Counterfeit Love

Have him, that is.

Not yet.

But I would.

And soon.

Whether he liked it or not.Chapter TwoFinchMaybe starting over in this clusterfuck of a town called Navesink Bank was not the best of my ideas.

Not that I was known for great ideas, that is.

But the underlying belief that hiding out in a place so overrun with other criminals would somehow give lowly ol' me anonymity was, in hindsight, a bit flawed.

Because who do local criminals notice and distrust immediately?

Unknown criminals from unknown places.

People like me.

What can I say, a guy like me stood out.

Anyone who'd ever met me said I had trouble tattooed on my forehead. Which was fair. And if that wasn't enough, there were my prison tats on my hands that gave me away to anyone keen enough to pick up on them.

No matter how low I tried to lie, there was always someone willing and able to ferret me out.

It didn't help, of course, that I had decided to rent an apartment right next door to a member of the local outlaw biker club along with the MC president's only daughter.

When it came to luck, it was typically tilted in any direction but in my favor.

Hell, I'd picked this apartment building--and we are being incredibly generous in thinking of these connected, glorified shacks as 'apartments'--because I thought it was the absolute last place any established criminals in a town like this would be found.

God liked to laugh at your plans and all that cliched shit.

God thought my plans were fucking hilarious. Always had. Likely always would.

But, I had to at least count a couple things in my favor.

Like the fact that Ferryn and Vance seemed content to leave me to my own devices, hadn't looked into me, demanded more personal information, mostly stayed in their own apartment.

There was also the fact that it didn't appear that Vance told his boss--or Ferryn her father--that I existed, that there was some new player in town.

This was evidenced by the fact that my doorstep had yet to be darkened by the man who was likely tall, dark, and intimidating. Much like his daughter. Except instead of occasionally letting me hang out, drink beer, and eat takeout, he would probably throw me out of my own damn room, and tell me to get the hell out of Navesink Bank.

So, things were as stable as could be expected for your average, everyday outlaw.

And I was never the type to panic before there was something to worry about.

Which was why I was cracking open a beer and lighting a cigarette at my fold-up card table in the early afternoon, mentally rolling through a list of things that needed to be done.

A storage unit needed renting.

Paper from Poland needed ordering.

The right ink needed to be mixed.

Printing presses needed to be procured.

A lot more than one might think went into the art that was making Monopoly money that could pass as the real thing.

And since I left my old place with nothing more than the clothes off my back and a small backpack full of all the wrong shit, I was starting new here. Everything I had carefully obtained over the years in the past needed to be purchased once again.

Luckily, in my line of business, money wasn't typically an issue. More of it could always be made. But finding the right items? That took a lot of work.

And no one would ever accuse me of being the workaholic sort.

That was okay. I wasn't the kind to be in a rush, either. My grandfather would say that was because I was raised slow, lived a slow life. A southern type of life. Front porch sitting. Firefly watching. Nothing in haste, as my grandmother might say.

Shit would shake out.

It usually did.

If you gave it long enough.

My gaze moved around my shack, taking in the kitchen against the back room, something that predated me. The water that came out of the tap wasn't exactly clear. Not in the kitchen, not in the bathroom.

The linoleum parquet style floor that wouldn't have even fooled anyone when it was freshly laid down was scuffed and faded entirely to white in certain spots. I couldn't help but imagine they were spots scrubbed clean with bleach to cover some sin or another. No one scrubbed so hard just to mop up some pasta sauce.

There was no bedroom, just the living space, which came 'furnished' with a green and gray, cigarette-burn-hole couch, that acted as the makeshift bedroom. There was a TV cabinet wedged into a corner near the window that looked out onto the shared front porch that was actually just a slab of cement and an overhang. Good enough to protect me from the weather when I needed to hop out to get some fresh air while I smoked. An oxymoron, sure, but I generally preferred to smoke outside.