COMMAND | MAFIA ROMANCE | SMUT

COMMAND

PROLOGUE

Do I like beer?

No, it tasted like cat's piss, at least, if I knew what cat's piss actually tasted like, I imagined it was this warm, bubbleless substance in a bottle. Yet, I drink beer daily like a fool who became an alcoholic since I had nothing better to do. Well, that's a lie. I have plenty to do, places to go, people to see, but feigning to be an unambitious fool sounded better than admitting the truth.

Fabrication versus reality hurt less.

Am I an alcoholic?

I mean, sometimes I consider myself a pisshead because, well, here I am, yet again, in some seedy, rundown bar, drinking my weight in cat's piss.

But I function without alcohol, too.

I can say no.

I can smoke weed instead.

Come to think of it. Where is the joint, I rolled earlier? I patted down my leather jacket, the one I nabbed from the charity shop last weekend. It's old, faded, tattered and smelt worse than a wet dog, rotten food and smelly feet combined. "For fuck's sake," I mumbled, coming out of the short search party empty-handed. "I left it on the kitchen counter."

The corpulent barman arched a pierced eyebrow.

"What?" His one head became two heads thirty minutes ago. "Are we not having a conversation?"

"No, Brad. You are talking to yourself." Dropping change into the cash register, he slid a shot of whiskey to the male customer on my right. "I am tending to customers."

"Well, good for you, sunshine." I polished off the remainder of beer from the bottle, shaking droplets onto my tongue. "Be a good barman and get me a refill."

He snatched the empty bottle out of my hand.

"Easy," I said, relatively offended by his lack of people skills. "I am still a paying customer."

"Yeah." He tossed the bottle cap over one shoulder, and it landed on the floor, spinning in annoying circles. "Let's see how long that lasts."

My finger pointed somewhere in his direction--basically fucking aimless. "You need to get laid."

His cheeks were puce with discomfiture. "You need to find a new bar."

"Why the hell would I do that?" My nose wrinkled. "I only just got my foot back through the door."

You see, I have the type of face that pisses people off. I barely opened my mouth the first time I rocked up here, yet I managed to earn myself a nice shiner from the doorman and a six-week ban, which only lasted five weeks because, well, I can be charmingly persuasive. "How's the wife?"

He dried recently steamed pint glasses with a chequered tea towel and stacked them under the wooden counter. "She is still a lazy bitch."

"Harsh." And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why he is a moody old fucker with an overhanging gut. Hell, if i were his wife, I wouldn't want to roll around in the sheets with him, either. I mean, look at the size of that zit on his cheek. Look at the pendulous double chin flapping in the wind and wispy grey nostril hairs going to town on his upper lip. He is a diabolical mess togged-up in bleach-stained denim, leather boots and unruly chest hair. Christ, he made me look like a model, which, sadly for me, I was not. Perhaps in the next life, or maybe the future, I will walk a runway. Time will tell. "I bet she fucks the milkman."