Page 15 of Karma
“Holy shit, I just realized he’s wearing pants,” she says, taking note of his dirty jeans hanging halfway down his legs to expose dirty boxers.
“You normally see him naked?” the man asks with a look of pure disgust. “And you still have eyes that you haven’t gouged out yet?”
“Shit-stained boxers, actually,” she says. “I think I understand why his wife stays high as a fucking kite. It must deaden her sense of smell.”
They both laugh as they watch Harold roll until he’s on his front and can climb to his knees. Grabbing onto the building, he hoists himself up and staggers back towards the direction he came from.
“I could’ve handled him, by the way,” Lex says. “I’m more than capable of holding my own.”
“I’m sure you could have, but he needed a decent beating.”
Crossing her arms, she lifts an eyebrow. “And you think I couldn’t deliver that?”
“Oh, I know you’re capable. You just shouldn’t always have to,” he says. “Your reputation is very well known, Lex.”
She looks into his eyes, and she’s surprised at the sense of familiarity. Hazel eyes and dark hair with a bone structure that reminds her of someone. An eerie feeling washes over her as it dawns on her that he knows her name.
“Wait, you know me?”
“Alexis Dalton. Well, that’s your original name. You’re the daughter of a founding member of the Deranged Drifters.”
“Do I know you?”
Shaking his head, he smirks. “I doubt it. I’m Nero. Nero Sanders, but I go by my middle name. Phillip.”
“Why do you go by your middle name? Nero’s kind of a badass name. You don’t really hear that one much.”
“Because it was given to me by my father, and I fucking hate his guts.”
She laughs. “I feel you there. I’m not the biggest fan of mine at the moment.”
“Is that right?”
“He favors my brother over me to the point that he’s just completely blind to any wrongdoings. Like the time my brother tried to kill me. That was just me overreacting, and he knows my brother would have stopped. Which, he would have. When I stopped breathing.”
Phillip’s eyebrows lift, and Lex can’t quite place who he reminds her of. “You’re kidding.”
“No, my dad could make a fortune off of the rose-colored glasses he wears if he could find a way to sell them.”
“I think we feel the same way. Different reasons, but we both would be better off without knowing the man. Luckily for me, I’ve spent most of my life without him.”
The way he says that sounds like he knows VP. Then again, if he really knows Lex, he probably does.
“I spent ten years without mine, but it would have been better if I spent most of my life with him gone. It’s kind of a shitty place to be because there’s so much in my life I wouldn’t have if things were different, but no one can hurt you quite like your father.”
He smirks, and that familiarity becomes stronger. She knows him. She has to know him. It’s like they’ve met before, and she can’t remember it. Something screams at her to run, but she’s too captivated to listen.
“What?” he asks with a smile. A crooked smile. On she knows she’s seen before.
“You look really familiar. Are you sure we haven’t met before?”
The chuckle sounds like someone else’s, too. She can’t place it, and it’s driving her crazy. “We don’t know each other, but I have seen you before. And we have something in common. Something we share.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“Our father.”
Holy shit, that’s it! He looks like Zane. And VP.“Excuse me?”
