Better When He's Bold

“Rasssssssse.” My name turned into a long-drawn-out sound and his glassy eyes flicked to Bax. “Did you bring him in to finish the job?”

Bax grunted and propped a shoulder against the doorway. “Looks like he took care of it just fine on his own from where I’m standing.”

“Fuck you.”

Bax lifted a black eyebrow. “Sorry, man, you aren’t my type.”

“Marcus, who did you tell about your date with Roxie today?”

Those pain-medicine-glazed eyes shifted to me. “How did you know about Roxie?”

On top of being a really shitty poker player, Marcus was married and had two little kids at home. He was a real prince of a guy.

“Someone showed up at her place because she was expecting you. He hurt her real bad and now there are a lot of people seriously pissed off about it. Two of them are in this room right now, and you don’t even want to know what Nassir will do if you don’t give me some answers.”

He tried to shake his head but it really just lolled from side to side. “I don’t know anything. I haven’t been able to move since the ambulance hauled me here. Besides, my wife has been in and out with the kids, so there was no way I was going to risk a phone call to a hooker when she might overhear.”

I lifted an eyebrow and curled my hands around the rail on the end of the bed. “It was a long-standing date, Marcus. Who knew about it?”

His eyes drifted closed and I saw him wince a little bit. “I had to lie to my wife and tell her I got hit by a car. Fuck you, Race. What else can you do to me? I’m not going to be able to walk for four months at least, and then I’ll be in a wheelchair for who knows how long.”

Typical addict. It was always someone else’s fault. It was my fault Marcus went all in on a shaky hand and tried to bluff. It was my fault he risked forty grand he didn’t have to lose. And of course it was all my fault I hadn’t just sat back and taken a beating, letting him walk away scot-free. There was nothing more irritating than someone else trying to make me shoulder the blame for their bad decisions. I was going to tell him as much when Bax suddenly shut the door behind him and stalked to the head of Marcus’s bed. Even doped up as he was, I saw Marcus’s eyes widen and fear flood in behind the pain meds.

Marcus opened his mouth to scream, but Bax was faster. He slammed a heavy hand over the immobile man’s mouth and yanked one of the pillows out from underneath his head. He snatched the nurse’s call button so that it was out of reach, and took matters into his own hands. I should’ve winced or at least protested when Bax put the flat hospital pillow over Marcus’s face and pushed down. Marcus clawed at Bax’s arms, thrashed his upper body on the bed, and made garbled noises from behind the pillow. His encased legs rattled the contraption holding them aloft. Bax looked at me and I just shrugged. What was I going to say at this point?

Bax lifted the pillow up and I could hear Marcus’s sucking breaths from where I was standing.

“A jackass who doesn’t pay his debts is one thing. A piece of shit who cheats on his wife is another, but anyone who idly stands by while a woman is hurt has no use walking around with the rest of us. I have no qualms about putting you out of your misery, asshole.”

Bax was scary without trying. When he really put his mind to it he could rival Satan for his spot at the top of the evil and petrifying food chain.

Marcus had tears leaking out of his eyes and snot dripping out of his nose when Bax released his smothering hold with the pillow.

“You’re both out of your fucking minds.”

I sighed. “No, but I am out of time.” I nodded at Bax and he loomed over Marcus again, making the injured man hold up his hands and shake his head violently back and forth.

“This guy came in to see me the night after I ended up here. He told me he would give me enough money to pay off the debt I owe you if I could give him a way to get to one of Nassir’s girls. I told him Nassir is careful, he knows what he’s doing, and he would never let one of the girls take a new client unescorted.” Marcus’s eyes darted between me and Bax and he gulped. “I told him I would keep my date with Roxie. That he could go in my place if he gave me another five Gs.”

Bax growled low in his throat and Marcus held up his hands like that would ever be enough to ward off the dark and dangerous man.

“I didn’t know the guy, had never seen him before. I don’t think he was from around here.”

“He was from the Hill?”

Marcus blinked at me like the question made no sense.