CHAPTER TWELVE

He sat in the darkest corner of the tittie bar and watched the men go nuts over those out of shape, fat-ass strippers who didn’t know how to shake it right or tease it to the point of anticipation or even charm their way through. They all looked more like they’d be more at home in a wrestling ring or a bodybuilding contest than up a pole. But the men in that bar seemed to like their ladies thick. They were having a good ole time with the ladies. Who was he to tell them they had no class either?

Besides, he had his own problems. What the fuck he cared about strippers?

He took another sip of his drink and gagged on the taste again. What did they put in this shit? But the customers didn’t complain. That was why they kept getting all of that cheap-ass, subpar services: they never complained.

But he wasn’t in that category anyway because he wasn’t there to be a customer. He wasn’t there to enjoy a night out. He was there to follow one of the young men home, the leader of the pack of the group of wise guys inside that joint, snatch him, de-nail his fingers and toes, and then dish him on the side of the road. He’d be in agony, but he’d live.

Which was more than they did for him.

But he couldn’t let bitterness get in the way of his plan. He had to stick to the plan. He had to trust the process. He had to know, that this time next month, he would be the king of that mountain just as it should have been all along. He was going to dethrone them all.

And not just dethrone their status as the top dogs of the underworld either. He was going to dethrone them of what it meant to be a human being.

Until they were the ones groveling in a wilderness of vultures.

Until they were the ones sitting in some smelly dive watching some fat strippers while drinking some hard liquor that even a wino would rather piss in than drink.

Until, one by one, they were de-nailed of their existence too.