Chapter 23

Cassie woke up in a sleepy, pleasure-filled haze, the golden rays of the morning sun slanting into her room through the blinds. They created bars of bright light across her floor and the far wall. She laid in bed for a moment, dressed in a silky, lavender gown with her comforter pulled up past her breasts. She suddenly noticed she was the only one in bed and a faint frown turned down the corners of her mouth. She found Alex in the middle of the room, his back to her, quietly trying to zip up his pants. He hadn’t put on his shirt yet, which afforded her an admirable view of the smooth, hard muscle outlined in his back. She smiled to herself as she watched him, thinking about ripping the pants off him. The thought sent little ripples of pleasure through her body.

“Hey,” she murmured, her voice silky and seductive. She stifled a laugh when the sudden, unexpected sound caused him to jump slightly.

He turned to look at her, his patented boyish grin plastered to his face. She loved that smile. It made him look even more handsome. She got a good look at his chest when he turned around, the muscles there standing out in stark relief in the light. She smiled to show how much she enjoyed the view. Then she sat up, her arms propped behind her. She let the blanket slide down, showing off her lingerie.

“Leaving?” She locked onto his eyes with hers, pinning him like a butterfly to a card.

“I…uh….yeah.” He stared back at her with intense hunger in his clear blue eyes. She smiled wider when she saw his cheeks turning red. “I sorta have some stuff to do today.”

“I see.” She gave him a cute, over exaggerated, sulky look. “I thought you could do some more important stuff with me.”

“You have no idea how good that sounds and if this were any other day I’d stay locked up in this room with you, but…” He paused as he watched her slowly rise out of bed, leaving the blanket behind.

She crossed the room to him, the light turning her gown exquisitely sheer. He saw the shape of her panties beneath it. They were a darker lavender and curved around her hips and thighs. She put her hands on his broad chest and he shuddered with the sensations now dancing through him. He fought to control himself and when he looked down at her, she saw his eyes clear a little.

“I have to go. It’s…important to me,” he told her.

“I like you, Alex. A lot,” she told him, and meant it. She couldn’t help it and all she wanted to do was embrace it. “I like spending time with you and I like the way I feel when I’m around you.”

He leaned in and kissed her, his lips gentle and at the same time, firm. She melted into him, one hand rising to stroke the nape of his neck while the other traced lines across his naked back. He pulled her a little closer to him, his hand grasping the small of her back. He lost himself for a second or two before he broke away, despite the fact that he wanted nothing more than to kiss her again.

“You have no idea how much I want to stay here.” He looked genuinely torn. “No idea. But this is something I really have to do. I’m sorry.”

“Come on, Alex,” she pleaded. She adapted a more playfully seductive attitude. She kissed him again and reached up to caress the lobe of one ear. She could see his eyes flutter with pleasure. No matter how hard she tried to get him to stay, though, he wouldn’t.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, and she could see how guilty she was making him feel.

Disgusted with herself, and what she was doing to him, Cassie decided to let the matter go.

“All right. Call me when this important thing you have to do is done, okay?” She looked up at his face again, the light catching her eyes and turning them into that blazing, gold fire he loved so much.

“You can definitely count on that,” he reassured, smiling down at her.

She backed away from him, the hand on his chest lingering for a second before it slid clear. He threw on his shirt real quick and kissed her again.

Before he could leave, she stepped in his way.

“What’s so important that you have to leave me?” She tilted her head slightly, curious.

He considered her question, an uncertain expression flickering across his face, before he answered.

“It’s better you don’t know.”

He left after that, not even giving her time to respond.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked to the empty air, a little wave of apprehension spreading through her at his conspiratorial answer.

Alex opened the door to his room with a certain amount of dread. He wasn’t sure how mad Darius was going to be at him for staying out all night, right before their big plan to rob Marks. When he got inside, he found Darius bustling around. There was a stiff, almost over-aggressive attitude with the way he handled the various things he had in his hands. He slammed some of them on the bed, or outright threw them. It didn’t take a genius to figure out he was pissed.

