Scarred

thirteen-3

Nya lived with enough guilt. But this was one she knew would weigh on her for a long time yet. “So why would you come here to do me a favor?” she asked. “If I’m just the b***h that got your bro, Archer, messed up in this s**t, why would you do me a favor?”

Hexam opened his hands and then brought them together in a clap. “Because you’re his lady. And you ask any guy in this town who the one guy they want on side is, and they’ll all tell you Archer.” Archer didn’t have property. He didn’t have a patch. He didn’t deal drugs or weapons or anything like that. “ ‘Cept that sonofabitch won’t give his loyalty to no one. He stays neutral all the f*****g time and won’t give his allegiance or withhold it. Sometimes I think he works against folks just so they don’t get the wrong idea that he might be soft or on their side.”

Archer had told her he worked best when he was neutral. “It’s worked for him,” she said.

“Archer knows everything and everyone. I know guys he’s screwed over who would still suck his d**k if he put them on their knees. Because if you control Archer, you control half the board. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t owe him something from some time even way back. And anyone else? He has dirt on so deep, they’re scared to take a piss without asking him.”

Fear, gratitude, blackmail, Archer had so many plates spinning, but he did it without breaking a sweat. “What do I care?”

“Are you kidding? The gal who sucks the c**k makes the man dance.”

Hexam wasn’t subtle. “And you want me to make Archer dance for you?”

“Not right now, but there might come a time…”

So he wanted her in his back pocket. “Thanks, but no thanks,” she said.

“You don’t even know the favor I’m offering to do for you. It could be big.”

“There’s nothing I want from you,” she said. “Except…” The last word slipped out and it was too late to take it back.

“Except what?” he asked, peering at her. “What do you want?”

“I want Archer home safe. I don’t want you sending him away on planes anymore.”

“That’s sweet,” he said, and she knew he was mocking her with his smile. “Unfortunately, not even I can make a plane turn around and they must be landing soon, right?” He looked at his watch, but not for long enough to actually read it. “They’ll need to land to refuel, so while they’re there, they might as well do the job.”

Nya wasn’t going to beg for information on when they’d be back. Hexam might make it seem like they would be on the tarmac for minutes only to turn around and come home. But she didn’t believe that.

“Why don’t you come with me?” he asked. “You can leave any time you want. All you’ve got to do is get in a car with me. I’ll send my boys away. Just you and me, boo. We’ll take a ride.”

But she wasn’t a soft touch. “I get in a car with you and you could drive me anywhere. There could be a thousand guys waiting for us wherever we go.”

“Maybe this will change your mind,” he said, lifting his hips, he reached behind him and he pulled out the biggest handgun she’d ever seen in her life. He opened the clip, showed her the bullets, slammed it back inside and loaded it before putting the piece down in the middle of the desk not far from her phone. “Does that make you feel safer?”

Guns. Nya didn’t really know what to do with guns. She’d seen them at Tag’s place in the past, had boyfriends who used them, even her father had a shotgun. But she’d become accustomed to seeing Archer’s knives around the place and wasn’t sure how she felt about holding a g*n.

But as she had the thought, Hexam reached behind him for something else. “Or maybe you’d prefer this,” he said and slapped a sheathed knife about five inches long beside it. “You can keep hold of them both. I swear to you, no one will hurt you. Archer must have told you something about me. What did he tell you?”

That he didn’t order quick hits. The people who Hexam wanted to hurt weren’t hurt quickly, they were hurt slow. So whatever he was planning, even if it was sinister, she wouldn’t end up dead, not tonight. But she wasn’t going to share Archer’s hints with this guy.

Weapons weren’t supposed to be allowed in here. Hexam probably wouldn’t have let himself be searched and bringing a group to distract security would’ve let this guy sail through without a confrontation.

“No,” she said. “I won’t do it.”

