The idea of growing up and being my own man, the kind of man people didn’t mess with, the kind of man who didn’t take shit from anyone, became more and more appealing as it rolled around in my brain and latched on, taking up residence where I was missing other things the guidance counselors said I was lacking, like a ‘firm sense of right and wrong’. But they were the ones who were wrong. It’s not that I didn’t know the difference.

It’s that I just didn’t care.

Because that’s what happens when you’ve never had anything to care about.

If I was going to take this kid seriously, I needed to know that he wasn’t going to bitch out on me if it all went south. I needed to know he was as serious about the plan as I was getting, so I had to ask, “What really happens if someone gets in our way? In the way of our business? In the way of our plan?”

Preppy held the end of a marker to the corner of his mouth where blood had begun to dry and crust over. For a moment, he stared over my head, deep in thought. Then, he shrugged and locked his eyes onto mine.

“We kill them.”

Chapter One

King

On the day I was released from prison I found myself tattooing a pussy on a pussy. The animal onto the female part.

A cat on a cunt.

Fucking ridiculous.

The walls of my makeshift tattoo shop pulsed with the heavy beat of the music coming from my homecoming party raging on the floor below. It shook the door as if someone were rhythmically trying to beat it down. Spray paint and posters covered the walls from floor to ceiling, casting a layer of false light over everything within.

The little dark haired bitch I worked on was moaning like she was getting off. I’m sure she was rollin’ because there was no way a tattoo directly above her clit could be anything other than fucking painful.

Back in the day, I could zone out for hours while tattooing, finding that little corner of my life that didn’t involve all the bullshit I had to deal with on a daily basis.

In the past when I’d been locked up, albeit for much shorter periods of time, the first thing on my mind was pussy and a party. But this time the first thing I did when I walked through the door was pick up my tattoo gun, but it wasn’t the same. I couldn’t reach that place of temporary reprieve no matter how hard I tried. It didn’t help that the tattoos people requested were getting dumber and fucking dumber.

Football team logos, quotes from books you know they’ve never read, and wannabe gangsters wanting tear drops on their faces. In prison, the teardrop tattoo represented taking a life. Some of the little bitches who wanted them looked like they couldn’t step on a roach without cowering in the corner and crying for their mamas.

But since the majority of time my clients paid in favors and consisted mostly of bikers, strippers, and the occasional rich kid who found himself on the wrong side of the causeway, I should’ve lowered the bar on my expectations.

But then again it was good to be home. Actually, it was good to be anywhere that didn’t smell like vomit and wasted lives.

My own life had been moving forward at nothing short of full fucking speed ahead ever since the day I’d met Preppy. I’d loved living outside the law. I fed off the fear in the eyes of those who crossed me. The only thing I’d ever regretted was getting caught.

When I wasn’t locked up, I’d spent almost every single day of the twenty-seven years I’d been on the earth in Logan’s Beach, a little shit town on the gulf coast of Florida. A place where the residents on one side of the causeway lived solely to cater to the rich who lived on the other side, in high-rise beachfront condos and mansions. Trailer parks and run down houses less than a mile from the kind of wealth it takes more than one generation to accumulate.

On my eighteenth birthday, I bought a run-down stilt home hidden behind a wall of thick trees, on three acres of land that practically sat under the bridge. In cash. And along with my best friend Preppy, we moved on up to the rich side of town like the white trash version of the motherfucking Jeffersons.

True to our words, we became our own men and answered to no one. We did what we wanted. I turned my drawing into tattooing.

Preppy got bitches.

I fucked. I fought. I partied. I got wasted. I stole. I fucked. I tattooed. I sold dope. I sold guns. I stole. I fucked. I made fucking money.

And I fucked.

There wasn’t a party I didn’t like or that didn’t like me. There wasn’t a chick who didn’t give me the go-ahead move, lifting her hips so I could slide off her panties. I got that shit every single fucking time.

Life wasn’t just good. Life was fucking great. I was on top of the fucking world and no one fucked with me or mine.

No one.

And then it all changed and I got spent three years in a tiny windowless cell, studying the changing cracks in the concrete block walls.

When I was done with the purple cartoon cat, I applied salve, covered it with wrap, and disposed of my gloves. Did this girl think that guys would be turned on by this thing? It was good work, especially since I’d been out of commission for three years, but it was covering up my favorite part of a woman. If I undressed her and saw it, I would flip her over.

Which sounded like a good idea. Getting laid would help shake this post prison haze and I could get back to the things that used to be important to me without this lingering sense of dread looming in my conscious.

Instead of sending the girl back out to the party I roughly grabbed her and yanked her down the table toward me. I stood, flipping her over onto her stomach. With one hand on the back of her neck, I pushed her head down onto the table, releasing my belt buckle with the other. I grabbed a condom from the open drawer.

She knew beforehand that money wasn’t the type of currency I was looking for, and I didn’t do free. So I lined up the head of my cock and took her pussy as payment for her new tattoo. Of a pussy.

Fuck my life.

The girl had a great body, but after a few minutes of irritating over-the-top moaning, she wasn’t doing anything for me. I could feel my cock going soft inside her. This wasn’t supposed to be happening, especially not even after years of my right hand and my imagination being my only sexual partners.

What the fuck is wrong with me?

I grabbed her throat with both hands and squeezed, picking up my pace, taking out my frustrations with each rough thrust in rhythm with the heavy beat from the other room.

Nothing.

I was about to pull out and give up.

I almost didn’t notice the door opening.

Almost.

Staring up from my doorway was a vacant pair of doll-like blue eyes framed by long icy-blonde hair, a small dimple in the middle of her chin, a frown on her full pink lips. A girl, no older than seventeen or eighteen, a bit skinny.

A bit haunted.

My cock stirred to life, dragging my attention back to the fact that I was still pumping into the brunette. My orgasm hit me hard, spiraling up my spine and taking me by complete surprise. I closed my eyes, blowing my load into pussy tattoo, collapsing onto her back.

What the fuck?

By the time I opened my eyes again, the door was closed and girl with the sad eyes was gone.

I’m fucking losing my mind.

I rolled out of and off the brunette who was luckily still breathing, although unconscious from either strangulation or the dope that had made her pupils as big as her fucking eye sockets.

I sat back on my rolling stool and dropped my head into my hands.

I had a massive fucking headache.

Preppy had organized this party for me, and the pre-prison me would’ve already been snorting blow off the tits of strippers. But post-prison me just wanted some food, a good night’s sleep, and these fucking people to get the hell out of my house.