Go Hard: A Bad Boy Sports Romance(57)

“Those things will kill you,” I said to her.

She laughed. “That’s it? Nothing else to say?”

I shrugged. “You moved the stuff. I’m not exactly surprised.”

She laughed again, shaking her head. “I guess I should have expected that. Mister Navy SEAL can’t be surprised.” Janey looked at Hartley. “Is he always like this?”

“Yeah, he is,” Hartley grumbled.

I grinned at her. “If I were still going to try to steal that stuff from you, this would be a huge deal, but that’s not my plan.”

“Before we discuss plans, I believe you have something for me.”

I tossed her the bag. She caught it effortlessly and looked inside.

“It’s all there,” I said, “courtesy of the Dixie Mafia.”

She looked surprised. “This is Dixie money?”

“I told them it was to hire a crew to rip you off.”

A bemused smile broke out across her face. “That seems suicidal to me.”

“Well, it’s good you didn’t have to make that call then, isn’t it?”

“I guess so.”

I felt someone approach from behind, and I resisted the desire to turn around. Instead, I looked blandly at Janey.

“Can you ask your brother to get out of my blind spot?”

Janey nodded and King moved farther to the left, getting into my peripheral vision.

“Thank you.”

“So tell me, Travis, why should I let you live?”

I sighed. “Why the fuck is everyone asking me that question?”

“It’s a good question. You seem like you’re more trouble than you’re worth.”

King began to drift back into my blind spot. I turned my head toward him. “Stop moving,” I said.

He glanced at Janey.

“Travis, I’m being serious.”

“So am I,” I said to her. “Your brother moves again, I’ll fucking break his knee.”

“I’d love to see you try,” King said, stepping up to me and drifting into my blind spot again.

I moved fast. I stepped sideways toward him, driving my elbow low and hard into his stomach. He stumbled backward and tried to get his hands up, but I wasn’t going high. Instead, I shifted my weight and swung a rough kick into the side of his knee.

He crumpled to the ground, grabbing his leg.

“Enough,” Janey said loudly. “Enough.”

I stood up straight. “I warned him. Twice.”

“What do you want, Travis?”

King was rolling side to side. “Relax,” I said to him. “I didn’t break it, you big baby.” I looked back at Janey. “You know what I want.”

“You want to make a deal. You paid me, which is good, but now you’ve hurt my brother. I’ll ask one more time: What do you want?”

I took a deep breath, calming down. “I want to give you the Dixie Mafia. I want to get the leaders, or at least the ones who are local, in a single room. Then I want to kill them all.”

I felt Hartley shift her weight nervously behind me. She knew the gist of the plan, but hearing it like that was probably pretty harsh.

“Interesting,” Janey said. I could see the curiosity in her eyes.

“If they die, you can grab hold of the local drug trade in Knoxville and its neighboring counties, no problem.”

“What do you want in exchange?”

“Three things. First, nobody knows we were involved in this. Second, me and Hartley walk away from this. Third, you pay off Hartley’s family debt.”

She looked amused. “That’s all?”

King slowly struggled up to his feet. “I say we kill them,” he said, giving me a pissed-off look.

I ignored him. “That’s all. Hartley’s debt is fifty grand. The drug trade is going to make you way more than that, and we both know it.”

“I’m doing a lot of work in this deal,” Janey said. “There’s a lot that could go wrong.”

“Yeah, maybe, but this is your chance to finally hit back. No more pissing them off. You can win.”

I didn’t know if she’d go for this, but I had a feeling she would.

Janey was a business woman. She was in this for the profit, and she did nothing that didn’t directly profit her. If this went down the way I planned it would, she stood to make a huge profit.

But more than that, she hated the Dixie Mafia. Janey was the type of person that wanted full control and couldn’t settle for a sidelined position. I was guessing that being so out of control in that car with Ray that night had taught her never to let someone else do the driving. She’d walked away from it once, but she might not again.

