Part 54: Late the Previous Morning.
I point out the windshield. “There’s Eva’s house."
He maneuvers the car into the driveway leading up to her quaint, tiny blue house, overshadowed by insidious deciduous. “How do you know where she lives?” he asks.
“How do you know where she lives?” I ask.
“I’ve had her staked out since she left Metro City.” He puts the car in park and hops out. “I can’t believe you fucked her again.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Those cats in the MC are going to hear about this, and I’m not talking from me.” I unbuckle my seatbelt and follow him out. Nepotism slams his fist on the trunk and the lid pops open. He plucks a massive handgun from the rack inside.
“We’re not going to kill her,” I say, staring him down.
“We won’t kill her if she hasn’t read the notebook.”
I take the blue-steel barrel of the pump-action, twelve-gauge shotgun. I knock the trunk closed with a sharp elbow and we break around on either side of the car. At the front, we fall into step, weapons displayed before us. We can leave no question, we are getting our way, or someone is going to get killed. That is a hell of a lot of paperwork.
I stride up the front steps and kick open the front door. “Eva!” I bark. “You do not touch the notebook...” I stop my macho posturing in mid-sentence and scan the living room from side-to-horrific-side.
Her house has been trashed, completely razed: furniture sliced up and broken, stuffing strewn about the floor around them, coffee tables lay in ruins, splintered wood standing up like soldiers about the floor, the carpets have been ripped up to reveal the tiles beneath. Every piece of artwork and wall-hanging has been pulled off the walls and torn to shreds.
Nepotism steps in behind me and surveys the damage. “Someone beat us to it,” he says. He slides around me and starts to wander listlessly down the hall. “I wonder if they got the notebook.”
“Oh shit, Nep, what if they killed her?” I gasp.
“They probably did,” he says reassuringly, throwing open her bedroom door, as if there wasn’t the possibility of danger lurking on the other side. His voice still rambles on, clear and unmolested. “I mean, they can’t let her go on, knowing what I’m assuming you’ve written down in that notebook.” He is busy picking through the remains of her dresses when I come in. “That’s important stuff.” The shades are still closed, curtained and draped, hardly any light is filtering through, and no one will be able to see in from the outside. Any kind of untoward action would find the perfect stage in this darkened chamber. All you have to do is turn the radio up loud.
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