Page 60 of Second Chances

I bring my booted foot up and smash it down on the phone several times until there’s nothing left but glass and electronic parts.

“Are you insane?” Victor cries out. I’ve pretty much destroyed his business with that one act. I bend down and sift through the remnants of the broken phone and find the sim card. It’s still intact, and I throw it to James, who catches it with his one available hand.

“We can use that to find out who else he’s got hooked on drugs and help them.”

“Good idea.”

“I hacked into his online account earlier and have a list of his contacts from there as well,” Matthew adds. “I’ll wipe it later, so he can’t get in contact with them.”

“You always were the better hacker out of the two of us,” I tell him.

“Well, I had to be better at something.” Matthew chuckles.

“Who are you?” Victor repeats again.

“I’m the boyfriend of one of your clients, and his wife is the owner of the business you forced my girlfriend to steal from,” I reply, pointing at James. Then I nod toward Matthew. “And he just hates slime like you.”

“You’ll have to fill me in a bit more. Which one of my clients are you talking about?” Victor suddenly gets a bit more confidence in his tone. “It obviously wasn’t the girl you just chased out of here. One of the perks of the job, getting my dick wet in payment for the drugs.”

Matthew lowers the gun and fires. The shot goes directly into Victor’s foot, and he falls to the floor in pain.

“Plan just changed.” Matthew goes to shoot the other foot, but I place my hand on his arm to stop him.

“Not yet.” I step up to Victor and press my boot down onto the bullet wound. He screams in agony and tries to push me away, but Matthew steps forward and puts the gun to his temple. “Elena Lopez. The teacher at your daughter’s dance school.”

“Pretty girl, that one,” Victor snarls.

“Don’t even bother lying to me and telling me you slept with her because I know you didn’t. She may have been desperate but not quite that bad, and she had access to funds.”

James comes forward to the bed and flips the mattress off it. Underneath is a stash of money.

“Seriously? You really are a pathetic criminal. This is the most obvious place you could use to store your money.” My brother looks disgusted at Victor’s ineptitude.

“Obvious is often the best.”

“Ryan, can you get on with it? I’m bored with the stupid this man possesses.” James flicks through the money. “Five grand. A nice donation for his wife. I’ll quadruple it, of course. Poor woman needs it—boob jobs and nose operations, indeed. A complete pack of lies.”

I continue where James leaves off. “No, the truth is you’ve left her with nothing, and she’s struggling to support her daughter. You’re ex-wife goes without food to allow your daughter to continue her dance lessons because she loves them so much. You really did play on Elena’s kind heart. But you won’t get away with it.” I curl my fist into a ball and send it flying into Victor’s face. It breaks his nose, and the blood splatters all over his face. “You’re the worse type of person, and we won’t let it carry on. When we leave here today, we’ll take all your stash with us and destroy it. You’ll leave London. I don’t care where you go, but you will never return. You messed with the wrong people, this time. You won’t contact your ex-wife and daughter again. They’ll be receiving a massive donation toward their future, including a new house and a full scholarship at the dance school. They don’t need you in their lives anymore.”

“You can’t make me do that,” Victor protests, and I step down harder on his injured foot before sending another bruising punch into his face. This one shatters his cheekbone. Matthew may have excelled at technology, but we both mastered in physical combat.

“I’m not going to make you. You’re going to do it yourself because you value your life.” I lean down to him as I continue, “You messed with my woman. You played on her vulnerabilities for your own financial gain. You should have said no when she came to you in the first place, but you saw pound signs before your eyes because it’s who you are. But as I said earlier, she was the wrong woman to do it with. Big mistake. The biggest ever.”

The scent of piss fills the air, and when I look down, I see Victor has wet himself in fear. Any confidence he once had has evaporated under my furious onslaught.

Out of the corner of my eye, I watch James as he collects bottles of pills from various hiding places.

“Give me one,” I order, and James raises an eyebrow at me.

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I don’t trust this fucker to keep his word. He’s the lowest of the low, and I’m going to show him just what he’s been doing to people.”

James brings me over one of the bottles. It’s the same as the one Elena had, containing super strength painkillers with horrendous side effects including kidney and liver damage along with heart issues. Just as Elena experienced.

“You can’t do this. You won’t get away with it,” Victor tries to plead with us, but I’m beyond listening.

I know Matthew and James have done this sort of thing before. We didn’t plan on ending this man’s life, but being here, seeing him in the flesh, I know it’s the only way to rid the world and especially his family of him.

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