The F King: A Bad Boy Romance (Still a Bad Boy Book 3) (10 page)

W
ith Sarina’s
coursework piling up, we didn’t get to spend as much time together as I would have liked over the next few weeks after making it official. It seemed like the “high school” relationship did some pretty quick growing up during that talk.

Every touch was still the embodiment of excitement when I was with Sarina, but I’d never touched anybody that I’d shared that deeply with. In my world, I couldn’t let anybody know my vulnerabilities or they’d just use them against me. It was both liberating and terrifying that Sarina had that window into my inner workings.

Tonight, we’d had a chance to celebrate that quick maturing of our relationship, and I’d given her a day to remember. Starting with flowers delivered in the morning, a sexy little cocktail dress delivered and waiting for her when she came back to the dorm for lunch, and then an expensive bottle of perfume, with a note to avoid the cafeteria dinner like the plague because we had plans for tonight.

She looked like a movie star coming out of the dorm, when I picked her up in the town-car, rented complete with driver, and she smelled like an angel while we rode to the restaurant. All eyes were on her as we ate, as was only fitting for the sexiest woman in the room.

However, the whole time it seemed like there was something on her mind, and it took me until the ride home to drag it out of her. Safely behind the privacy panel so the driver couldn’t hear us, I leaned in and kissed her.

“Spit it out, I can tell you’ve got something you want to say.”

“It’s… it’s just embarrassing…”

“More embarrassing than leaving your panties on my bookshelf like they were a best seller?”

Sarina blushed and slapped my arm with the back of her hand. “Shut up, you. And yes, in a way, it is.”

“Well, what is it?”

“It’s just… I haven’t managed to get a job to pay for my tuition and accommodation yet. The club got back to me and said they had a huge list of applicants with a lot more relevant experience than me. I should have spent more time looking, applying everywhere, but
somebody
has been keeping me busy. Not that it’s your fault,” she added hastily, “but everything I paid in advance is going to be running out soonish, so I need to get on top of this or you’ll be dating a homeless dropout.”

I shrugged. “This is no problem, just tell me what you need and I can cover it-”

“No.” She shook her head. “No… I can’t do that. I wouldn’t feel right. I know we’ve been moving pretty quickly, but that would just feel like charity and I’d hate that feeling. And don’t you
dare
say it would be for services already rendered.”

She waggled a warning-finger at me and I shelved the obvious joke, holding my hands up in surrender. Dropping my arms after a second, I rested one hand on her inner thigh and she clamped them together as if giving my hand a kind of hug.

“So what are you going to do?”

“Well… I did have this
one
idea…”

“And this is what’s been on your mind all night?”

“Yeah… um… I was thinking, you know how you said you could get some F?”

I narrowed my eyes, glanced at the privacy screen and then back to Sarina. “Yeeeaaaaahhh…”

“Well, would it be possible for me to get some to sell? I could pay you back once I sell it, and then it wouldn’t be just you paying for my whole life. You already give me too much.” She gestured at her dress.

I pressed my lips together into a thin line and turned my head to look out the window on the opposite side of the car. There wasn’t much to see there, on account of the tinting, but a blank canvas to stare at while dealing with this potential drama-bomb was probably for the best anyway.

Giovanni had been pretty specific about clamping down on the distribution of F at our last meeting, a point he would no doubt reiterate next week. As a result of that, and of meeting Sarina, I hadn’t taken any F from the lab or even visited any of my regular on-selling haunts since then. But I
did
still have a modest amount tucked away in my apartment.

I had no other use for it, having no particular need to take it myself. It was essentially a really inconvenient and inefficient paperweight, if it wasn’t bringing in any money or the kind of respect and lifestyle I’d grown accustomed to.

The Acardis would frown upon it, to put it mildly, if they found out, but it wouldn’t take
that
much F to cover her expenses for the rest of the academic year. After that, well, life was going to be pretty fucking different anyway. For “us” and the Acardis both. If there was a version of “us” that could even survive the entire truth about what I was.

The way she accepted the first part of my story, my initial reasons for going down this path before I got my taste of the kind of power I could take from the Acardis, gave me a lot of hope. The idea of having Sarina at my side when I took control instead of a string of meaningless, and ultimately inferior, lays was all kinds of seductive.

