Sell My Soul (Sixty Days 1)

Today was anything but normal fucking circumstances it appeared.

“You’re fine,” I told her, forcing my voice into some semblance of smoothness.

“I want out!” she screamed. “Fuck the money, I want out!”

I kept my grip strong. Kept her close. Kept a fucking lid on her flight.

“There is no out,” I told her. “You knew there was no out when you signed. Sixty days without limits. No bail outs. No rescue. No fucking early exit.”

Her adrenaline cracked clean through and turned to sobs, soaking my shirt with her streaming fucking snot as she snivelled. If Eric hadn’t already been crawling dazed I’d have given him another shoeing for my disgust.

“Please,” Annabel cried. “Please let me go, sir! Please let me go! I won’t talk, I swear! I won’t say a word!”

I fought back a smile at the irony of her subservience in these conditions.

“What the fuck?!” Eric groaned from the floor. He stumbled around on his knees, pressing his palm to his jaw with a grunt.

I hoped it was fucking broken.

I eased Annabel back onto the mattress and she curled up into a ball with her welted ass in the air.

Eric wasn’t expecting me to grab him afresh by his collar. He clattered into the landing railings as I launched him clean out through the door.

I directed a hovering Lance into the room behind me. “Get her a drink and see that she’s not climbing the pissing walls,” I barked.

He brushed right on by me and stepped inside, closing the door behind him.

I lit up a cigarette without giving a fuck for the indoors, shaking out my knuckles as Eric pulled himself to sitting.

“You’d best start fucking talking,” I said after a long drag. “Or you’ll be out of this place on your ass in thirty seconds flat.”

He spat blood to his left without giving a shit for the carpet. “What the fuck do you think you’re playing at?” he asked, and I raised a brow.

“That’s precisely what I should be asking you, don’t you fucking think?”

His eyes were dark on mine. “Oh right, yeah. So you go swanning off like a fluffed up stallion, seeking out a sad little piece of ass like it’s made of fucking gold and saying fuck you to our whole fucking network, and it’s you who’s got the cheek to come back here and speak to me like I’m the idiot piece of shit?”

I jabbed a finger right at him. “I said she wasn’t ready. I said you weren’t fucking ready. Jesus fucking Christ, Eric, it’s me who makes the fucking rules around here. You do what you’re fucking told or you get the fuck out of here.”

I could have booted him in the nuts when he stared me out and shook his head. It was slow. A knowing smugness which made no sense what so fucking ever until he opened his dipshit mouth again.

“You don’t make all the rules around here, Bran.”

I ignored the chill in my gut. “I make the rules around here, Eric. Always.”

“Drake called,” he said. “He fucking called me, Bran. I was in there because of Drake. Because he told me to. Because he said I’d better get the fuck in there now and make the performance worth the wait.”

“Fuck it,” I snarled and slammed my palm into the railings above his head. “Why the fuck was he calling? A slight delay? One fucking delay and he’s sticking his fucking nose in?”

His name was shit in this building. His name was shit everywhere we went, hushed under my breath with a torrent of expletives whenever I was forced to acknowledge his requests for an update.

Drake.

A friend of our father’s, but not one of mine.

The man with the money to set me up in this seedy haven in the first place. The man with the original contacts and the original motives.

The man who shaped me from the bitter young piece of shit mourning the death of his father and set me off on a whole new road.

And in more recent years, the man who wasn’t welcome within ten fucking miles of me or my set up.

Just as long as his friends got their service and his bank account grew all the richer for it, that distance was serving him just fine.

“Richter,” Eric said, and I took a long drag on my cigarette. “Richter rescheduled important business for tonight’s viewing. He pinged Drake at the no show.” He brushed his fingers against his swelling jaw.

I’d got him good.

“Richter’s a piece of shit,” I said.

I should’ve known Mr Strangulation Fetish would have his ass out over me turning down his requests for a private webcam viewing. He was present at almost every bastard viewing, jerking his tiny dick like a rabid little terrier. His bids were frequent. Filthy.

Everything about the asshole was cash in the pocket but a pain in the fucking ass.