Page 6 of Prey

And why the fuck did I care if he criticized her? Annika was nothing to me, just a fly on the windscreen that I needed to wipe off. Yet, it was impossible to wipe her from my mind until I hunted her down and destroyed her. This entire situation had been messing with my head, so I found some dope and started rolling a joint while keeping an eye on the body language between Shaun and Callum.

“Yeah, I know. But Riley is boring, man,” Shaun argued. Callum took his shot. “She’s got no friends and doesn’t like to party much and always talking about fish and coral and shit. She’s a fucking nerdy bore and a stark difference to how you described your foster sister.”

“What? Fish and coral?” I questioned, perplexed.

“Yeah, well, she’s studying marine biology,” he informed me as my mind traveled back three years when she was a sixteen-year-old.

I don’t remember her being interested in marine biology or water. She liked to swim in the lake in summer but was not very interested in the minnows and water boatmen that lived there. There were no pictures of fish or squid on her walls when we were kids, although she did have a thing for that skinny actorwho played Spider-Man because she got angry at me when I drew a mustache and glasses on his face.

Fuck, maybe I had the wrong girl.

4

Isat behind the lavish desk in the boss’ office above The Savile Gentlemen’s Club, where I oversaw the legal and illegal business until Mik got out. Even though I was eager for Mikky to retake the reins, I will miss this office and desk and drinking his Scotch whiskey.

This sort of wealth was foreign to me when Mr. Kaiser recruited me into his business as a minion at first. Still, I demonstrated my loyalty and performance, and eventually became his confidant, along with his son, Gunner, and his nephew, Mikael.

It was a privilege to be part of the Kaiser family, but being an outsider, I had to earn their trust and work my ass off to proveto them that I was worthy. My life had improved substantially because of their generosity, and I never thought I’d go to college. But that was the deal. Mr. Kaiser and Mikael wanted me to go to college, get an education, and study business to bring a fresh perspective into the industry.

But I still couldn’t get used to the wads of cash thrown about on pleasurable pursuits - purchasing the latest model Rolls Royce or Mercedes Benz without a blink of an eye and buying land and property with little consideration. However, Mikky was brilliant at bartering the price, mainly when our syndicate drove out our enemies and bought several ventures at a lower price, including The Savile Gentlemen’s Club.

“Have you found the Annika?” was often Mik's first question during my weekly business meeting with him in Gothenburg Prison.

And every answer I gave him was, “Not yet.”

Now and again, we’d get a lead, a rumor, a suspected sighting, or someone’s hunch. Once we followed that lead, we’d slam into a wall, and I’d return to see Mik in prison to tell him the bad news.

That’s why I took little interest in Gunner’s latest obsession, as he’s done this several times before. He spotted some chick from afar who flicked her hair or smiled like his foster sister, and then he’d start stalking her until he’d found out the truth or the girl had a restraining order placed against him. Admittedly, the restraining order happened only once, and then he moved here to Gothenburg and forgot about her.

I don’t remember Annika Kaiser that well, mostly because she’s the boss’s adopted daughter and Mik’s foster cousin, and averting my eye whenever she was near was wise. Besides, it wasn’t my job to pay her any attention, and all of my meetings with Mik and the boss were in the office in Larsson, where weonce lived and still claimed the territory, so I rarely saw her anyway.

The accountant was right on time when I heard the nervous knock at the office door. The arrangement was that he brought the books over himself, and not a single set of eyes or pair of hands went near these books, apart from him, myself, and Mikael.

“Anything we should be wary of?” I asked Jacobson in his swanky suit, which we paid for.

“No, it’s all up to date and balanced,” he answered, distracted by a scratching sound coming from the bathroom. “And when will Mr. Kaiser be returning?”

“In two days,” I replied, flipping the pages over and running my eye down the columns of numbers, searching for anything awry. “I’ll take a deeper look at these when you’re gone, but where are the soft copies?”

“Oh, yes, sorry,” he scrambled anxiously to find the USB stick in his leather satchel and placed it on the desk.

“And no one else has looked over these?” I pressed just to ensure he knew who the boss was.

“Not a soul, except me,” he replied, glancing again at the scratching sound from the bathroom.

“Okay, good. You can leave,” I asserted, pointing to the door.

As Jacobson left, Freddie, the bar and burlesque manager, poked his head into the office. “We’re down two girls.”

Staff matters was a stress I had no interest in, but if men are coming to the club to pay money to the girls to flirt their asses off and spin the wheel, then we need the girls to turn up.

“Hang on,” I halted Freddie as I strolled casually to the bathroom door and flung it open to find a girl on the floor, cooked out of her brains, tracks down her arms. “Is she one of yours?”

Freddie peered at the hot mess on the floor and gritted his teeth. “Yup, that’s Candy. One of the better moneymakers.”

“Well, she’s not bringing in the money now,” I snarled, grabbing her thin arm and pulling her to her feet. “How did you get in here?”

She was spaced out, barely awake, as her eyes rolled about in her head, and she only managed to moan an answer.

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