4. Nitro

FOUR

NITRO

Drinking my beer, I listen to Tic telling a story about an episode on some murder show he's watching. Nyx is at the bar with Ares getting our drinks, and I watch Esha smiling at something on her phone.

"Do you think Ares would teach me how to ride a bike?" She looks up from her phone towards me, because we both know Tic is in his own world and won't be taking any notice. "I've been thinking about it, but one, they scare me, and two, I don't think I can pull it off."

I have to press my lips together to stop the smile spreading across my lips, because no she can't pull off riding a bike, and I don't think she would last one lesson, but it's Ares' call not mine. If it was my girl I would rather she didn't learn to ride, having the thought of a woman holding on tight to me, while we speed on the roads and enjoying the freedom, is a thought that gets me excited.

"You'd have to ask him, I know he won't let anyone else give you lessons, there is no way he's letting anyone else touch you," I reply, looking over at the guys walking towards the table, placing our drinks down, and I take a sip of my beer.

Ares slams the notebook on the table, and brings his chair in closer to the table, and looks at us before talking.

"So I've spent more time than I'd like on this book which seems to be the first one. I can't find another one which dates further back than this one." Taking a big gulp of his beer, he opens it to the first page. "This fuck show started almost sixty years ago, there is no date in the first notepad, but I'm hoping as I read them I will get a better idea of the timespan."

"Why do you think sixty, if there's no date?" I ask, turning the notebook to me.

"There is a surname with the first child they talk about, and so I googled the hell out of the name. I get a lot of hits, but with what it says in there and the hundreds of articles, it only matched with two kids, and they were reported missing over sixty years ago." Ares leans back in his chair, and lets me look through the notebook.

I hear Nyx ask, "Any names on the families?"

"No. Not one. From what I can tell from this book, each family has a name and a colour to go with their name. Then it's all colour coded. Which family gets the most boys, girls, the youngest, the most money, and who didn't sell. I'll know more once I read through more of them." I look up at Ares, and he gives me a nod, answering my unasked question. Can he find information about me?

"What about where they live?" Nyx asks.

"The first kid taken was from Manchester." He turns to Nyx, and continues. "I have no idea how to do it, but if when I go through the books I can tell you where I find they are missing from, can you mark them on a map? Maybe we can pin point each family with which kids are missing."

"I'll work on something tonight, and see what I can do." Nyx turns to me, and I close the notebook, but don't slide it back to him. "How did-"

"After." I quickly cut him off. "Ares, your friend is here." I nod my head to the door, and slide the notebook off the table, and put it into my jacket pocket.

This fucking officer has it in for Ares, and it looks like he's prepared to do whatever it takes to fuck up his life.

"Officer Flair, would you like a drink?" Ares asks.

Ares can be a confident prick sometimes. Now if I had a cop on my back for no fucking reason I would let the officer talk shit to me and get on with my day, but not my brother. No, he needs to piss the officer off more.

"Just wanted to pop in and remind you I'm still looking into what happened to Esha's family-"

"Why? I closed the case, it was a fire. The fire department said the same thing. Why don't you just let my family rest in peace?" Esha snaps at him, Ares puts his arm around her shoulder and ignores Officer Flynn as he drinks his beer.

"Because I know it wasn't an accident." Officer Flynn turns to Esha, who still isn't looking at him.

"You need to find some real criminals, and stop wasting time on the people who do nothing wrong," Esha snaps. I smile, she's getting good at telling people how good we are If only that were true.

"Mr Black, I just want you to know I've not forgotten about you." He places his hand on the table and takes a few seconds to look at each of us. The moment his eyes land on me, all I can do is smile.

He's watching Ares, which means he's watching all of us, I'm not sure what he will find on us, but we need to be careful. It's time to make sure when we have to leave in the middle of the night, we do a double check, at least until this prick is out of the picture.

"Have a good evening." He deliberately knocks Ares beer over before leaving.

"He's making it hard not to slit his throat," Ares shakes his head, cleaning up his beer as Esha walks away to the bar to get him another drink. "The only reason I haven't is because you lot tell me I can't."

"No, Nyx said you can't, I'd be happy to hold the asshole down for you," I tell him.

I would like him out of our life as quickly as we can.

"Me...Me too," Tic turns to the three of us.

