Page 69 of Bully

“I—” He choked on the blood pooling in his mouth and fell into a fit of incredibly embarrassing sobbing. “I’m sorry!”

The three of us paused, standing over the man, as his hysterics grew in volume. “Has anyone ever cried this hard before?” Maddox nudged me with his shoulder, “I mean you’ve hardly even touched him,” Max’s eyes opened a crack, before Maddox finished, “Yet.”

The sniveling simp fell back into more sobbing as I shook the cringe worthy feeling it gave me to watch a grown man cry. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take.” I opened my bag and stared down at the array of tools laid out inside.

Originally, I had planned to turn him into a piece of Swiss cheese with my knife, but the more he cried, the more dramatic I wanted to be about it.

“Well,” Dane interrupted, looking down at his phone a second before an alarm sounded from somewhere inside the house. “You’re going to have to wait a moment more, I’m afraid.” He looked up at me and pointed at the front door down the long hall to the foyer. “Because you are not going to want to miss this show.”

The three of us crowded together as the front door flew open, banging off the wall before a smoke grenade rolled in through the opening.

“Is that—?” Maddox hissed as we watched the smoke turn a bright orange color.

“A drop zone marker?” Dane tried but failed to hide his chuckle behind his hand. “Oh, but wait until you see the masterminds behind it.”

Seconds later, dark figures dressed in tight black outfits paraded in through the opening. And by paraded, I mean, one rolled in with some sloppy Catwoman move, one ran at the speed of a clumsy snail, and the other one crouch walked like a crab, making a beeline to the table against the wall to hide behind.

“Oh, my god.” I groaned, covering my face as I realized what kind of spectacle I was witnessing. “No, they didn’t.”

“Oh, they did.” Dane chuckled as Maddox bent forward, hands on his knees, laughing as the clumsy snail ran into the doorframe of the hallway and cursed in a very familiar voice.

The next noises were coughing. Lots and lots of coughing as the drop zone marker smoke filled the large foyer, coating the three stooges in iridescent orange dust.

“Damnit, Liv!” The clumsy running snail who I now recognized as Peyton gasped, “I thought you said this was fog.”

Wheezing, as she fought with her tight black facemask, the crouching crab pulled it off and revealed a tuft of crazy red hair as Liv gasped for breath, “I must have grabbed the wrong one.”

Meanwhile, my eyes found the roly-poly Catwoman fighting for her life as she tried to slink down the hallway toward us.

One. Somersault. At. A. Time.

Like a bad kindergarten level somersault—and that was being kind.

Halfway down the hall, she gave up, sitting on her ass in the middle of the floor as she removed her mask, letting her crazy rainbow curls free. “This all played out much cooler when we made the plans between drinks four and five.” Sloane said with a lopsided grin.

“Yeah,” Liv chuckled, walking next to Peyton toward us, where we still stood in utter shock. “But that was like six drinks ago.”

“Good God,” Dane laughed, “You three are menaces to your own life expectancies.”

Leaving our now silent and surprised victim of the night where he was, I stood over Sloane and held my hand out to her, helping me up and glancing down at her lush body in her outfit. “Is this latex?”

She giggled and shrugged, “My on-hand costume choices were limited, it was either this or sheer black lace.”

I wagged my eyebrows at her, “I don’t hate that option either.” Turning to join the group, surrounding my hit for the night, I watched Sloane’s face as she came face to face with the reality she so desperately fought to be a part of.

I expected her to be grossed out by the blood and gore on Max’s face, or even just somber to the fact of what I was here to do. But she wasn’t.

She simply looked at the man, crying again as we all stared down at him and asked. “This is the man who shot you?”

“It is.” I replied, looking over her head to Dane, who nodded approvingly as he held his wife to his chest.

Liv hunted with Maddox pretty regularly, in some weird middle aged date night adventure they did to keep their sanity amidst raising kids. Even Peyton went with Dane on some hits, but having Sloane with me at one, never crossed my mind.

Maybe it was the liquid courage that gave her the idea to tag along tonight, or something else, but I didn’t hate having her here. “And you’re going to kill him for it?” She asked, looking up at me.

“A hit was put on his head long before he shot me, for his own actions. He just bought himself some more time by trying to take me out.” I replied honestly.

“He traffics women.” Maddox added, “Prostitutes and drug addicts. And then he funnels the money through his tech company to wash the blood and tears off it.” Holding his hands up, he indicated the luxurious mansion we were all standing in.

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