“Just how many boyfriends do you have, lady?” Cherry said, struggling against the muscled men. She couldn’t escape their grip.
Black Diamond stepped forward, took her in with a deep whiff. “One. The other’s just a silly husband, pays for all the bills,” she said, waving the gun around with significantly bad trigger discipline.
Pickle scowled at her, biting her lip. This was bad, really bad. Killie could definitely take out some of them, and by Athena’s armoured ass, so could she, but bullets would fly and they were unarmed. Oh, by Hephaistus, why had she agreed to Hector’s silly plan?
“So, you fooled me,” Hector said, frowning.
“Oh! You’ve put that together, haven’t you?” Black Diamond said. “Really, did you believe that old ‘I need to be authentic’ line I fed you?” She scoffed at him and turned to Pickle. “If that worked, we’re talking about tall, dark and vlaka.”
“I’ll kick your ass one-on-one, black eye!” Cherry said, still struggling against the mobsters. “That was a sick burn. Ya burnt!”
“How quaint,” Black Diamond said, clearly not amused. She turned her back to Cherry.
“Okay, that’s enough, baby.” Achilles slashed the air with his meaty palm. “What do you wanna do with them?”
“Well, we get paid either way if they’re taken out. And I don’t want them blathering on to Lucius, at least not until I get him to change the prenup. So, I dunno,” Black Diamond shrugged. It did wonderful things to her collarbones with her strapless dress. “Kill them out the back?”
Pickle tensed up, her eyes went wide. She turned to Killie, who was calm. Unusually calm. The kind of calm she got just before a match, waiting for the stones to start hitting.
Pickle focused on the mobster on her side. She had to trust the others to cover the rest, to protect Hector. If Hector was gone…
She didn’t even want to consider that possibility.
“Come on!” Black Diamond shouted, annoyed. “Achilles, I said take care of them.”
Cherry kicked up a fuss, exactly as Pickle expected her to. She might be small and un-augmented, but she could be a real pain in the ass when she wanted to. Cherry wasn’t a girl that would go without a fight. She propped her leg up against the wall and kicked back, ramming her shoulder in the mobster’s chest. Big or not, it was a solid hit. The man folded, and Pickle was already on him, disarming him by the kung-fu technique of crushing the man’s fingers with her superior strength. “Ah!” he cried out in pain. Pickle grabbed his Uzi, kept him in a leg-lock and turned around.
Achilles sprayed them all with bullets. He pushed his girlfriend to the side and emptied the magazine on them, without caring for his own men. The small, boxy gun barked out and emptied in a second.
Everybody got hit. Including Hector. Pickle cried out and tried to reach him, but he was too far away. He took cover behind the chair and kept his head down, just as he should.
When the Uzi clicked empty, Killie fell upon the mobster, punching him in the throat. He dry-heaved a bit, holding his neck. Killie disarmed him with a furious precision and then rammed his still burning cigar up his nostril.
Ouch.
Pickle hurt, she got hit in the leg. The mobster she was currently facesitting on was also hurt from a ricochet. “Boss, you hit me,” he complained, trying to press the wound with her on top of him.
“That’s what happens when you spray and pray, vlaka,” Pickle said, but she was talking to the Black Diamond Bitch.
She kept threatening Hector on the head with her gun. Hers was a smaller one, just a lady’s pistol, but it would still do the trick from such a close range. “Drop the guns, now!” she hissed.
Pickle dropped it immediately. Killie hesitated, turned to Pickle, who nodded in acknowledgement. Killie dropped the gun as well.
“Ow…” Achilles cried out, pulling the cigar from his nostril. It was both bleeding and burnt badly.
“What’s the matter, laddie? Don’t like the cauterisation, now?” Killie taunted with her thick accent, keeping her hands up in the air. “Bonus: No more nosebleeds, aye.”
“Black Diamond!” Hector said to the woman threatening his thick head, his hands up in the air. “Someone paid you to lead us to a trap. Who was it?”