"You kill him, your name will be top of the list. We need to work on something else for him, and I have an idea-" Nyx stops for a second and looks at Esha sitting back down. "Esha, you want to complain about officer Flair?"

Before Esha can answer the question, Nyx's phone rings, and he walks away from the table.

I look over at Nyx while he talks, but his eyes are on the three of us, which can only mean one thing - we have plans tonight.

"Looks like we're out tonight," I tell the others, and they both turn to face Nyx, and Esha gets back ton her phone.

"I hope it's local," Ares is the first to talk, and Tic starts laughing.

"I'm st...stabbing," he locks eyes with Ares, who starts laughing, even I can't hold the laughter in.

These two would kill anyone who did something bad, it's always kill them first and ask questions later. I suppose someone in the group has to be like that, otherwise one of us might grow a heart.

"It can be more than one person we stab," I add smiling, like I'm almost going to enjoy the night myself.

I turn to my left when a chair is placed between Ares and I, I smile at the blonde who sits down. My smile gets bigger when another blonde sits on her lap. Now this might turn into a lucky night in two ways, if we don't have to leave them straight away.

"I thought maybe you'd like some fun tonight?" one of them asks, rubbing my inner thigh. "I'd like to see what other tattoos you have." Her voice is very sexy, and imagining her whispering dirty words into my ear while I fuck her like crazy jolts my friend in my jeans.

"You'd have to get down on your knees to find some of them," I tell her, making Ares laugh out loud as he turns to me.

"Some with a glow stick." He looks to the girl close to me, and I tell him to fuck off.

I have a lot of tattoos, then tattoos over tattoos, and it's Ares or Nyx who put them on me, so they know every inch of my body.

"I do like a treasure hunt." She moves closer to me, her friend moves closer to her, making sure I'm watching them both. I'm glad I am, one slides her tongue over her bottom lip, then over her friends lips, and within seconds they kiss. Full tongue on tongue action, now this is a sight I can watch for a while.

"You want to play?" the girl on the lap asks.

"Time to leave girls," Nyx tells them both and I look up at him putting my hands up in the air.

"Come on," I argue as I watch the girls rub each other's inner thighs. "It was just getting good." I was going to get a good show, and even get rewarded after too.

"Maybe next time," Nyx sits back down staring at the girls to make them walk away. The one sitting on her friend's lap stands up, while the other one takes my hand, and places her phone number in it.

"Call us."

"Oh I will." I look at the number, then watch them both walk away, their short shorts showing the bottom of their asses.

Oh, what I could do to those two girls walking away.

I turn to Nyx. "I better get to kill someone tonight."

Nyx drinks his beer, as Ares and Esha walk away from the table so they can talk. I stare at Nyx, waiting for him to tell us something. But he doesn't. He wants us to we wait for Ares, who's walking back over without Esha with him.

"She's pissed at me.She said I was enjoying the show a little too much." He shakes his head, grabs his beer and downs it. "How are you not meant to enjoy the show?" he asks, making the three of us laugh.

We all know he would never do anything to hurt Esha, but he's a man, and all men are going to enjoy that kind of show.

"Right to the topic. Wes called about a hit. Tonight." Nyx moves closer to the table, and we copy his movement. "A woman has been selling kids, and has a lot of newspaper cut outs about missing children." Nyx stops, looking at the three of us. I'm the first to say anything.

"She's keeping up with what's happening with the children?" I ask.

We had a man a few years ago do the same thing, he had information about every child he had kidnapped and sold. it was sickening.

"Yeah, so the only good thing from this is that we get the names of all the ones she's sold. We might even be able to get them back to their families." Nyx leans back in his chair letting us digest that information. We all finish our beer, ready to get a move on for the night.

I still remember killing a woman for the first time. It hit me a lot harder than it hit the three of them. She did some evil things to children, but in the back of my head she was still a woman, and I just couldn't do it. Tic pushed me out of the way and without even thinking for a moment, he just slit her throat.

It took me a while to finally do it, but when my brothers told me about what they did to innocent children, the pain they put them through, I was happy to get rid of another sick piece of shit from the World.

Something isn't right. Most of the people who kidnap then sell children do not live in shit holes like this. When Nyx told me the address, I had to ask twice, because this part of London is where most of the druggies, or homeless live.

