His Angel

Chapter Seventeen

Kremlin was simple, at least to a certain extent. It was simple in the way one might knit a scarf, a repetitive motion that changed based on the shape you wanted, and although each one was fairly similar, there was always a chance on each loop of the string that you could mess up, ruining the line, or maybe even the entire endeavor. Maxwell might have been an excellent sniper, but that's not what he wanted to do, at least not forever. What made him shiver, the blood rush through his racing heart wasn't being a gunner, but a strategist.

He played people like chess pieces, he told them where to go, where to avoid, he planned out their every next step, and determined his opponent's response to create his own. It was all about reading minds, humans were repetitive, predictable creatures, especially when they panicked and fear filled their eyes.

His people allowed themselves to be ordered around, to hand over their will, simply because Max was good at telling them what to do. He sat at the computer screen, staring at multiple angled camera feeds, ordering the ebony-dressed thieves through the halls, past doors to avoid detection by security as they pulled out their tools, unlocking the safe on the second floor. When the money was in their grasp, when they returned home from another successful swipe, that's when the party started.

That night, darkness shook with the walls, making human minds to crumble. It was so shadowed he could hardly see, but they were there like always, and as soon as he entered the room, their glasses went up in an ear-shattering cheer. The room turned like it was on an axis as the people danced through flashes of light and sound like stars, pressing against one other.

Fingers, tongues, whispers into waiting ears, the place was hot like a desert. The fog lingered in the air, he didn't know where it was from, but it was sweet, like a perfume. He walked the room like a king, a royal that ruled over a waiting crowd, head high and body stiff as the people slipped out of his way. The place had a kind of red glow, a halo of sin. It radiated from every pore, every touch, every breath. There was no fighting it, no running away from it, only experiencing the pleasure from it. The women were beautiful, and pretended it took nothing to get that way. The men were hungry, but not for one thing, they were hungry for it all. They used their money, shoving it into skimpy strings for a single taste, a single kiss, desperation as if they had been trapped in the sand for days and had just come across a waterfall.

"Congrats" he spotted his second in the crowd, holding out a glass of watered whiskey with a large, circular cube of ice.

"Fucking bastard!" You're the one that caused this shitstorm in my life.

He snatched the glass from Spike's waiting hand, taking a good, long sip of the liquid within. It shocked with a cut down his throat, like swallowing a knife. Spike smacked him on the upper back, taking a grip across his shoulders and leading him through people towards the bar. It wasn't enough, it would never be enough. "That's why you're the boss!" Spike called with a mischievous smile, holding out a glass of gin to clang them together in cheers.

The atmosphere in this place was always electric, every body was a surge charging those around them, causing an attraction that only fell when you were ripped away from the moment, to realize that the world wasn't all drugs, alcohol, and sex. It was only temporary, like the pleasure of a chemical peak that always waned eventually. For now, it could come alive as a group psychosis where the problems of tomorrow don't exist, only the second does. A shot, another shot, come on, just a little longer.

He could forget about the beauty sleeping in his old bed...just a little longer.

His glass sat on the bar, and the music's base was so loud that the liquid inside vibrated. The money would never run out, they would never age, and the poisons would never stop coming. They destroyed themselves, and there was nothing more he wanted than that.