She looked smug. “Would’t you like to know?”
“Was it Nicomedes? He promised you money, that little weasel?”
“Yes!” Black Diamond said, still aiming her pistol at him. “Well, and my own jugger team.”
Now it was Pickle’s turn to frown. “What? Is that even possible?”
“Oh, everything is possible if you have enough money, you sour pickle, you,” Black Diamond purred, glancing at her.
There was a blur from the side. Pickle didn’t even register it in time. Someone was in-between them, someone…
Cherry rammed Black Diamond and threw her to the side with a whoof of air. Sweet mercy of Hermes, that girl was quick when she was pissed off. She wrestled Black Diamond on the ground, and she pulled her dress in the process, exposing her ample chest.
Cherry punched her in the face. “I told you, I was gonna give you a black eye for threatening Hector,” she said and punched her again to underline her threat.
Hector stood up, wincing from the caught bullets in his underarmour. “Good job, Cherry.”
Pickle breathed out in relief. “Oh, thank Athena you always wear that thing around.”
“Contrary to what the lady says, I’m not a vlaka,” Hector said, wincing from the pain.
“Of course not, baby,” Cherry cooed at him. Then she covered up the woman’s nudity with her hands. “No, don’t look at her titties, Hector. Look away.”
Back at HPP, they tended to their wounds. There wasn’t anything serious, except a broken rib on Hector from the bullet impacts on the Kevlar, and Cherry’s pride for getting caught in the truck.
“I’m sorry…” Cherry whined, slamming her head on the table.
“It’s okay, it’s better that you didn’t resist. They might have hurt you badly,” Pickle said, putting her hand on the younger girl’s shoulder.
“So, what did that little expedition of yours gave us again?” Mamacita asked, bringing in the plates as everyone sat around the dinner table.
“Nothing…” Hector snorted. “No client job, we made an enemy of the Albanian mob, some of us got injured, your armours need repairs.” He stared down at his ouzo.
There were solemn faces all around.
“But! Nobody died, so that’s something,” he smiled. “Yiamas,” he toasted for the Greek ‘Cheers’ and drank the entire glass in one big gulp.
“And we know for sure now that that weasel Nicomedes is actively after us,” Pickle added.
Hector nodded, wincing as he moved. “Yeah.”
“That’ll teach you to believe every pretty lady that comes and bats her eyelashes at you, Hector,” Cherry frowned, pressing her lips together.
He looked down. “Yeah… She said she was in love with the man that bailed her out. She said Lucious loved her so much he wanted to help her start a career of her own. I believed her. What can I say? I’m a sucker for true love.”
Killie sucked in air through her teeth in a loud ‘tsk.’
Everyone turned to her. “What is it?”
“I wadnae to see what the diamond armour would look like, ya ken?”
Cherry snorted. They all laughed.
“What? I like pretty things…” Killie shrugged. “Jewellery even. I’m a lassie, aren’t I?”
“Sure you are,” Cherry teased her.
Killie glared at her with her classic death stare. Cherry sat further away from the woman.
Hector stood up and hugged Killie, giving her a kiss on the shaved part of her head. “It’s alright. I’ll make something pretty and deadly for you.” He winced, his broken rib still fresh. “When I’ll be able to raise a hammer again.” He left, walking slowly to his room. Pickle offered to help him but he raised a hand and nodded that he was fine on his own.
“Ooh…” the girls cooed, looking at each other. They didn’t even hide their raised eyebrows and smirks from Hector and Killie.
“Oi!” Killie said, slamming her hand on the table. “Shut your pieholes, all of you.” She stabbed a piece of meat with her fork and started to chew.
Cherry glanced at the others, pressing her lips together, fighting back a laugh. She picked up a fork, grabbed a potato, and pulled it back like a trebuchet.
Then she threw food at the woman with the reputation for maiming people.
The End.
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