Losing Control (Kerr Chronicles #1)(9)
Author: Jen Frederick

Chapter 4

THE BREEZE FROM THE EAST River stinks as I bike across the Queensboro Bridge. But it feels good and I still have the scent from Bruce Wayne lingering in my nose. I know that’s kind of illogical—that’s it’s not really his scent, only a memory of it—but it’s still there and I suck it in, holding my breath as if I can swallow it and make it part of me.

Then it hits me that I’m mooning over a guy who insulted me, apologized, and is involved in some fashion with my criminal ass stepbrother. If anything belongs in the East River, it’s Malcolm and all his associates.

But shit, I don’t even have the right to be mad about this because I’m benefiting from all the illegal crap he’s involved with. Deciding I need to drown my thoughts, I crank up AWOL Nation and let the heavy metal guitar riffs occupy my attention as I bike the fifteen miles to the apartment.

I punch the button next to Malcolm’s name and he buzzes me up. This fourteen story building is slightly run down and in a not-so-great neighborhood but you have to be where your customers are, says Malcolm. Given the number of times I have made deliveries to individuals living in apartments overlooking Central Park, I think he should move his offices into the city. But then I’m not part of the executive team. I’m merely the delivery girl.

“No go.” I slap the package into his chest when he opens the door. A quick glance inside the room reveals that his flunkies are gone. I turn to leave but he grabs my shirt and drags me inside.

“Not so fast. What do you mean, ‘no go’?”

“He said he couldn’t work with me but he did write something on the papers.”

Malcolm keeps one hand on my shirt and drops the contract out onto the table with the other. Picking up the signature page, he curses, “Fuck you.”

“Hey,” I protest, finally wiggling out of his grip. “I delivered it. That was my only job. You’re the one who made the deal.”

He turns the contract to me and holds the paper up two inches from my eyes. “See this? Even you can read this. I know it.”

Like I told Bruce Wayne, I have a learning disability but I’m not illiterate. I can read some but it takes me a while, so I avoid it whenever possible.

“So he wrote ‘Fuck you.’ I assume that’s a message for you and not me.” But I’m dying inside because I know this means that Malcolm won’t help me. I wonder if he’ll even allow me to deliver for him.

He mashes the paper in my face a little too hard to be a joke. “Goddammit. I gave you one f**king job and you managed to f**k it up. It’s a wonder you could get a job even delivering packages, you stupid f**k.”

When I say I’m not ashamed of my learning disability, it doesn’t mean I’m immune to insults. Malcolm’s words sting badly, but I cover that pain by pretending he hurt my nose. He tosses the papers aside and they flutter to the ground.

I don’t use Google because stuff is even harder to read on the computer than on paper. The letters don’t just swim on the page, they leap at me in 3D, and it’s a real headache trying to figure out what their correct order is. Since I have a decent paying job, I’ve given up on trying to learn how to read. The only reason I even have a smartphone is because dispatch uses it to convey instructions, orally, to me.

I have a good memory, can read most street signs with practice, and locate the majority of businesses by landmarks. I watch television, everything from comedies to documentaries, but I’m not a reader and never will be. I refuse to be ashamed about this but I’m not dumb which is what most people associate the inability to read with.

“I couldn’t force him to sign it,” I protest.

“Goddammit!” Stomping off into one of the two bedrooms, he releases a few more curses and then yells at me. “Don’t f**king leave. I’ve got another delivery for you.”

“Jesus. Fine.” Because I’m well acquainted with Malcolm’s hair-trigger temper being expressed primarily through slammed doors and shouts but no real violence, I take the opportunity to rifle through Malcolm’s refrigerator, which is surprisingly well-stocked for a bachelor’s. He has cold pizza, cold Chinese food, and sandwich makings. “Can I have the leftover shrimp fried rice?” I yell.

He mumbles something that I assume is agreement. After the contents of the box are heated, I unhook the sides and lay the cardboard flat on the table. Malcolm and I discovered the magic of the Chinese takeout box when we were teens and have never eaten leftovers any other way.

He must have heard the completion ding of the microwave because he stomps out of the bedroom he uses as an office. Jerking out a drawer and grabbing another fork, he huffs into a stool next to me and starts eating the leftovers. It’s like we are twelve and fourteen again, back before testosterone overtook Malcolm and turned him into an ass**le.

Before then he was a Skylander-playing, Pokémon-loving goofball. Somewhere around the end of fifteen, on the cusp of sixteen, he left it all behind to become this woman-hating, amoral jerk. Twelve years later, he’s perfected what he started—only now he’s a criminal, woman-hating, amoral jerk. I wonder idly whether Malcolm fits the profile of a sociopath.

“How’s Sophie?”

“She’s…” I start to say “fine,” but she’s not and I don’t know why I would pretend with him. “She’s hanging in there.” I push the food around.

“I can get Sophie some good weed. I’ve got a nice shipment in,” he offers. At my raised eyebrows, he shrugs. “I don’t hate her. Not anymore, I guess.”

Malcolm’s dad left his mom for my mom. If I’m objective, I can understand his dislike for us. But who the hell is rational when it comes to someone you love? Not me and not Malcolm either. Neither of us pay much attention to Mitch Hedder anymore. He walked out on my mom when I was sixteen and Malcolm was eighteen. The old man is a shiftless piece of work who inveigles his way into women’s lives and then ruins them.

I guess Malcolm thinks relationships are for suckers. He might be right. I’ve never been able to keep a man in my life.

“I found a place but I need a co-sign for the apartment application. The on-the-books money I make isn’t enough to convince the landlord I can make rent and I won’t make rent without the job.”

“Should’ve thought of that before you left Kerr’s, Tiny.”

I shift uncomfortably on my stool. I don’t want to go back to see Ian and not for any reasons associated with Malcolm’s situation. Ian Kerr is a danger to me. The only way I will stay safe is to maintain distance. In a city this big, with our massive economic differences, that should be pretty easy so long as my mother’s health doesn’t rest on a return visit.