Alex took stock of the situation and saw that Darius was grabbing several items and lumping them together into two rough piles on his bed. When he heard the door close, he whirled around, eyes flashing coldly at Alex.

“Where the hell have you been?” His voice dripped with venom. “I’ve been trying to get this shit together for the past hour.”

“I spent the night with...uh...Cassie,” Alex replied, somewhat guiltily.

He checked out the piles on the bed, looking to see what it was he was putting together. Both piles had the same things in them; black ski masks with matching black gloves, black pants, black sneakers and one large black duffel bag. Along with all the clothes were piles of food. Alex noticed, depressingly, that it consisted of nothing but power bars and energy drinks. It looked like Darius had gone shopping at Burglars-R-Us and then went to one of those stores that sells nothing but vitamin supplements.

“That doesn’t look suspicious at all. Where and when did you get all of this stuff? And why couldn’t you have gotten food that actually tastes good,” Alex commented, trying for a lighthearted and sarcastic tone to defuse his friend’s anger.

Darius, however, flashed him a warning look and Alex quickly shut up.

“How was it?” he asked, gruffly. He watched Alex closely.

“Greatest night of my life,” Alex responded quickly, a huge grin stretching his lips.

Darius just nodded and when he didn’t say anything else, Alex gestured to the stuff on his bed.

“I went around town this morning. Thought it would look suspicious if I bought all that stuff in one place, so I went to several different stores,” he explained.

Alex noticed the discarded shopping bags bearing several different store logos on their fronts. They were sticking out of the little trash can beneath Darius’s bed.

“And you’re a hundred percent sure you want to do this?” Alex asked for the last time, pushing the little apprehensive knot of unease out of his thoughts.

It’s okay. I’ll be there to make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid, he thought to himself. That seemed to work. He felt a little bit better about the whole situation.

“Quit trying to back out of this, Alex. Remember, you owe me,” Darius answered, an edge in his voice. “We’re doing this, okay? That bastard has it coming. We’re the good guys and we’re doing the right thing. So what if we get to profit from it? That doesn’t make us evil.”

“And there’s no way Marks is going to connect the robbery to us?” Alex asked.

Darius walked up to him and placed his hands on his shoulders. He looked Alex in the eyes, completely serious.

“We’re not leaving him with any way of tracking us down,” he explained, slowly. “We’ve got all our bases covered. We’re hiding our faces, leaving no fingerprints, and we’re parking a long way off. Quit worrying so much and remember why we’re doing this. Focus on that and you’ll be fine.”

“All right,” Alex conceded.

“You good?”

“Yeah, I’m good,” Alex replied. A grim, somewhat unsteady confidence started filling him.

He latched onto the idea of stopping Williams from hurting Anna and also a life free from financial worries like a lifeline. Those things gave him the backbone to go through with it.

“We’re the good guys.” He repeated those words like a motto meant to reinforce his resolve. He was uneasy about robbing someone, but telling himself they were the good guys managed to shift the focus of what he was doing away from robbery and on to something more…heroic.

“Damn straight,” Darius laughed. “We’re the superheroes. Righting wrongs and all that good shit.”

“Quit reading so many comic books. It’s not healthy for a guy your age.” Alex clapped his friend on the back.

“Okay, let’s go over the plan one last time,” Darius said, sitting down in his chair. “We hit them in the middle of the day when the club isn’t actually open for its official business. We know that Marks and his thugs are holed up there most of the day. We also know when employees start showing up. We make sure we go in before they get there so that innocent people aren’t caught in the crossfire.”

“Right, because that would be bad,” Alex confirmed, needlessly. “Very bad.”

“We make sure we get noticed, bash things, take a few bullets, and scare the shit out of them. Then we head upstairs to his private office and grab whatever cash he’s got. Simple but highly effective.” Darius looked at Alex to get his reaction.

“I like it,” Alex said quickly. “Especially the part about scaring the shit out of them. How funny would it be to see a bunch of hardass, ruthless criminals running from the two of us?”

“Yeah. I wish we could record it,” Darius said, smiling himself.

