That explained a lot. It had been a long time since a woman had played so coy with me. "Not that kind of girl, I need to take things slow." Yeah right. That kind of girl didn't exist in my world.
I'd been sloppy. Concentrating so hard on taking down the Acardi family, I'd become too used to the lifestyle that my position afforded me. I'd had too much fun and at some point I'd come up on the police radar, or was it the DEA?
Either way, it didn't matter. It was a wake-up call for sure. I was going to have to rein myself in, keep a lower profile until I pressed the button on what I was privately referring to as Operation House of Cards.
Son of a fucking bitch. It was all going so smoothly, too. The lab was running like clockwork, the Acardis were paying me eye-watering amounts of money, and unknowingly funding their own destruction. All the chess pieces were almost exactly where I wanted them.
Clearly, I'd been celebrating too early, though. Blinded by all the pussy and respect I was getting. Well, I wasn't the first man that had happened to, and at least it wasn't too late for me. They didn't know I was The F King, otherwise they'd have sent a SWAT team instead of this pretty little thing.
Sarina was back-pedaling like her life depended on it. "Um, I mean, don't worry about that, it's none of my business. I actually got an application form to see if I can get a job here."
Such a shame, because even if she was a cop … she was still the sexiest girl I'd seen in real life with my own two eyes. You can't go deep enough undercover to fake that. She was sex on legs.
What my brain said to do was tip an imaginary hat at her and tell her to have a delightful evening before I left, but my cock had other ideas. I was still semi-hard from our bump and grind on the dancefloor, and teasing her while she flashed the innocent-blues at me.
Lord forgive me, but I still wanted to see what she looked like with my cock inside her. It'd never happen but, fuck it, I'd already spoken to her, what was the harm in a little more?
I'd take her to one of the club's semi-private areas, and play a game of undercover-slut-chicken with her, see how far I could get before she bailed on it and had to report back that she couldn't continue the investigation.
Maybe I could get my cock in her mouth, and she'd have to leave the club while trying to avoid any areas with black lights, because if she started sucking my hard dick, you can bet she was going to finish the job and wear some evidence. That brought the smile back to my face, which seemed to relax her a bit.
"No problem," I said, and leaned forward again. "Listen, why don't we-"
"Hey! You Ryan Crewe?"
I looked up and saw two guys who couldn't have been less welcome at this point. The sloppy tats and shitty clothes were a dead giveaway that they were in the Cannibals street gang, who thought they owned this city. It never rains, but it fucking pours.
"Yeah. Excuse me for a minute," I said to Sarina.
Scooting all the way around the booth so the hottest undercover cop in the world didn't have to stand up, I got to my feet and ushered both of them away from our table. I glanced back and saw Sarina was doing her best to look casual, but she was straining to hear us.
She wasn't as frightened of scary-looking motherfuckers like this as any normal woman would be. Fuck.
"Keep your voices down," I said.
The two of them looked at each other as if I was crazy. Then the guy who had first spoken, the designated leader of the night I guessed, piped up.
"Yo, we heard you can get your hands on some F, that right?"
"Sorry, guys, I'm all out for the night," I said.
"Oh, so you can get it, though? Well, let's go get some more, fucker. We'll drive you."
Before I could even say anything, they each took a step in my direction and reached for me. I backed away, avoiding their grasp for the time being as righteous fucking indignation swelled up.
"Fuck off, shit for brains."
It was probably not the most diplomatic thing to say, especially to these kind of people. When they weren't getting high or committing petty or violent crimes, they were always whining about respect, but I sure as fuck didn't respect them.
"You wanna die tonight? OK."
The talkative one aimed a straight right in the direction of my chin, but I dodged to the left and countered with a straight right of my own that caught him flush in the nose. I saw the blood beginning to flow already as he staggered back and bumped into some girl at the edge of the dancefloor. Sarina was standing by our booth, looking like a deer in the headlights.
The silent one rushed me, swinging with a wild left hook at my head that I managed to block, but which still hit with enough force to send me stumbling back and to my left. He kept on coming, as I tried to regain my balance. The first guy knocked over the woman he'd staggered into and started in my direction again.
I got my feet properly under me again, just as another punch came whistling at me, sneaking through my guard and catching me right on the forehead. I heard the ‘thunk' inside my head over the music and saw stars for a second, stumbling back even further.
Still, however much it hurt me, it hurt him enough to make him utilize his powers of speech. He cradled his hand for a second, it was likely broken, and cussed me out with more imagination than I would have given him credit for. Then he kept on advancing on me.
I aimed a left hook at his head, which he was forced to block with his broken hand, and followed it up with a right cross to his chin that made his legs wobbly. Unfortunately, the first Cannibal was back, and fucking furious beyond belief, raining punches on me that I barely had time to block, let alone consider countering.
He faked a right cross and I ducked, only to wind up catching a powerful uppercut right in the stomach. I immediately got nostalgic for the days when I was getting punched in the forehead, because holy fuck that hurt.
The wind was knocked out of me and I thought I'd rather get punched a thousand times in the head than one good one right in the stomach. I managed to tie his arms up enough that he wasn't able to keep on punching me, but I saw his friend about to re-enter the fight already, and I still couldn't breathe.
This was about to get really bad for me.
Sarina
There was nothing in Ryan's file linking him to the Cannibals street gang, so this was something to put in the report, at the very least. If it was them that was in charge of the manufacture and distribution of F in the city, it would have actually surprised me though.
The street gangs, of which the Cannibals were the undisputed Kings of Shit Mountain in Highston, operated on a lower level than the older, more organized, and better-funded Acardi family. It was hard to imagine they had the equipment and know-how to produce a product like F on the kind of scale the department was starting to uncover.
Still, if the rumors were true, The F King was one man, and if he decided to make a deal with the Cannibals, then that might be all it took, depending on who he was. So why in the hell were these two fighting Ryan? Did he sell somewhere he wasn't supposed to sell? Turf dispute?
If only I could have heard what they were saying over the music, but the first thing Ryan had done was pull them out of earshot. Whatever it was, it sure went south quickly.
Ryan more or less held his own against the two of them by handling them one at a time, but once he caught a punch flush in the stomach, it looked like he wouldn't be able to stave the first one off before the second rejoined the fight.
The second gang member had something in his hand. It looked like this was about to get nasty.
I'd been told in my brief that the men in this world liked their women to be seen and not heard, candy for the arm and the eye and out of the way of the men's business. Ryan already thought I was acting unusual, and if I stepped into a fist fight with a Cannibal, I'd be acting even less like the kind of woman who could quietly slip into his network.
On the other hand, my investigation was pretty much up shit creek if he got killed within an hour of my meeting him. I grabbed the bottle of Champagne by the neck and pulled it out of the ice bucket.
It seemed like my heart had been working overtime ever since I'd first laid eyes on Ryan. As I approached the three of them, only a few steps behind the second gang member as he rejoined the fight, I told myself that this was all for the sake of my job.
And I didn't want to see Ryan get hurt. That was the truth bubbling under the surface. The feel of his hands and his eyes on me was more exciting than any drug he might be peddling, and more exciting than I should have let it be, if I had any choice.
Arriving only a second after Ryan became outnumbered, I swung the bottle with everything I had in an overhead arc, bringing it down on the skull of the second Cannibal. The bottle shattered, spraying all four of us with glass and Champagne.