It had been a month since the dance. A whole perfect month of being with Ellie. The month hadn’t been perfect work wise though - things had been getting more…. involved recently. I’d been doing more of the things that I hated doing when I was younger. I was back in my old position of ‘anything goes’ - collecting protection money, meeting with Brett’s suppliers about a new shipment of cocaine that was coming in on a boat in a couple of weeks. I was basically one of Brett’s hired thugs and had to hand out more than my fair share of beatings to people who were taking liberties or trying to muscle into Brett’s turf. The strip club stuff was getting easier though, I didn’t need to go there too much because there wasn’t that much trouble. I’d had to sort a few problems with people that used to run the security firm before Brett took it over, they weren’t too happy that they’d lost the contract, but they were over that now. Also there was a dealer issue that I sorted pretty quickly. One of the girls had trouble with an ex-boyfriend that wouldn’t leave her alone. All in all though it had gone pretty smoothly. People knew that I was there so lately there was no trouble at all.

Thankfully I’d managed to keep my job at the scrap yard too; how I’d managed it I have no idea because I was working for Brett a lot during the evenings. I was getting by on about five hours sleep a night because I’d be out doing boosts about three times a week and then other stuff on the nights off. I was seriously tired which I think made me more irritable and snappy at other people - but that worked out pretty well too because it just meant that people stayed out of my way more because they thought I had anger issues. I was happy to let people think I had anger issues, that way they were more scared of me and didn’t start trouble so it made my life easier.

The only good thing about working so much, as far as I could see, was that I earned a bucket load of cash. Word had spread quickly that I was back with Brett, deals were rolling in and orders piling up quickly. I was earning on average about $18,000 a week. Last week I had taken great pleasure in taking a wad of cash down and throwing it on Tony Grier’s desk in full payment of the debt. I also gave $5,000 in cash to my mom. I hadn’t wanted to go myself because I didn’t want anything to do with her again, so I’d asked Terry to do it for me. Terry and I had been getting on a lot better since our little indiscretion with the knife after Ellie’s dance. We basically were on friendly terms but didn’t socialise outside of work - he did work security on one of the strip clubs for me though so I saw him quite a bit.

Money was piling up from my ‘jobs’ and I’d even managed to set myself up a bank account - which I’d never had before. There was less than two months left now and then I’d be able to say goodbye to this life forever. Nothing was dragging me back into this situation again; if my mother got in trouble again then she was on her own this time.

The end was fast approaching, and tomorrow was Ellie’s eighteenth birthday. I had made it clear to everyone that I was unavailable tomorrow; I was planning on making her birthday special for her even if it killed me.

Right now however I was sitting in Brett’s chair, swivelling it back and forth, desperately trying to keep my eyes open as I focussed on his ceiling. Tonight was a big deal, a huge boost and it was going to be a long one that’s for sure. There were ten guys out tonight with me and we were stealing a total of twenty-five cars. On paper it sounded impossible, but in reality, ten of those cars were all in one place - a warehouse just outside of town. We were killing two birds with one stone tonight, the owner of the Jaguar garage whose warehouse it was, wanted to pull an insurance job so we were stealing his cars - then Brett had lined up a buyer for all of them, so we were getting double payment. The other fifteen cars however were scattered around all over the place, so I knew I’d be here until the early hours of the morning.

My ‘crew’ were already assembled downstairs but I just needed a couple of minutes to collect my thoughts. I had a bad feeling about tonight. Something wasn’t sitting right in my stomach, I think it was the fact that five of the guys that were helping with tonight’s boost, weren’t even used to stealing cars. They had no experience whatsoever and were used to working another part of Brett’s business for him. Inexperience and a high profile huge boost just didn’t mix well, but I guess with the amount of cars that we were talking about here, I couldn’t exactly refuse the help - there just wasn’t enough hours of darkness for the usual crew to complete this task on our own.

“Your father used to get that look on his face when he was concentrating hard on something.”

I jumped and looked up to see Brett walking into his office, a smile on his face. I frowned as I took in what he said. “You knew my dad?” I asked curiously. He’d never said anything about him before; I didn’t know they even knew each other.

Brett nodded, shrugging out of his suit jacket and throwing it over the empty chair opposite me.

“Yep. A long time ago now though, but you just reminded me of him for a second there,” he mused.

“How did you know him?” I asked, sitting forward quickly, interested now. I’d never really spoken to anyone about my dad before, the only one that ever talked about him was my mother, and that was usually to rant about what an inconsiderate ass**le he was.

Brett smiled and motioned with his hand for me to move. “Out of my chair, you don’t run this place yet you know,” he said, raising one eyebrow teasingly.