A cell phone started ringing and Darius took one out of his pocket, flipped it open and put it up to his ear. He must’ve gotten a new one while he was out shopping for their gear. He couldn’t help noticing the frantic way Darius had fumbled it out of his pocket. That pretty much confirmed who was on the other end.

“Hey, babe,” Darius said.

While Alex was talking to Anna, he was left to his own thoughts. He thought about what had been happening to her. It made him angry and for the first time since he heard the truth, he was glad for it. He didn’t try to fight it at all. Instead, he wanted to use it like a tool. Anna was his friend and the fact that she was being forced to be a...a… He couldn’t even finish the thought. The Anna he knew had been such a warm and caring person, but over the past few months she had retreated from the both of them. Alex couldn’t even remember the last time he’d even seen her, much less talked to her. He understood why Darius was always angry. He could only imagine how bad it was for him to see the girl he loved abused that way. A man in that situation was apt to do almost anything. As he came out of his own private thoughts, he caught the last bit of Darius’s conversation.

“I’m handling things…No…Don’t worry about anything…You know I’ll be alright…I’m not going to hurt anyone. I’m just gonna make sure they’re…persuaded…into forgetting about you.” He paused, listening as Anna began talking again on the other line. There were increasingly dark looks showing on Darius’s face. “They’re not going to come after you or your dad. We’re not idiots, Anna.” He listened again, starting to relax. “I love you, too. Always.”

He hung up the phone and put it in a drawer in his desk. He didn’t want it falling out of his pocket when they robbed Exclusive.

Alex gave him a questioning glance.

“She’s worried about me, that’s all,” he said.

“She loves you,” Alex replied in a matter-of-fact tone. “She’d die herself before she let anything happen to you. It’s worse because she knows you’re only doing this to protect her.”

“I know. The thing is, she knows we’re practically indestructible but she’s still acting like I’m going to get killed or seriously hurt.”

“There are more ways to get hurt than physically,” Alex responded, his voice serious. “She knows that. That's why she’s so worried.”

Darius blinked a few times.

“Wow. That was really deep,” he commented, a little shocked to hear the philosophical side of his friend. He didn’t realize Alex even had a philosophical side.

“I eat a lot of fortune cookies. Must’ve gotten it from one of those.” Alex grinned.

Darius pondered that for a moment and then burst out laughing. Alex joined him and soon they were both in tears. Their hysterical fit of laughter went on for a good five minutes before it died out. When it was over, the tension and anxiety started to creep back in. The waiting only increased both feelings. They stayed in their room for two more hours, deciding to hit Marks a little after one in the afternoon. Most of his thugs would be in the club then and they’d decided early on to use them as examples. Neither one felt the slightest guilt about tossing them around. They almost liked the possibility of causing pain to people whose job it was to push life-destroying drugs onto anyone they could.

When the two hours were up, they loaded their gear in the black duffel and headed out, deciding it would be best to change somewhere else to look less suspicious going through the lobby. They could easily shed the all-black clothes after the heist and melt into Ashebrook’s population.

They quickly went to the parking lot and got in Darius’s Civic, which had finally gotten fixed. It had taken a big chunk of the five-grand he had thanks to not only the busted windshield but the damage from the bullets too. In a little bit, however, money wouldn’t be an issue for either one of them. At least, not for a long time depending on how much Marks stored at Exclusive. Darius drove toward its general location.

Darius found a parking garage a few blocks away from Exclusive and pulled into the tiny it. He found a parking spot on the first level and pulled into it. They got out and he reached into the back seat to pull out the black duffel.

They decided to stick to traveling behind buildings, using back alleys and side streets that barely anyone actually used. There were a few homeless people scattered here and there but for the most part, they traveled in complete anonymity. They picked up speed as they went. Soon, they got to a particularly narrow alley and decided to change clothes there. They got dressed quickly and Darius stowed the duffel, which was now filled with their street clothes, behind a dumpster. They double-checked each other to make sure they didn’t miss anything or leave anything on that could identify themselves. Once that was done, they started running again, picking their way carefully toward Exclusive’s front door using the well thought out path they came up with weeks ago. If they saw or heard someone coming, they would hide and wait until they were past. When they reached the same parking lot where they had watched the door so many times, they ducked behind someone’s gold-colored car and took out masks. With one last look at each other, as if to confirm that they did indeed want to go through with their plan, they put them on over their faces.