I turned back to Sarina. “OK. I can get you some. Not much, but you won’t
need
much. Just make sure you don’t go out on the streets selling to dangerous people. Sell on campus, small amounts to people looking to have a one-off party. Understand?”

“Yes! Thank you! This solves everything!”

Sarina wrapped her arms around my neck and gave me a hug and kiss. We lost our balance a little as the driver turned into the driveway for Cumberland, but managed to avoid any clashes of teeth.

The first thing I saw when I stepped out of the car was that short chick from Sarina’s floor, Millie, standing outside the dorm with her hands on her hips. She threw up her hands in mock disgust when I helped Sarina out of the car.

“Are you fucking serious right now?” she asked, coming over to us.

“What?” asked Sarina.

“I just walked home from a date at the messiest house I’ve ever seen,
by myself
because “the game” was on, and you turn up like this? It’s not fair.” Millie turned to me. “You got any friends?”

I laughed. “Um… they’re all taken, I’m afraid.”

“You coming up?” asked Millie. “I’d like to grill you in the common room about why men are such a-holes.”

“Sounds like fun, but I’ve got somewhere else I need to be tonight.”

“Such a shame.” Sarina slipped her arms inside my jacket and cuddled up to me.

I would have loved to come up and christen Sarina’s bed with her, but my interrogation serum from hell was at a stage where I had a relatively small window to put the final touches on, or the whole batch was fucked. Either way I was glad to go without playing the agony aunt for Millie.

“Hey! You should come to the Halloween party! Dress up! Guests are allowed!” She poked Sarina in the arm.

“Oh… I’m not really sure Ryan’s interested in that…” said Sarina.

I remembered the Halloween parties from my college years, they were invariably incredible boozefests and the source of many a story for everybody who attended. Lots of fun. Plus, it would do my heart good to see the sexy thing snuggled up to me dressed as Sarina the Slutty Teenage Witch or something.

“I’m in,” I said.

“Really?” Sarina looked up at me.

“Oh yeah, those parties are always memorable, if you can remember them at all. But, listen, I’ve gotta go. Talk soon, OK?”

“OK.”

Sarina rose up on the tips of her toes and kissed me before letting go and heading towards the entrance with Millie. It was almost enough to make me forget about the potent chemicals bubbling away in my lab, but not quite.

“Bye. Talk soon?”

Sarina nodded and the girls both waved me off. I re-entered the car, and the last thing I saw as I was driven away was Sarina and Millie heading towards the entrance of Cumberland, with a couple other girls rushing out to get a debriefing on their dates.

T
here were always
a few Acardi soldiers around the lab, and even
in
the lab if it was just before a top to bottom clean anyway. They were there for security, to deter any stupid motherfuckers from trying to rob the place, or at least hold the fort while reinforcements came if a serious threat was posed to the operation.

Now that the latest batch of my interrogation serum was ready, all I had to do was wait for one that I hadn’t questioned before. There was a constant rotation of new people, so all I had to do was sit here at my computer with the bait out and see what I caught.

I’d never seen any of the soldiers on duty today, so it was the equivalent of an untapped fishing spot. I made sure my desk was clean, except for a Ziploc bag containing small sheet of absorbent paper divided into small squares and decorated with various cartoony pictures and other designs. They looked just like the acid tabs I was going to pretend they were.

It was around five o’clock in the afternoon when the greasiest mobster I’d ever seen wandered through the lab as my team packed up for the day, ahead of a major scrub-down they were doing in the morning. His hairstyle was a straight-up nineteen-fifties slick-back that may or may not have been assisted by copious amounts of lard and black shoe polish.

“Hey, what’s that you got there?” he asked.

“Hmmm? Just some LSD I got on the weekend. It’s getting a bit of a reputation in the club scene as some pretty good shit, a well-deserved reputation in my experience, so I brought it in to run some tests to see if I could figure out what they’re doing differently, and maybe who “they” are.”

“You… uh… need to test
all
of it?”

“No, why?”

“Well, I hooked up with this broad a couple weeks back. Real raver kinda girl, likes to wear hotpants, crop top and a glow in the dark pacifier when she goes dancin’, you know what I’m sayin’?”