“It’s an interesting idea,” Janey said.

“You can’t be serious,” King snapped. “This guy is an animal.”

I sneered at him. “Go ahead. Say that again. I’ll break your fucking skull.”

“Jesus, enough you two,” Janey said. “King, get the fuck out.”

King glared at me, spit on the ground, and then hobbled out the back door.

Janey walked over toward us, looking at me curiously. “You don’t seem like the same guy you once were,” she said.

“I’m not,” I admitted. “And you’re not the same girl.”

“No,” she said. “We’ve both changed a lot.” She looked at Hartley. “Why is he doing this for you?”

Hartley looked surprised. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I honestly don’t.”

“You’re pretty; I’ll give you that. But this man is offering to dismantle a very dangerous and powerful gang. All for what, some peach farmer’s daughter?” Janey shook her head. “I’d never do it, no offence. Nobody is worth this much effort.”

“You don’t understand a thing about me,” I said to Janey, “but I think I understand you. Getting control of Knoxville is your dream, isn’t it?”

“Something like that,” she said, nodding.

“I got you your money. I’m for real, Janey. Come into business with me. I’ll give you Knoxville, and you’ll give us freedom.”

She stared at me for a second, considering, and finally laughed. Her face shifted from an intense and dangerous stare to her old cheerleader smile. “Okay then,” she said. “Let’s do it.”

As she reached out and shook my hand, I couldn’t help but feel like I was shaking hands with a snake.

But it didn’t matter. All I knew was that I couldn’t steal that shipment from her, not really. My next best move was to topple the mafia, at least locally, and hope that they’d be too disorganized to realize that it was me who set them up. Then once Hartley’s debt was paid, we’d be out of this, and Janey would have her power.

All in theory, of course. I needed to get the heads of the Dixie Mafia together in a single room, and I needed Janey to uphold her end of the bargain.

A lot of loose ends, a lot of possibilities for failure. But this was the best course of action.

It had to be the best, because I was committed to it.





17





Hartley





Something felt off about Janey Caldwell.

I couldn’t tell what it was exactly, but the way she reacted to her brother getting beaten down by Travis was incredible strange.

He didn’t notice it. He was too busy being a macho idiot. But when Travis took King down so easily, Janey actually stood there and smiled.

She watched her brother get hurt, and she smiled.

That was so strange. It only lasted for a brief second, and then she acted like she cared afterward, but I knew she had no real feelings about it. Maybe she even delighted in seeing King get hurt for whatever reason. I couldn’t begin to guess her reasons for any of this, but there was something very strange about her.

After we got back to the apartment, Travis poured himself a whisky and sat right down on the couch. He said he needed to do some planning, and that was fine with me. I retreated back to my room to do some planning of my own and got changed.

This had gotten so far out of hand. I didn’t know where I stood in all of this, or if I even thought we had a chance of succeeding. When Travis first told me his idea of turning on the mafia, I could hardly believe him.

The man was a Navy SEAL. He was supposed to be fighting for justice, not helping one gang take over another’s territory. But in his mind, he was helping the lesser of two evils rise to power while saving my life. Somebody else could deal with Janey and her family, he figured. A SEAL wasn’t a lawman, not by a long shot.

It just felt so strange to me, so unreal. I didn’t know how things had gotten this far, how I’d gotten so deeply into this. I knew I needed Travis’s help, but I was afraid that his plan wouldn’t work and we’d both be killed because of it.

I didn’t want him to get hurt because of me. Of course I didn’t. I wasn’t a monster, but all of this had gotten so complex, so far out of control. I didn’t think I could back out anymore even if I wanted to.

I hated just sitting in my room. I was trying to read a trashy romance novel just to escape and feel good for a little while, but I just couldn’t get into it. Reading about rich billionaires on Tinder just wasn’t doing much for me.

Frustrated, I got up and went out into the other room. Travis was still sitting there, staring at the wall, glass in hand.

“I don’t trust her,” I blurted out.