-degree murder charge lowered—potentially down to manslaughter—but to pull it off, I had to speak to an old friend.
I asked Pedro for a favor. I didn’t need his guys to storm the mansion. I just needed them to put a tail on Jasmine. I wanted them to track her movements and figure out where she went when she actually left the estate.
If they could find a public space she frequented—a quiet park or some local coffee shop—then I could approach her on neutral ground. I could talk to her face-to-face, without having to dodge a dozen armed security guards.
So here I go, asking one of Pedro's goons to drive me a whole-ass two states away. We were heading from the heat of Florida all the way up to Tennessee. I was going to talk to a girl whose mind had been completely broken by the same monster I hated. The man solely responsible for the suicide of the innocent girl he’d raped and made killed herself back in college.
As her first boyfriend, and the person she’d lost her virginity to, I honestly hoped I still had some hold over her. I hoped I could pull her back from whatever sick brainwashing and conditioning Nathan had put her through. But my optimism was quickly fading the closer and closer we got to the Tennessee border.
Does she even want to see me?
the voice in my head asked, and the cynicism felt like a heavy, cold weight.
Are we really going to deadass break our bail conditions just to talk to a girl who might not even want to speak to us? Just to get our heart broken? Only to come back pissed off and crying?
God, I didn’t want to think about it, but those doubts were real. So fucking real.
But fuck it. It was the only card I had left to play. I spent the long drive with my Librem 14 on my lap, pushing bricks on the darknet and trying to keep my shit together as the miles slipped away.
“Hey! Rico!”
I quickly snapped my eyes open, my heart jumping.
Holy shit, did I actually fall asleep?
“
Huh! What?” I blinked, looking around at the unfamiliar streets.
“We’re here in Nashville,” Pedro’s guy said, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. “So what’s your play for this operation?”
“Right now, we need to go ahead and find an apartment,” I said, stretching my neck. “Get one that’s already fully furnished. Once we do that, we wait until the tracking team hits us back with her routine.”
“Bet.”
We drove around the city for a little bit, and I couldn’t help but take a few pictures of the skyline on my phone. Nashville was actually a very beautiful place. It was hard to resist.
But after me and old boy got our temporary apartment set up, I went right back to work. I kept moving keys on the darknet and waited.
Now, you’re probably wondering why I’m not using my driver’s name. It’s because I literally didn’t know it. Pedro’s guys are weird like that. No real introductions. No bromancing a nigga, nothing. He was just some random nigga I kept fed while making sure I had something to eat, too.
It was awkward as fuck.
Boy, was he a bitch-ass nigga.
I remember this one time when I went to the fridge to get some of my cheesecake. I’d bought it from one of the local businesses nearby. I opened up the container, and my whole shit was completely gone. Eaten.
BOOM!
I marched back into the living room. “Yo! You ate up all of my cheesecake, son?!”
“Yeah?” this bitch-ass nigga said, not even looking up at me while he casually changed the channel.
“You nutsack!” I shouted, my veins popping. “That nice old lady made me that shit yesterday. Quit eating up all my shit that I clearly didn’t buy for you!”
“It’s just a cheesecake,” he muttered, clicking the remote. “You can buy more.”
“I know damn well I can fucking buy more!” I roared. “That’s not the fucking issue! The issue is you eating my shit and acting like you’re entitled to it just because you stay in here and Pedro pays you. With your fucking bum ass.”
That seemed to strike a major nerve, because he stood up real quick after that.
“Who the fuck you calling a bum?!” he barked, getting right in my face.
I got chest-to-chest with him instantly.
“I wish you would,” I growled, looking right into his eyes. “Make my day. I’ll cry tears of joy if you swing on me, on my mama.
PLEASE
do it. I’ve been up pushing cocaine bricks on the darknet for twelve fucking straight hours. I wish you would swing on me. I’ll throw your ass right through that front window.”
“You ain’t going to do shit, bitch!” he yelled.
“Who’s a bitch?!” I roared.
“You, bitch!”
“How bout you try my chin?!” I tapped my jaw. “Come on, test my chin, nigga!”
“You better quit playing with me—”
Before he could finish, I shoved him so hard he went flying clean over the couch.
“I pushed you, what’s up?!” I yelled. “What the fuck are you going to do?!”
He scrambled back over the couch, swinging wild. I stepped to the side, ducked, and hit his ass with a nasty two-piece to the face.
BAM! BAM!
The impact turned his legs to straight noodles. He stumbled sideways and ran face-first into the drywall.
“You better quit playing with me before you go to bed,” I said. “I know how to fight, nigga.”
The motherfucker managed to regain his balance after getting rocked, and he tried to tackle me. But I’d been working out with Mr. Bone. I hit a perfect sprawl, got on top of him, and locked in a deep rear-naked choke.
