Nothing and no one favor the weak. Petey V’s bones ached. He’d been hustling almost forty years, and most criminals his age washed cars, washed dishes, or plastered sheet rock. You knew them by the vacant, defeated look in their eyes and the faded prison ink emerging from beneath a sleeve or marking the crease …
Violence lurks beneath the surface of society’s most amiable aspects. Seth wiped the sweat from his forehead and sipped his beer before leaning back on the inclined bench and pumping through a final set of twelve. His living room consisted of a secondhand couch, a television sitting on a board balanced between cinder blocks, a …
Few beasts can match the ferocity of a mother protecting her young. As Karla Buchelli wiped down the bar on a slow night at The Side Saddle, she counted six patrons sitting at low tops near the stage. Four of her girls chatted near the end of the bar, one danced on stage, and one …
A cell provides the only rest for the wicked. “Welcome back, Mr. Pantagglia. It’s our pleasure to have you staying with us.” Undersheriff Reese, the superintendent of Shattuck County Jail, had known Bruno Pantagglia for years. Bruno had been the county’s guest Reese’s first year as superintendent, and Reese’s predecessor had made a point to …
Only the chosen few can stand at the center and pull people together. Vincent Bayonne sat in his favorite booth in Book ‘Em’s and nursed a drink he hoped would heal his mind. He ground a cigarette into the ashtray with his right hand while sliding a fresh nail out of the pack with his …
At the gateway to desire stands the arbiter of taste. Tran sat a table in the corner of The Dragon’s Mane and watched the flow of bodies beneath the strobe light. The beautiful, the important, the famous, and the powerful moved as a single mass, marionettes dancing to music he controlled. He recognized, scattered throughout …
Some things must end before anything new begins. In the midst of a peaceful night in a violent city, Kane Kulpa smoked a cigarette on the rooftop of a building he owned in St. Patrick’s Diocese. He didn’t own the building outright, of course. According to the state, Kane Kulpa made minimum wage plus tips …
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