Darius shot Alex an arrogant grin and then sped forward. Alex followed after without only a slight pause of hesitation and the two raced toward Exclusive in twin blurs.

After confirming the club’s door was locked, Darius stepped up to it. He put both hands on either side of it, bracing himself. His fingers sunk into the tiny crack between the door and its frame. The metal twisted and bent to accommodate them. With what looked like no effort at all, he yanked. The door was ripped off and Darius threw it behind him with a sense of cruel glee. They heard it skid and bump against the asphalt before crashing loudly into a random wall.

Then, one after the other, they stepped inside.

It was eerily dark and empty. The place looked way different in daylight hours. The frosted glass windows that made up most of the left wall did very little to let in the daylight. The interior was illuminated poorly which gave the place a somewhat cheerless, gloomy look.

Before they could even walk a couple feet inside, a dark (and very large) form stepped out of the shadows to block their progress. They dimly saw sunlight glinting off the barrel of a pump-action shotgun pointed directly at their chests.

“Move and you die,” the voice said, calm and almost bored, as if doors being ripped off their hinges were a routine thing he had to deal with. Darius recognized him immediately as the mountain that had pulled him out of Exclusive the last time they had been there.

“Oh no. I guess they got us,” Darius said, obviously not scared by the gun pointed at him. He glanced at Alex, looking at him through the holes in his ski mask, and flashed him a big grin. Alex answered it with one of his own.

“Looks that way,” Alex answered.

They nodded to each other and at almost the same time, they advanced on the huge bouncer.

Despite the knowledge of being indestructible and knowing bullets wouldn’t hurt them, Alex still felt a flutter of panic deep in his gut. He let none of that show on whatever could be seen of his face, however. He kept the cocky grin in place and the steady, smooth walk he had adopted to intimidate Marks and his men. Darius was on his right, walking as smoothly and confidently as Alex, if not more so. The bouncer pumped the shotgun and then put it up to his shoulder, leveling it at them.

“I ain’t joking,” he said, his voice iron hard.

Alex, however, saw a glint of regret deep in the man’s eyes. He obviously didn’t want to hurt or kill them. If he did, that regret wouldn’t be there and he would not have given either of them a chance to walk away. He would have just killed them and gotten it over with.

Alex realized the man wasn’t one of Marks’ cartel foot soldiers. He was clearly just a guy showing up to his job and being forced to do something he didn’t necessarily want to do. It wasn’t all that different from the millions of other people who had to force themselves to go to crappy jobs so they could earn a living.

“Sorry about what we have to do,” Alex murmured, too low for the bouncer to hear.

Darius flashed him a pointed look, trying to tell him without words to quit being soft. Alex nodded his head in silent agreement. Without further hesitation, they continued walking right toward the bouncer.

The bouncer shook his head sadly and fired the big shotgun. The blast was loud enough that it felt like a physical blow all on its own. The world around them once again slowed, the cloud of round pellets spewing from the shotgun seemed to trudge through the air. They didn’t move out of the way, even though they had the time to do so. The cloud reached them in a split second, impacting across their chests and necks. They didn’t feel it. They didn’t even flinch. There was a rapid series of click-clack sounds as the deformed metal balls fell to the concrete floor. There were also dozens of holes and scorched bits of clothing. The flesh beneath their ruined clothes was unmarked and completely fine.

The bouncer stared at the both of them, a look of blank incomprehension on his face. He had expected to see two bloody, mangled corpses at his feet and instead he was faced with two men who could apparently shrug off a shotgun blast from point blank range. He might as well have been firing pillow feathers at them for all the good it did. He knew they weren’t wearing any body armor either. He’d seen for himself their undamaged, and completely healthy, skin.

Darius suddenly lunged, as quick as a mountain lion, and snatched the gun from the bouncer’s nerveless fingers. He held it in one hand and then abruptly squeezed, his fingers crushing and twisting the metal barrel. When it was warped to uselessness, he tossed it aside.

