Page 20 of Collateral Love
“You know what hurts the most?” I asked him. “It ain’t the pain.”
He shook his head violently.
“It’s knowing you had a chance to shut the fuck up.”
I crouched so we were eye level.
“You didn’t even have to talk,” I continued.
He sobbed harder. “Please, I’ll leave,” he said. “I’ll disappear. I’ll go anywhere.”
I smiled.
That was the problem.
People thought distance fixed betrayal.
Distance just gave it time.
I stood, wiped my hands on my jeans, and nodded once.
Xavier stiffened. He knew what that meant.
I pulled the gun slowly. No rush. I enjoyed theatrics for disloyal motherfuckas.
Martin saw it and lost whatever dignity he had left.
“No—no—no?—”
I put one shot through his knee first.
His scream echoed off the warehouse walls, raw and ragged. He tried to crawl. Tried to drag himself somewhere safer, as if safety still existed for him.
I walked up behind him.
“You see,” I said quietly, “if I let you live, you become a question.”
I pressed the barrel to the back of his head.
“And I don’t leave questions unanswered.”
The shot was loud.
Martin collapsed forward, face-first into the concrete.
Dead weight.
Xavier exhaled behind me. Baby bro wasn’t shaky, but that sigh was heavy. He still lacked the stomach for this life.
I stood there for a second longer than necessary, listening to the silence settle back into place.
Then I turned.
“You good?” I asked him.
He nodded once.
“Yeah,” he said. “I just didn’t realize how fast it could end.”