“Listen, boo, I could’ve come in here and dragged you out kicking and screaming. There wouldn’t have been a f*****g thing any of your men could do about it. Archer isn’t even in the country. The chances of anyone getting word to him in the next forty-eight hours are nil. Not close to nil, Nya. Nil. And even if by some sheer miracle, someone managed to talk to him, do you have any idea how long it would take him to get back here? At least a day, not a short, daylight-hours day, I’m talking twenty-four hours, and that’s without delays… and just so we’re clear, we’d make sure there were delays. Do you know what kind of f****d up s**t could happen to you in twenty-four hours?”

“Our friendship was short,” she said.

“Far as I’m concerned, you delivered. I came in here and told you I wanted Tag on my doorstep, now a day later, he’s my b***h. That was you and Arch that made that happen. You’re a helluva team.”

Nya didn’t want praise from this guy. “So you want both of us on the books now,” she asked.

“You’ve got something, boo. Some way of convincing guys to do what the f**k you want them to do. And that’s interesting to a guy like me.”

Nya didn’t want to interest Hexam. The idea that he might have his eye on her, now or in the future, in a professional way or otherwise, made her uncomfortable. “I think you should leave now,” she said.

“I could.” But he didn’t move, he just watched her rise to her feet. “But these clubbers of yours, they’ll be f*****g off soon, and then it will just be you and me back here, and all those young, sexy servers who’ll line up for me and my boys.”

This guy didn’t know the meaning of friendship. But Nya didn’t know what to do, she needed Archer and he was half the world away. “I get in the car with you and then what?” she asked.

“I told you. I’m not gonna hurt you. I wanna do you a favor to show you, we can be allies. I can be useful to you. I can give you what you want.”

This guy believed he knew so much about her, but as far as she was concerned, he was still bluffing and she wasn’t falling for it. “What do you know about what I want?” she sneered.

“Plenty.”

She didn’t believe him and began to tidy her desk around the conspicuous weapons that were making her uneasy. Hexam might think he’d put them there to make her feel better. But she was too aware of the fact that he was stronger and quicker, so if he got hold of one of these, she wasn’t sure she’d be quick enough with the other to even the odds.

“Tulio.” The name made her stop straightening papers. “That’s right, boo. See, like I said, it takes a guy a few days to get back in the loop, but now I am. And I know what you want.” Hexam clasped his hands. “I know f*****g everything, boo, and I can give you it. I can give you the revenge that you want. You don’t have to do it bit by bit, I can help you rain down hellfire because the same guys who wronged you, wronged me. We have something in common.”

Back to that. And he was right. He knew everything. All the problems her and Archer had discussed were becoming reality. Hexam knew about Tag and Farrah, and he knew about her plan to get revenge. Archer had said Hexam wouldn’t care what happened to these guys as long as they weren’t in his inner sanctum. This had to be the evidence that they weren’t.

“How did you…? What did you do to Tulio?”

“You marked him,” Hexam said. “It wasn’t Archer’s trademark, but the work was pristine, there’s only one guy with the skills to do that.”

“And Tulio… he told you what…”

Hexam smirked. “Made us promise to protect his women.”

Nya had seen how Tulio cared for his women. “And that’s when he told you…”

Hexam shook his head. “But after putting two bullets in his w***e’s head, he got chatty.”

Tatiana. That was the name of his mistress, she remembered Archer saying it. Pain clenched her heart. “Why would you hurt your own men?”

“He wasn’t a serious player. He’s expendable. Just like the fuckers who hit Sizzle for me and f****d up your friend. They did sloppy work under my name. Whether you come to watch or not, I’m taking them out tonight.”

“You have them?” she asked, dropping into her seat, Nya almost didn’t notice that her hands folded over the top of the g*n.

Proud of himself, he stretched out in the chair. “I do. Four of ‘em lined up and ready to go.”

“Does that include Tulio?”

He shook his head again. “We let him live, ‘cause he gave us useful info.”

So four, plus Tulio, plus Jonno, that left only one unknown. “Who are they?” she asked.

“Come and see for yourself. I’ve got them all for you, boo. Not even Archer did that for you. I’ve got the little guy who shot your bouncers, and the three who screwed… what was her name?”