“What the fuck?” the bouncer stuttered, his face filled with fear and terror. His eyes were wide and startlingly white around their brown irises. “What in the fuck!? How’d you do that? What the hell is going on here?”

He was clearly out of his depth and he knew it. Not only that, but Darius’s display of superhuman strength seemed to break something inside the bouncer’s head. Then he realized the very real danger he was in and he held out his hands in surrender.

“I was just doing my job, that’s it. I swear. It’s just a stupid job.”

Darius was about to make sure he wouldn’t bother them again, but Alex intervened. He couldn’t shake the look of silent remorse he’d seen in the man’s eyes. He had his hand wrapped around Darius’s already cocked arm, stopping him cold.

"What are you doing?” he hissed, his voice harsh. He jerked his hand out of Alex’s grip.

“He isn’t gonna hurt us,” Alex told him, not backing down. He glanced at the whimpering man. “Get out of here and find a different job. This one can be unhealthy for you.”

The big bouncer continued with his mumbling rants, trying to reassure them over and over again that he didn’t really want to hurt them. He was just doing his job. It would have been funny to see such a big guy cowering in front of two outwardly unimpressive guys, but the terror in his eyes killed the humor and turned it into something repulsive instead.

Alex felt a little sickened by that.

“Go,” Alex told the bouncer again, his voice hard and ringing with authority. “Before I change my mind and let you stay for round two.”

Darius was obviously angry with him for letting the guy go, but when the bouncer clumsily slipped past them, he didn’t make a move to stop him.

A gush of cold, winter air rushed through the open doorway. It felt good to Alex, who was practically roasting beneath his ski mask. He could feel portions of it, mostly around his mouth and nose, getting damp with his breathing. It was also starting to take on a rather unpleasant smell.

Darius walked into the club and Alex dutifully followed along, ready for the trouble he knew would be coming. Like clockwork, it showed up seconds later in the form of about fifteen guys that stepped into view, each one carrying a gun of some type. A little over half of them were dressed in plain jeans and simple shirts. The other guys were dressed in expensive suits that looked tailor-made. Even the ties and shoes they wore looked expensive. Those guys carried harder hitting stuff like assault rifles and automatics.

And all of those guns were trained on Alex and Darius. Their barrels were dark, ominous black holes with one purpose. To kill.

Alex’s flutter of fear was gone, evaporated after he took that shotgun blast to the chest.

Darius’s crazed-looking smile had appeared on his face again.

“Impressive display, Gentlemen,” an educated and smooth-as-honey voice said. A man appeared next, standing at the railing of the second story loft clad in a charcoal gray suit that probably cost more than most people’s cars.

It was Quentin Marks himself.

He had a navy, button-up shirt beneath it but no tie around his neck. The top two buttons on his shirt were left undone, leaving a patch of lightly tanned skin showing. A gold chain hung around his neck and a gold watch glittered on his wrist, but other than that, he wore no other jewelry. He smiled at them, flashing teeth that looked too white to be entirely normal. It made his already good-looking features reach new levels. It was also blatantly fake, just another tool he used to get inside someone’s defenses and prey on their weaknesses. A trickster’s smile. He knew how to manipulate people into giving him what he wanted. Both Alex and Darius could tell that much just by looking at the guy.

You won’t be smiling soon, Darius thought to himself. I’ll be sure to rip the lips right off your face.

“I could definitely use men of your clearly...unique talents in my organization,” Marks continued, talking to them like they were old school buddies. “Of course, you would be greatly compensated for your services.”

They didn’t reply. They just remained where they were in total silence.

Marks’ men took the time to move around them in a loose circle so they couldn’t escape. Their guns were still trained on the intruders, their tips never wavering.

“I see. Well that is unfortunate,” Marks finished with mock sadness. “It would be a shame to waste your talents, but I can see we won’t be able to reach an agreement.”

He snapped his fingers, the sound surprisingly loud in the almost empty club, and abruptly turned his back on them, walking out of immediate view.

At the sound of that snap, Marks’ men opened fire.