“Yeah, I know the type,” I said.

“After the rave’s over, she likes to suck dick and I like to be around when she feels like that. We were gonna go out this weekend, so maybe I could grab some tabs and we’ll be the life of the party, whaddya say?”

I swung my chair round to face him and sucked air in through my teeth. “I dunno man, this is some potent shit. There’s not many Italians that could handle it.”

Somehow, I managed to contain my smug smile as I played him like a fucking maestro. His eyes widened in surprise and he almost choked on his sudden sense of bruised ego.

That was one thing I could always count on with these Acardi fucks, a massive sense of self-importance that was easily manipulated. What the fuck was their induction process like that they were so genuinely surprised when somebody didn’t lick the ground they walked on?

“You mouthy fuck, I was droppin’ acid when the best-”

I held up my hands and waved him down before he could recount the lengthy history of Italy, his family, the Acardis, and how badly he’d fuck me up.

“Take it easy, take it easy. I’m just saying, it’s potent shit. Tell you what, just to show you I meant no disrespect, how about this, alright? You can take one for free, but just chill out here for a while and see how it hits you? You like what it does, then you can buy enough for yourself and that dick sucking raver girl to have a hell of a night, OK?”

My new friend straightened his suit and raised his chin proudly as if he’d really asserted himself well. “Yeah. Alright. Fuck it, I’m clocking out for the night.”

Oh he had no idea.

“What’s your name, man?”

“Tony.”

“OK, Tony,” I said, opening the bag and tearing off a square with a picture of a grenade on it. “Here you are. Down the rabbit hole you go.”

“Hey, thanks, maybe you’re not so bad.”

Tony put the tab on his tongue and scratched his neck awkwardly. I could see he was the kind of guy who had to decide how low to stop shaving his face and say “OK, this is chest hair now.”

“Take a seat, man,” I said, gesturing at the spare office chair. “I can put some music on if you want to listen to it while you wait for a while. I’ve got to get a little bit of work done though, if you don’t mind.”

Tony looked over at the chair and then sat in it. “OK, that’d be great. Hoo-boy, I can already feel it kickin’ in over here.”

I found some generic rave music on the internet, and a moment later my computer speakers were doing the best they could. It wasn’t much, but it didn’t have to be.

Changing screens back to some test results, I pored over them for about ten minutes before glancing over my shoulder to see what kind of state Tony was in. It turned out he wasn’t in any kind of dancing mood.

Staring straight ahead at nothing, I could see he was already breathing quick and shallow. Sweat was beading and dripping down his forehead and the sides of his face. To his credit, the sweat looked clear, so I at least had some evidence that he hadn’t used shoe polish to get that slick-back style going.

I rose to my feet, closed the door to my office and approached the poor bastard known as Tony. He was probably seeing some pretty trippy colors right now, but as the drug worked its magic and triggered the production of
m
-chlorophenylpiperazine in Tony’s brain, well, that was when the shit was really going to hit the fan.

The office chair he was sitting on rolled easily on its wheels, and I pushed him casually over to my decontamination enclosure. It was like the world’s most intense shower, and if anything dangerous was ever spilled on me, that’s where I’d run to.

Things might get messy with Tony, so it was important to question him somewhere that was easy to clean. I took him to the edge, until the chair hit the frame around the door, and tipped him in.

Tony sprawled forward, instinctively putting his hands out to brace for an impact he couldn’t see coming as he sensed the sudden movement. He landed mostly inside the enclosure and I moved the chair aside before planting my foot on his ass and shoving him the rest of the way in.

Unable to keep his balance in the throes of whatever mind-expanding experience he was having, he tumbled forward again, this time breaking his fall with his face. He grunted and I shut the door, locking him inside in complete darkness.

He’d be a lot easier to work over in an hour or two, if I let him soften himself up a bit by stewing in his own juices. Plus, I’d found that the early stages were a little on the incoherent screamy side of things. I’d get a lot more sense out of him later on, and the decontamination enclosure would spare my long-suffering eardrums most of his worthless Acardi shrieks.