Dazed, she felt she was slipping out of reality. “Jamie. If you have them, why didn’t you tell Archer?”

“He knows. I guess you guys never got time to talk about it.”

No, they hadn’t, and she glanced at her phone that still hadn’t rung. Maybe that was what he was going to tell her tonight that he was doing this job in exchange for time alone with the men who’d killed Jamie.

Hexam smiled again. “You’ve got the bloodlust, I can see it. You want to see them suffer and you’ve got nothing to lose. You can come and watch with your own eyes and then I’ll take you home and leave you alone.”

This wasn’t the time to be shocked. She had to keep it together. “How do I know you’ll let me go?”

“What would happen if I held you? I can’t force Archer to stay away forever. It took me a whole f*****g hour today to convince the guy to go. One of his conditions was that he wouldn’t stay down there for a breath longer than he had to. You must do mad things to his d**k, ‘cause there’s ample p***y down there, and he doesn’t give a f**k about it. Told me to keep it the f**k away from him.”

She did. But that wasn’t why he was so eager to come home. If she was in Archer’s position, she’d be eager to come home to him too. “I can’t trust you,” she said. “I’ll have to pass.”

Archer would go postal if she went with Hexam, no matter how desperate she was to see these men taken down a peg. He’d told her that she should never put herself in danger for him because if she did, they’d be through. Nya had to guess the same rules would apply if she did something to endanger herself by choice.

“Come on, Nya, you know I wanna be your friend and do you a favor—”

“And then I owe you,” she said.

He didn’t deny it but wasn’t offended. “Way I see it, you owe me either way,” he said, with his elbows on the edge of the desk.

“How do you figure that?”

“Because you can come with me now and get exactly what you want, watching these men go down. Or you don’t come with me now and you miss your only chance to see it.”

“Then I pick door number two.”

“Fine,” he said, standing up to brush his hands down his jeans. “But you’re making a mistake. Don’t forget, Columbia’s a dangerous place. There’s lots of gangs down there who see Americans as a payday, grab one and they get a helluva ransom. Lots of stray bullets and machetes swinging too, accidents happen all the time. You wouldn’t believe how easy it is to f**k people up down there, no one gives a shit.”

Hexam had a way of doing this thing with his eyes where he could cool them and intensify them at the same time, conveying his threats while keeping his words implicit.

“You’re telling me something might happen to Archer or Tag?”

“I’m saying if I get upset, like I will be if you don’t come with me, I might forget to give the guys down there orders to protect the Americans’ asses or to put the safety on their guns. You might have heard that I can be unreasonable. When I’m in a bad mood, I make bad choices. You don’t want me to be in a bad mood… Do you, boo?”

She stood, angry, confused, offended, she couldn’t reason with this guy and he was leaving her in an impossible position. There was no choice. He wasn’t asking. He was giving her an order. “You said Archer was your friend.”

“And if he picks a girl who hates my guts, that’s a friendship that will sour fast. So what do you say, Nya, spend a couple of hours with me, or your boyfriend comes home in a box? What’s your pleasure?”

Like she had any kind of choice.

Archer would be hurt if she refused. Tag would never make it alive either. On top of that, she would’ve made an enemy out of a gangster just to complete the f****d-up trifecta.

“Okay,” she said, bowing to grab her purse from under the desk, she slung it across her body and picked up both of the weapons. Putting the g*n in her purse, she strapped the knife to her hip and hid it under her shirt. “But just you. Get rid of your understudies.”

“I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” he said, holding out his arm.

As much as she didn’t want to, Nya went over to step under it. Just as they were about to walk out, her phone began to buzz and she glanced back to see it light up. His hold on her shoulders strengthened.

“Leave it, Nya. You can tell him all about it in the morning.”

If Hexam held to his word as Archer said he did, then she would see bad men being punished and then she’d be taken back to her apartment and left alone. But if Hexam didn’t keep to his word, she might still be with him when Archer came back. If Archer came back.