He Came Back to Collect

Chapter 003

According to the file, Maria Sten ran Sterling Group in Bellwick City. Cornell left the hospital with the address and set off to find her.

Walking through the city felt stranger than he had expected. He'd only been gone three years, but whole stretches of it seemed to have changed while he wasn't looking. After asking for directions several times, he finally found Sterling Tower, the company's headquarters.

Now that he knew where it was, he decided he could spare a little time to find somewhere to stay. For three years, he'd spent twenty-three hours a day in a cell barely thirteen feet across. He'd had enough of those four walls to last him a lifetime.

Being back among traffic, shops, and ordinary people put a spring in his step.

Then he remembered how little money he had.

His accounts had been frozen when he'd gone to prison. Everything he could currently call his own amounted to less than seven hundred and fifty dollars, and he'd borrowed that from Hannah before leaving the hospital.

Back when he'd been the Reaper, money had never been a problem. He'd spent it without thinking. Now he was going to have to budget every dollar.

He wandered away from the tower and discovered that, just one street over, the gleaming downtown gave way to a neighborhood that looked ready to collapse.

Pedestrians threaded between cars and pools of filthy runoff. Faded signs hung crookedly above storefronts, rattling in the wind. Children were coming home from school, older residents were carrying groceries, and tired couples were making their way back from work.

With Sterling Tower rising above them, the rundown blocks looked even worse. They were an ugly blemish on a city that liked to present itself as a world capital.

Cornell grinned. At least he might be able to afford a room here.

A little farther down the street, he spotted a battered neon sign. It took him a moment to work out what it said: ROOMS FOR RENT.

The building was one of the old six-story walk-ups common to the neighborhood, the kind where anyone unlucky enough to live on the top floor spent the rainy season catching leaks.

“Hello? I'm looking for a room!”

No one answered on the ground floor, so he started up the stairs. Voices reached him as he approached the second-floor landing.

“Come on, Rebecca. Protection's due. I charge everyone else a hundred and fifty, but for you? A hundred and twenty. Tell me I don't take care of you.”

The speaker was a skinny man with bleached hair and a silver nose stud. A chain hung from his ripped jeans, and a cigarette bobbed between his lips. Two other men stood behind him, all three openly leering at the woman in front of them.

Cornell took one look at her and almost forgot why he'd come upstairs.

Wavy hair framed a pretty face touched with just enough makeup. She wore a sheer black lace top, denim shorts cut high on her thighs, and nude stockings over long, shapely legs.

Three years in prison had left him desperate for female company. After that long surrounded by men, even a female dog glimpsed during exercise time had started to look pretty.

A woman dressed like this was almost more than he could take. Only his self-control kept him from throwing the thugs aside and forcing himself on her.

“I've got one fucking tenant,” Rebecca said, a cigarette held between two fingers. “One. That's a hundred and twenty a month. You take all of it, what the hell am I supposed to eat? I'm not paying.”

“Don't be like that. We've got people to answer to.” The blond's eyes dropped to her chest. “Still, if you're short on cash, I'm sure we can work something out.”

Her expression tightened, and she took a step back.

“If you think you're getting into my pants, you're out of your fucking minds. Even your boss, OG Brain, knows better than to mess with me.”

The three men exchanged amused looks. The blond moved closer.

“You haven't heard? OG Brain got himself killed a couple of days ago. Big B runs this neighborhood now, and we're his boys. Nobody's looking out for you anymore.” He reached for her. “Be nice to us, and we'll make sure you're taken care of.”

She jabbed the glowing end of her cigarette into his forehead.

He screamed and stumbled back, clapping a hand over the burn. When he looked at her again, his eyes were bloodshot with pain and fury.

“You fucking bitch! Who do you think you're kidding with the good-girl act?” He jerked his head at the others. “Grab her!”

They backed her into a corner. She folded her arms over her chest, searching for a way past them and finding none.

Then a cheerful voice came from the stairs.

“Hi. Which one of you is the landlord? I'm looking for a room. Ideally with a balcony, a kitchen, and my own bathroom with a shower. Internet would be good, too. Somewhere that gets plenty of sun.”

Cornell stood on the landing with his head tilted and an easy grin, apparently oblivious to what was happening a few feet away.

Rebecca stared at him.

Was he an idiot?

A man with any nerve would have told them to leave her alone. A man without it could at least have slipped away and called the police. This one didn't seem frightened, but he wasn't exactly rushing to her rescue either.

She had no idea what to make of him.

“Can't you see we're busy?” The blond flexed his fingers. “Fuck off before I kill you.”

Cornell looked past him.

“You the landlord, sweetheart?”

One of the other men snickered.

“He's ignoring you, man.”

“Yeah. You gonna let him do that?”

The blond seized Cornell by the collar.

“You got a death wish?”

Only then did Cornell look at him. His gaze traveled down to the fist bunched in his shirt, then back up to the man's face.

“Easy with the hands. I'm trying to rent a room.” He smiled. “Keep interrupting, and you're going to piss me off.”

The blond burst out laughing, and his friends joined in.

Three years spent mostly indoors had left Cornell exceptionally pale. He was muscular, but lean rather than bulky, and his clothes concealed most of it. To the men on the landing, he looked like a pretty boy who'd never thrown a punch.

“Let's see how tough you are with your head split open.”

The blond snatched up a broken floor tile and swung it at him.

Rebecca clapped a hand over her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut.

A scream made her flinch.

Then everything went quiet.

She waited for another blow, another cry, anything. After several seconds of silence, she couldn't bear it any longer and opened her eyes.

Cornell was still standing exactly where he'd been.

The blond lay curled on the floor, clutching himself and groaning.

She sucked in a breath.

He hadn't just underestimated the pale young man. He hadn't even seen what had hit him. One moment he'd been swinging the tile; the next, he'd been on the floor in more pain than he knew what to do with.

His friends had no better idea what had happened, but they charged anyway.

Before either could land a blow, Cornell caught their arms and flung them aside. Both went headfirst into the garbage bins by the wall with a tremendous crash.

“Fuck! What the hell was that?”

“We picked the wrong guy.”

The three men hauled themselves upright, leaning on one another. Their swagger had vanished.

“Look, man, we fucked up,” the blond said, attempting a smile. “We didn't know. It won't happen again. Just let us go.”

“Yeah. We're sorry.”

“We won't do it again, we swear.”

They were calling him every name they could think of behind those nervous smiles, but none of them was stupid enough to say any of it aloud.

Cornell had no interest in wasting his afternoon on them. He wasn't quite ready to let them leave, though.

He grabbed the blond by the collar and slapped him twice, hard enough to snap his head from side to side.

“Try this again, and you won't get off so easy.”

There was nothing playful in his voice now. The blond looked into his eyes and stopped trying to smile. Whatever he'd thought of Cornell a minute ago, he suddenly had no trouble believing the threat.

He nodded frantically, his lips trembling.

“We won't. We won't.”

“Get out.”

They scrambled toward the stairs, nearly tripping over one another in their haste.

But just before the blond disappeared from view, he glanced back, his eyes cold with hatred.