For two full hours, as my lab assistants finished their tasks and left for the day, I listened to the dull thuds of Tony trying to smash his way out through the stainless steel, and occasionally entertained the notion that I could hear the more high-pitched of his screams. Hopefully he didn’t lose his voice by the time I questioned him; his writing ability would be severely impaired even if he hadn’t broken his hands.

When I had the place completely to myself, I finally opened the door. Light spilled into the decontamination enclosure and Tony scrambled backwards into the corner in terror.

In addition to the blood coming from his nose, he had scratch marks on both of his cheeks and a wet patch on the front of his pants. He was looking at me as if his mind was breaking, muttering in what I assumed must be Italian.

I smiled. “Do you know who I am?”

Tony nodded and cried silently.

“Say it. Who am I?”

“Il Diavolo.”

“In plain English…”

“The Devil.”

I laughed. “That’s right. Clever Tony. I’ve been watching you your whole life. I think, today, I’m going to eat your soul.”

Tony whimpered and cried, trying to push himself backwards through the walls. “Nonononoooooo…
please
!”

“Let’s have a talk, you and I. I’ll ask you some questions, and you tell me some answers. If you lie to me, I’ll be
very
fuckin’ angry. Do you understand?”

“Anything! I’ll tell you anything,
please
!”

“We’ll see about that, Tony. Let’s talk about your job. You’ve been with the Acardi Crime Family for a while now, done a lot of jobs for them. You’ve seen some things. What do you know about where they stash weapons? Cash? Where have you helped them hide their shit, Tony? Tell me
now you motherfucker!
”

“Money! Weapons! Yes! I know! I fucking know some shit!
Please
!”

“Tell me!”

“Fucking millions! They’ve got millions hidden in a vault under a factory that makes computer shit in Redmond!”

“Bellevuetech?”

“
Yeah! Yes! Yes! I delivered some cash there myself! I’ve never seen so much money in one place! Holy fucking shit! Oh please don’t hurt me! Oh my God…
”

Tony was wide-eyed and frantic, still pushing backwards to keep every last scrap of distance between us that he could. I stepped forward and kneeled in front of him.

“Tell me
more
.”

* * *

T
ony was very helpful
. Over the course of an hour before he passed out, he corroborated the information I’d had from several others in the past, and gave me the location for one more weapons and money cache that I hadn’t heard of before.

When it came time for the Acardis to find out they were in a war with me, these places would be where they ran to. It would be crucial to take these locations to fund and supply the small army that would be required to establish my control in the chaos, and to consolidate my power before they really even knew what hit them.

I heard a groan from the decontamination enclosure and some movement, so I spun away from my computer and peeked in through the open door. Tony was sitting in the corner, blinking in confusion.

“Hey there, champ, how you feeling?” I asked.

“W-what happened?”

“Well, they call that a bad trip. You started swingin’ and swearin’, so I kind of bundled you into here where you couldn’t do too much damage.”

“What… what’s that smell?”

“I think you shit yourself.”

“Oh… fuuuuuuuuuuuck,” he groaned.

“Hey, listen, it’s OK man. Believe me, I’ve seen people do worse things while having a bad trip. Nobody needs to know. I’ve got some clothes here that a lab assistant left behind when he quit a few months back. You can have a shower in there, shove your clothes in the waste disposal, get dressed and head home. No harm, no foul, right?”

“Um… what… uh…oh… OK.”

“There’s the shower head, all you need to do to make it work is press that button and hold the handle… yeah, that one. Just reach out the door when you’re done.”

I returned to my computer and blocked out the sounds of showering and vomiting that streamed through the crack in the door. A quarter of an hour later, Tony stood in my office in his new clothes, looking pale and dazed.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Almost midnight.”

“Holy fuck…”

“So you wanna buy some of this acid? $500 a tab.”

“What? Fuck no.”

“OK. Out of interest… what did you see?”

“I… I dunno. Something. Something…” Tony trailed off.

“Well, let’s get you out of here. Like I said, nobody needs to know about this, right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, thanks… If the guys ever found out…”

Tony stumbled off through the lab, his keys jingling in his new shorts. He was clearly in shock and didn’t even notice he was wearing a gay pride t-shirt.

The clothes weren’t really left behind by a former lab assistant. I bought them especially for such interrogations, because what was the point of being the King without a sense of humor?