"Where to next?" Reynolds asked the taciturn man.The silence in the car was sharp and bladed. Coupled with the fact that they still had no idea where Ceneau was, Rey could not help but feel stifled.Gaude glanced at him. "A bar a little further down.""What's there?""Ceneau, hopefully."Rey gave the man a dirty look and he relented. "It was somewhere Ceneau, Tate, Sean and Lloyd used to visit when they were younger. It has long since been overtaken by a biker gang and all sorts of people, like a rendezvous for the worst kind. The brothers stopped visiting the place a long time before then. Their taste changed. It is luxury hotels and expensive vacations now. But not Ceneau. Whenever he is in the country, he goes there.""The gang, they don't make trouble for him?"The bald man shrugged. "They could try if they wished to. I am often with him though. It would end poorly for them. But they don't even go near him. They stay away; leave him in peace. He says it is a haven, that place."G
"The Johns are a beastly people." Gaude told Ceneau quietly, while looking straight ahead.If they were not the only persons in the vehicle, Rey would have turned around to check for the person who spoke. He had never heard one of the Johns family aides speak ill of the family or the patriarch. The act itself seemed like treason.Gaude ground his teeth. "They lie, cheat, steal, kill, all to get what they want. It is their nature. And they make us to be just like them, too. Only more violent. More prone to do harm. The things we have done for them." He mused, shaking his head."So why don't you leave?" Reynolds asked.Gaude looked at his as though he was slowly losing his mind. "What?"He repeated himself. "Why don't you leave? Find your own path. Haven't you had enough?"The guard shook his head. "You don't just leave when it comes to being in service of the Johns, Mr Reynolds. Clearly for all your skill you still know little to nothing about these people. Besides I do not know any ot
"I could use a guy like you." The bartender told Reynolds when they approached the counter."Oh, how so?" He asked. Gaude was still irritated from his encounter with the men and he had for a short while taken a step back. For this, Reynolds was grateful. The man had a soldier's approach to anything and everything, and while violence and force usually got the job done, Rey had long since learned that their were other ways to go around a problem.The woman shrugged. "I saw what you did over there for your friend here. I was going to call my husband, but it would have been a mess. You stepped in and did what you did. Let's just say I am a big fan of your method." She grinned. Reynolds grinned back. She was married and friendly, therefore she was safe. "Well, my method is expensive." He said. He did have to cover the cost of their drinks, didn't he?"The price of peace. It is a small price to pay, wouldn't you say?""Perhaps,"She was looking at Rey the way Kayla looked at him most days
Another figure had emerged from the shadows - Jamie, an old friend of Rey's.James "Jamie" Corrigan was the golden boy on campus when Reynolds was in college. He was not a jock or anything, but you could not spend the day without hearing something about what Jamie did. He was smooth-faced and stereotypically handsome in the way that college girls loved. It helped that his parents were like Riker's —filthy rich. They owned an assortment of businesses in the country and the name Corrigan was a household name. Reynolds struck up a friendship with him by accident of place. Jamie was the last person he expected to see in a room standing next to a man like Riker."Rey," Jamie said, opening up his arms as if preparing to embrace him, but keeping his distance. "It has been too long."Reynolds glanced between both men, his head spinning with confusion. "Apparently, it has. Tell me you are not with him."Jamie offered him a small smile. "I am," He admitted.He had grown a tad, morphing from
"Pay up," Riker told Jamie, making a beckoning gesture with his left hand.Grudgingly, Jamie pulled out a wad of notes from his pocket and slapped it on the counter next to the other man. "You win." He grumbled."Again," Riker laughed.The air in the place smelled like cigarette smoke and alcohol exposed to the naked air. After years of being in cohorts with Jamie, he still could not get over how the man could stand places that smelled of cheap cigarettes and sweat, but barely had the stomach for violence. Both men had made a bet. If Reynolds agreed to work for them, Jamie won. If he refused their generous offer, Riker was the winner. What sane man born of a woman would refuse an offer like that, Jamie had said days before, when they first set their sights on TheJohns Conglomerate. Reynolds Sheen, Riker told his partner. And he had been right.Riker knew Reynolds. He knew men like him. They prided in their righteousness, slick bastards like those, and this got in the way of their
It was mid day when they got to the gallery. The place was just as Gaude had described it: quiet and quaint. It stood between two buildings of smaller statures, and its roof which was flat and square cut a straight line across the sky.Rey and Gaude exited the car and went into the building. There was man at the reception in a blue dress shirt. They told him they were there for Ceneau and he let them up. The elevator made a whirring, electronic noise as it took them up. Gaude filled a large part of the small space with his broad shoulders. They soon found Ceneau at the top of the building. He had his back to them, and he had somehow lost his blazer.How long had the man been there? Reynolds wondered.At the thump of their footsteps in the roof, Ceneau whirled to face them. His tie was missing too. For a man who had a small army of guards ransacking the dirty in search of him, his brother in-law seemed quite at peace with the world."Gentlemen, to what do I owe the pleasure?"Rage,
It was not often that a bridegroom decided against showing up for his own wedding. But at the same time, it was also not very often that people got married for reasons other than love, even if it was merely perceived love and was not true.Mei had arrived at the church at the back of one of the Land rovers the Johns provided when she arrived in the city. She was driven by a female guard, a mountain of a woman, whose hair was cut like a man's. When she overhead the conversation between Kayla and her husband, she’d decided to follow them. Her father complained about this habit of hers often. Her proclivity for following the wind anywhere it led, doing the first thing that came to her mind. It was an inclination she had worked hard to suppress, but when she watched Kayla storm out of the church, she knew going after her was the right decision. Somehow, she just knew.She beckoned to the guard. The woman marched to her. Mei half expected her to salute. "Come," she told her, "I could use
In the elevator, Kayla decided she had to be in a dream. It had to be.She simply could not believe her eyes, or ears. It was the same Ceneau who barely moments ago was so close to biting a chunk out of her face, as much as she wanted to do the same to him. His arm was now linked with Mei's and she stared up at him, lovingly. The woman had once again saved them from a catastrophe of epic proportions. Who would have thought that a person like Mei, simple and unsophisticated for the most part, would act as she did, masterfully using her knowledge of and her feelings for Ceneau to convince him?Kayla blinked and shook her head. 'What in God's name was that?' She asked herself."Cocaine dust," Reynolds whispered to her. He was standing behind her in the elevator, squeezed into a corner to fit in with all their others. His open palm on the swell of her hip was a small comfort."What?" Kayla asked even though she had heard him. The day's chaos made her want to reach back and hold his han