“She’s a fuckin’ stripper,” he hissed.

Marcus ignored that and he could because he’d learned early how to control his rage.

“You broke the rules, she had you ejected, so you raped her?”

“I know she’s yours. I’ve heard your name. Didn’t know it at the time but I sure as fuck know it now. I also know nothin’ I say is gonna stop what you’re gonna do. Maybe just make it last longer and be less fun, and serious, man, that guy with a beard and his Indian friend weren’t a barrel of laughs. So not that I’m invitin’ that shit, but just sayin’, to top the joyride I had with those fuckin’ guys, you’d have to get creative. But how about we skip this bullshit and you just fucking finish it?”

Interesting.

Shirleen and Darius hadn’t played with him at all.

Only Stark and Nightingale’s tracker.

This meant Nightingale and his team had no qualms with a variety of aspects of their business.

Marcus set these thoughts aside, studied the man before him for some time, and then whispered, “You can’t answer me.”

The man looked away and Louie used his hair to make him look back.

“Fuck,” he bit out.

“Do you have a mother?” Marcus asked.

“Fuck you,” the man spat.

“Sisters?”

“Fuck…you!” he leaned forward and shouted.

Louie pulled him back.

“You do, so why?” Marcus pressed.

“Because I could, all right?” he yelled. “Because I fuckin’ could and she couldn’t fuckin’ stop me that time, could she?”

Marcus tilted his head to the side. “That’s it? Because you could?”

“Yeah, because I could.”

“So you’re telling me you thought she bested you and your dick is so small, you couldn’t bear that blow so you needed to show her who had the power?”

“Why do you do all the shit you do to wear your fancy suit and have your men at your back?” the man countered. “Don’t stand there thinkin’ you’re better than me when you got me on my knees and you got a gun in your hand I know you’re gonna use. Because for that reason right there, you aren’t better than me, asshole.”

“That’s an interesting, but erroneous, comparison.”

“Whatever,” the guy muttered.

“I’ve never raped a woman.”

“Oh, good. You’re a saint,” he bit back.

“I’ve never ordered a woman to be raped.”

“Whatever, motherfucker, just end this.”

“The games I play, every player knows the score.”

“Jesus, put you in a suit, you’re a superhero.”

“The point I’m trying to make is, she was an innocent woman walking through a parking lot not having any idea someone was going to commit a violent act using her body to do it. And what I’m trying to understand is how you could be that someone who’d commit that violent act using an innocent woman to do it.”

“I mighta got my bell rung pretty fuckin’ good by those two fuckin’ assholes, but I’m not missin’ your point.”

Simply out of curiosity, Marcus asked, “Have you done this before?”

“Never taken it all the way.” He suddenly sneered at Marcus, showing him a set of bloody teeth, of which three were missing in a way Marcus knew they’d only been recently lost. “Your girl was my first.” The sneer faded and a different kind of ugliness replaced it as he shook his head. “But no bitch disrespects me. No bitch. I had my way of communicatin’ that, and I don’t give a fuck I’m on my knees, I got no regrets. A bitch has it comin’, that’s just the way. You’re too weak to get that, not my problem.”

At that, Marcus heard from behind him Brady pull in a hiss of breath through his teeth.

This was not because the man on his knees had insulted Marcus.

Or, not entirely.

It was because Brady had three younger sisters and two shit-for-brains parents that got their asses incarcerated, one three weeks after the other, leaving an eighteen-at-the-time Brady the only one who could look after those girls like Marcus’s sister had done, or let them hit the system.

He’d decided to look after his sisters.

Fortunately, he’d found Marcus not long after and Marcus helped him do that.

Nevertheless, for obvious reasons, Brady, like Marcus, wasn’t a big fan of any man thinking it’s just the way if “a bitch has it comin’.”

Down low, Marcus swung a hand slightly out and he felt the heat of Brady’s anger at his back subside.

He’d taught Brady the lesson about rage too.

Marcus focused again on the man.

“She was going to get her lip gloss.”

“Do I care?”

“Her laugh sounds like bells.”

“Again, asswipe, do I care?”

Again, Marcus studied him and he did it for a good length of time.

Closely.

“No,” Marcus finally said, speaking quietly. “You don’t. You don’t care. And that’s it. That’s why you could do what you did. Because you don’t care. I was right. You’re nothing but an animal.”

“You think I’m gonna beg for mercy, I’m not, fuckwad. Again, don’t give a fuck she’s convinced you different. That gash don’t matter. Most gash don’t matter. But her? She’s a fucking stripper!”