Fifteen minutes. Finishing it up now.
My heart constricts with excitement. I’ve got him. Now I can start planning how I want to destroy his life.
In the fifteen minutes it takes for him to send the rest of the report, I make a cup of coffee and grab a five-minute shower. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I register the fact that I have not had enough sleep, but it hardly matters. I have a name. I am about to get the report.
Excitement stirs the darkness in me. People should always get what they deserve, and I am happy to be the one who makes sure Anthony Milton pays for what he did to Blair.
The report isn’t long. Not as long as the reports I pull on people who are a part of the underworld. Antony is a civilian. His life is pretty straightforward except for the part where he’s still a selfish fucker who has zero issue with messing people around. There are several police reports against him that seem to have disappeared at random. That usually means money exchangedhands. I know how that story goes. Along with that, there are three restraining orders and one assault charge that went nowhere.
It looks like Anthony never stopped harassing women and has someone in the police who is willing to accept payment to make the issues go away.
He lives and works in the Florida Keys and runs a successful business, which, no surprise here, is a strip club.
There are a number of photographs in the file showing a guy standing in front of expensive cars, with half-dressed women draped all over him. There is a photo of him with a pretty girl, then another photo of that same girl in a police report with bruises on her face.
The more I look, the angrier I get, and slowly a plan begins to form in my mind.
He thinks he has an empire. One strip club. A handful of nice cars and women that you have to pay to want to be with you. It’s not an empire. And he isn’t as untouchable as he believes.
I spend a few hours reading the report, then rereading it, again and again, and doing more research of my own. It’s past one in the afternoon when Blair sticks her head in the office door. “Simon? Are you ever going to come out of here?”
“Mm?” I mutter without looking up.
“I didn’t want to disturb you this morning. You looked so deep in focus when I peeked in, but you literally haven’t come out of here all day,” she giggles.
I look up at her, snapping out of my focus.
“Blair, hi,” I say, smiling at her.
“Wow, you really are locked into that. What are you doing?” she asks as she walks into the office.
I quickly close my laptop and stand up to stretch. “Nothing, just work stuff. How are you?” I ask, trying to lead her away from my desk so she doesn’t see the paperwork I’ve printed out about her stepbrother and his life.
“Um, I’m okay,” she says, trying to peer at my desk with her brows knotted. “What stuff are you working on?” she asks, sounding skeptical.
“Boring stuff. I seriously need a break. Do you want to make some lunch with me? I was thinking grilled cheese and bacon toasties?”
“Sounds good,” she smiles, stealing one last glance at my desk, but I maneuver her away before she has a chance to see anything.
After lunch, I head right back up to my office.
And over the next week, I spend most of my time in there.
I have every tiny detail about her stepbrother and his business and all the underhanded shit he has done to hurt people. I know where he lives and every detail about his bank, his offshore accounts, his coke habit, the enjoyment he gets from poker and gambling, and the names of the policemen he has paid off over the years.
And slowly but surely, I am piecing together a plan to rip his world out from under his feet one brick at a time. It’s not going to be sudden. There would be no satisfaction in that. It’s going to be slow and confusing for him. He won’t understand why his financial records are suddenly not aligning. Or why the club he owns is suddenly leaking money. He won’t understand why his property is rezoned and all the expensive renovationshe had planned are no longer approved. He won’t understand when his cars are repossessed, and the bank records show he’s in arrears.
None of it is going to make sense. Each piece of his downfall will eat away at him, breaking his spirit while he tries to fix it, but can’t, until there is nothing left of his tiny little empire. The illusion will be broken, and he’ll be in financial ruin, homeless, nowhere to go, and begging for help. That’s when he’ll realize all hisfriendswere only there for the status.
And Anthony’s demise is not the only plan I’m working on. I have side ventures running to take down the four men who were his friends back in the town Blair grew up in. And while I’m doing that, I’m also working on Jaco’s plan, redoing everything, and starting again from scratch.
***
My phone rings late on Friday afternoon, and I snatch it up, answering without looking at the screen.
“Hello,” I snap into the phone.
“Dude, where the hell have you been? I’ve messaged you a ton of times. Why aren’t you replying?” My brother sounds annoyed.