“You better tap before you go to sleep in this bitch,” I gritted, squeezing tighter to let him know I wasn’t playing.
Once he realized he couldn’t get out, he tapped my arm. I let him go.
But the second I let him go, the dirty motherfucker lunged right back at me, trying to get on top and ground-and-pound.
“You dirty whore!” he screamed.
He managed to get on top, but I immediately threw up a Spider Guard, hooking my feet in his biceps.
“What the fuck is this shit?!” he growled, trying to shake me.
“Something you don’t know how to deal with,” I grinned.
I stripped his grip, kicked him dead in the nuts to throw him off balance, and scrambled to my feet. Before he could recover, I grabbed his shirt and executed a perfect Judo throw, launching his ass straight through the front window.
Glass shattered everywhere. I leaned out the broken window, chest heaving.
“What the fuck did I tell you?! I meant what I said! You done?!”
But this stupid bitch got to his feet outside, reached into his waistband, and tried to pull his strap on me. I didn’t even hesitate. I leaped out the window, grabbed the gun before he could level it, and twisted. His trigger finger snapped like a dry twig.
“AHHH! My fucking finger!” he shrieked, dropping the gun.
POW!
“
Shut your bitch-ass up!” I yelled, and soccer-kicked him right in the jaw.
His lights went out instantly. He slumped onto the grass, completely unconscious.
“Put that nigga to bed. Call me NyQuil. These hands and feet are full of melatonin.”
Not trusting his unstable ass since he’d literally tried to shoot me, I dragged him back inside through the broken window. I went to my kit and zip-tied the absolute fuck out of his hands and ankles before calling Pedro.
“What’s up, Re?” Pedro asked when he picked up.
“Yeah...” I sighed, looking at the broken glass on my floor. “I’m going to need another driver.”
“Huh? Why?”
“Because he tried to kill me, bro.”
“WHAT?!”
“Yeah,” I said. “We were boxing because this nigga kept eating up all my shit. I buy food for the house all the time, but he ate my cheesecake. I’d gotten it from this nice little old lady when we first got into the city. She’d made it fresh, and it was free! So I had to check his ass about it. He thought that because I knew some computer shit, I was just a nerd or something. So I had to put these hands on him.”
There was a long silence on the other end of the line.
“Wait...” Pedro said slowly. “You actually know how to fight?”
I almost threw my phone at the wall.
“Tch. Man, I’ve been doing martial arts for six years, fam. Strong people don’t need to be loud or act tough. And I proved that shit today. I got my old driver in a zip-tie right now. He’s over here wiggling around on the floor.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure that’s handled,” Pedro said. “I don’t know how long it will take me to get a new driver out there, though. You might have to walk a little. Or just take his car and drive yourself around for a while.”
I looked down at the dude groaning in the zip-ties. “What about him?”
“Just make sure he’s fed and uses the bathroom.”
“Bet.”
I stood in the doorway of the guest room, staring down at my former driver. He was still out cold, groaning slightly as his body wiggled on the floor, wrapped up in about thirty heavy-duty zip-ties.
The adrenaline from the fight was finally starting to wear off, and a very practical, very disgusting problem began to sink in.
Pedro had told me to just keep him fed and let him use the bathroom. But how the fuck was I supposed to do that? I couldn’t exactly untie him without him immediately trying to grab my throat or find another gun. At the same time, I couldn’t just leave him bound on the carpet. The safehouse was fully furnished with decent shit, and I could not afford to have this nigga peeing and pooping all over my guest-room mattress while he was tied up. I’d have to drag his heavy ass to the bathroom myself, but the logistics of letting a hostile, violent thug use the toilet while his hands and feet were bound was an absolute nightmare.
We need to put him in the bathtub,
the voice in my head suggested.
Line it with some trash bags. It’s easier to hose down.
“Man, shut the fuck up,” I muttered, rubbing my temples. “I am not turning this place into a jigsaw puzzle.”
I bent down, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt to drag his dead weight toward the hallway.
But before I could even pull him an inch—
Wooo-wooo-wooo.
The distant, unmistakable wail of a police siren started echoing through the quiet neighborhood. And it was getting closer. Fast.
My heart did a violent backflip.
I looked from the unconscious, zip-tied cartel driver on the floor, to the shattered glass of the front window, and finally down at my pocket where my unregistered .45 was tucked.
The neighbors. Of course. In a decent side of town, people don’t just ignore the sound of a grown-ass man being launched head-first through a pane of glass.
I was out on a million-dollar bond, running a dark-web coke ring, with a kidnapped driver in my guest room, and the laws were pulling up to my driveway.
Yep...
the voice in my head whispered.
We are completely fucked.