It's not the location for someone who is selling kids for a shit ton of money, and we know this because we've killed a few people who had this very same job.

I look around, we've not got our masks on yet, already knowing the CCTV cameras around here don't work, and are only for show. We always check the CCTV cameras whenever we go somewhere, so before we left, Nyx had a look, and not one is working.

"You coming?" Tic asks.

I nod and follow them into the building and start going up the stairs to the apartment block. It's two in the morning, and I know the four of us are quiet enough never to wake anyone up. We've been doing this shit long enough to learn how to get in and out without anyone even knowing about it.

Nyx gives us a nod when he stops in front of her door, and I pull out my mask from my inner zipped coat pocket, and slip it on. Tic kneels and starts picking the lock, within seconds we're in the apartment.

Walking around the small space, I notice it's a fucking mess, not as in dirty dishes not washed up, more in a way that everything is just thrown around. I look to see if there are any papers around with anything on them which can help us. Nyx and Tic walk to the furthest door, hoping it's the bedroom, while Ares looks around the rest of the place.

I go to look through the stuff on the kitchen counter, but stop when I hear someone knocking a lamp over in the bedroom. We do love the fighters; it makes it more entertaining to kill them.

Hearing them exit the bedroom I look up to see the little tiger who thinks she can fight us. Tic throws her on the couch and I look over at her, and it feels like I've been punched in the stomach.

Blue magical eyes lock with me, her chest rising and falling, but yet I can't take my eyes off her beautiful face.

"I don't have anything worth stealing," she shouts, and I look away from her, because her beauty is distracting me from the job we have to do. I don't think I've ever been affected by a hit before. This one can't fuck with my head.

"We can see," the computer cracked voice makes her jump, then Ares sits in front of her on the coffee table, moving his knife between his fingers, and all the colour from her face goes.

"What do you want?" She looks between us all, and I start looking through the paperwork, because I don't care how much we're getting paid for this kill, something doesn't feel right about this hit.

Reading through some of the paperwork, I take a quick glance at the woman, she's sitting in the corner of her couch, legs brought closer to her. She's wearing jogging bottoms and a hoodie which I think could fit me it's so big, but yet I can see her shaking as she watches the four of us, wiping the tears away from her cheeks with the sleeve of her hoodie.

"You find anything?" Nyx asks.

"No, these all seem like articles from this week," I tell him, passing them over to him, and I shake my head.

"What's wrong?" he asks.

"You telling me you don't feel like something is fucked up about this one?" I ask him, because he will be the only one who will look at this as something more than just a kill.

He looks over at the woman, then back at the pile of papers. "Go check out her room, and see if you find anything."

I walk away from everyone in the room and look into her bedroom which is the nicest room in the whole place. Grabbing the drawing pad on the dresser to see what's in there, and to my surprise it's amazing artwork. Drawings, painting, tattoo designs. I pick up some of the others, and they're the same. Since when do child kidnappers like to draw in their free time?

Looking around for anything else, I start pulling out the drawers to see if there is anything in there which can give me some answers, but there's nothing. Flipping the bed over, I smile under my mask, bingo a box is stuck to the bottom of the bed. I open the box,take out the phone and see it's switched off.

Walking back outI see Ares moving the tip of the knife over the side of her face. I don't say anything, because I still don't know what is going on.

I tap Ares' shoulder telling him to move over, and I turn to the woman. Biting my bottom lip to stop myself saying something stupid, because fucking hell this woman is a piece of art. Her whole face is beautiful, I've never seen a woman look like this before.

"What's on the phone?" I ask.

"Take it, it's yours. Means fucking nothing to me," she shouts at me, and Ares tells her to lower her voice before he slits her throat to shut her up.

"Well it was important enough to hide, so start talki-"

"I'm dead either way."

I start laughing, and she widens those big blue eyes of hers. "First, don't interrupt me when I'm talking, it's rude, and second, do you know why we're here tonight?" I ask, and she shakes her head, then looks over at Nyx going through the rest of the paperwork.

"I don't know anything, and have nothing worth taking. If you leave, I promise I won't say a word about this to anyone." She brings her legs closer to her body.

"We were sent to kill you." Her head snaps towards me, mouth wide open. "So, you might want to start talking, before we do our job," I tell her, and she closes her mouth, and I don't think she has any idea what the hell is happening right now.