“What the fuck is going on?” the younger Stewart brother yelled, glaring daggers at them through bloodshot eyes.
Meridian slammed his leather-clad fist into the man’s jaw sending him flying back into the arms of his older brother.
“Motherfucker,” Jason growled, checking his brother out.
The shock of the entrance was wearing off and the men were slowly making their way to their feet—except for the one with the broken leg—backing towards the wall trying to put some distance between them. Meridian pulled his black Smith and Wesson from his harness and began to screw on the suppressor while the men stared as if they were about to shit themselves.
“What the fuck is this?” Jason snarled, tucking his little brother behind him.
“This is Hell. Welcome,” Meridian said, his voice sounding as dark as his soul.
“Fuck Hell. I already live there,” the thug replied with hostility lacing his tone.
“Shut up,” Ex said, his voice even and smooth. “I want you to take your cell phones out and toss them at my partner’s feet. Do it now. I won’t ask twice.”
The men pulled out their phones and none-too-gently threw them to the floor. Meridian picked each of them up and tucked them into his inside pocket. People kept way too much incriminating shit on their smart phones, even linking their home computers to them.
“Man, you guys are in my house. Who the hell are you?” a man Meridian didn’t recognize asked. He wasn’t one of the men in the nine arrest records they’d gone through, so he was probably a flunky—a loudmouth one, at that.
“I’m the one person you never wanna see coming,” Ex growled, making Meridian turn in his direction, liking what he saw.
There was silence as the men seemed to contemplate whether Ex was all talk or not. As if in an old-fashioned stare-off, the loud-mouth squinted at Ex, his right-hand twitching at his side. Meridian saw the bulge in the man’s waistband but he knew he’d never get the chance to draw it.
The man leaned a fraction to the side, reaching his big, clumsy arm towards his belt buckle. The guy was so laughably slow that Ex was able to stall an additional half second before he snapped his hand behind his back, produced his 9mm, and shot the man three times in the chest before his fingertips even reached the hem of his shirt.
“Shit!” one of the guys hollered, staring wide-eyed at the man lying dead next to him. “Please just let me go. I don’t know nothing... I don’t...”
Meridian frowned, his eyes hard on the young man trembling off to the side by himself. His outburst had drawn everyone’s attention, including Ex’s. The more Meridian stared, the more he realized that they may have made an error in judgment. He and Ex started to close in on the man from both sides.
The younger Stewart brother was still holding his jaw when he blurted, “Yo, leave him alone, man! He ain’t got nothing to do with this. He’s just giving us a place to crash.”
“I told you to shut up.” Ex glared, making Marcus Stewart snap his mouth shut. Ex had already shot and killed one man with the ease that a scorpion kills an ant, and the unaffected expression on his face said he wouldn’t hesitate to do it again.
“How old are you?” Meridian hissed, standing close enough to the guy to make him crane his head back. Ex stayed back and observed from a wider angle in case the other men made a move.
“I’m twenty,” the guy—no he was a goddamn kid—mumbled nervously.
“What are you doing protecting these killers?” Ex asked just as Meridian placed the tip of his suppressor to the guy’s forehead.
“No. Please,” he cried, tears and snot running down his face, the fear seeming to make him unable to answer the question. “Please, don’t.”
“Leave him alone! I said he don’t got nothing to do—”
Ex snapped his arm out to the side and shot the older of the brothers in his left shoulder, the force of the bullet hurling him backwards. Marcus cursed and dropped to his brother’s side, immediately putting his hand over the wound.
“You’re a goddamn baby,” Ex told the young man who’d yet to tat his face up with gang signs. “You wanna be one of these assholes? Killing innocent people on the streets, poisoning his own neighborhood.”
“It’s about getting paid,” the kid said shakily, still trying to sound hardcore through the damn sniffling.
Ex aimed his gun at the guy’s heart, making his knees buckle. Meridian gripped him beneath his armpits and yanked upwards, slamming him against the wall. “What’s the point of making money if you’re not alive to spend it?”
The young man started to perspire, his shaggy, brown hair damp at the ends and clinging to his temples as he pleaded for his life. “They paid me to let ’em stay here for a few weeks. I’m done with all this shit after this, I swear it.”