Counterfeit Love

But, really, there was simply nothing to tip me off. Even hours later, replaying those first few moments in my head, I couldn't think of a single thing that had been out of order.

He knew what he was doing.

Much like myself, he'd been a career criminal.

Even more so since he didn't lose those years behind bars like I had.

He'd honed skills I'd never really needed to perfect.

Breaking and entering.

Concealing his presence.

Lying in wait.

Then pulling a movie villain move of waiting for me to close the door and move inside to flick on the light.

It had been a few years since I'd seen him up close. When I'd put a bullet inside him, it had been from several yards away and while I was running toward my bike to get the hell out of there.

The last time I'd seen him face to face had been right before I'd been locked up.

He'd been younger then. Softer in the jaw, thicker hair. He'd matured a lot since then.

He'd been hitting the gym, bulking up his once scrawny body. His hair had thinned back at the temples, threading a bit prematurely with gray. His face, which had once been a little fleshy, was hollowed out in the cheekbones, giving him an even more severe appearance than he'd once had.

"Oh, McAwley, did you really think Jersey was too far for me to come and find you?" he asked, shaking his head, tsking as he lounged on my couch, a gun in his hand.

"Didn't think you'd be so fucking obsessed with me that you'd follow," I shot back, not caring if I was goading him. When it came to Ewan O'neal, he was always goaded, always ornery. And nothing I said would make him rethink his desire to stick that gun in my gut and fire. "Don't you have anything else going on in your life?"

"Like a woman?" he asked, lips curving up slightly. "Like yours? Pretty one with all that blond hair, that soft face."

"Don't let that soft face fool you, man. She'd rip you open, pull out your guts, and strangle you with them before you could even get a shot off." Maybe that was embellishment, but I was sure that Chris was the sort of person who would not think twice in that sort of situation. If it was her or you, she was going to pick herself. And you would barely live long enough to get to regret forcing her to make that decision.

"Well, one of you's got to have balls, I guess," he said, sounding unimpressed.

"The fuck do you want, Ewan?" I asked, sighing. "If you wanted me dead, you could have made it happen by now. So what the fuck do you want now?"

"Oh, I want a lot of things, McAwley. I want my brother back, for one."

"He was more of a brother to me than to you, so you're barking up the wrong fucking tree if you want sympathy. He wouldn't be dead right now if you didn't force us into doing all your dirty work, if you had been any sort of boss at all and provided us with protection. But, no, you wanted to sit fucking pretty and let us do everything. You can blame a lot of shit on me, but you can't hang Ryan's death on my shoulders."

Knowing he had no logical argument about that, he charged on instead.

"I want my counterfeiter back..." he tried. And, yeah, I was guilty of that. I had taken that life. But only because when you had a knife to your throat and a gun in your hand, you fucking used it to save yourself.

"Then maybe you shouldn't have sent him to steal from me," I told him, shrugging. "Besides, he was shit. His work was shit. The two of you would have been locked up in under a year if that operation went on. You should be thanking me."

"I want my business back," he continued on like I hadn't spoken. Ewan was a lot of things, but he wasn't a complete fucking idiot. He knew that money his older counterfeiters was printing up might pass an eye test, but if a marker came out, if a counter came out, they'd be found out on the spot.

"Maybe you should have spent the last few years in art school, man, learned to draw your own money. You could have flown to Russia, to Canada, to Denmark, to Scotland, talk to some of the best counterfeiters in the world to learn their secrets. No one was forcing you to sit on your ass and wait for someone else you could con into doing all the work for you, man."

"You're talking a lot of shit for a man with a gun pointed at him."

"Yeah, well, I'm not the chickenshit kid I used to be. You don't scare me anymore."