The Starlight Inn charged him another three hundred dollars.
Brandon paid without arguing this time. He was too tired to fight, too numb to care about being gouged. The clerk took his money with the same indifferent expression as before and slid a fresh key across the counter.
Room 14 was identical to the previous one—same stained carpet, same flickering lamp, same view of a parking lot that had seen better decades. Brandon locked the door behind him, checked the windows, and sat on the edge of the bed.
Sleep wouldn't come.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Thomas Reeves's face. The surprise in his eyes before the first punch landed. The blood spraying from his nose. The way his body had gone limp, like a puppet with its strings cut.
Brandon looked at his hands. He'd washed them three times, but he could still feel the sticky warmth of another man's blood between his fingers.
What am I becoming?
He lay in the darkness for hours, staring at the ceiling, listening to the sounds of the city outside. Car doors slamming. Voices raised in argument. The distant wail of sirens that made his heart stop every time they passed.
At some point after midnight, he gave up on sleep entirely.
---
The bar across the street was called The Rusty Nail, and it looked exactly like the kind of place where questions weren't asked and answers weren't offered. Dim lighting, sticky floors, a jukebox in the corner playing country songs from thirty years ago.
Brandon found a stool at the far end of the bar and ordered the cheapest whiskey they had. The bartender—a grizzled man with a missing front tooth—poured without comment and moved on to the next customer.
The whiskey burned going down, but it was the good kind of burn. The kind that numbed the edges and softened the sharp corners of reality.
Brandon was on his third glass when he heard them.
Two men had settled into the booth behind him, their voices low but not low enough. Brandon kept his eyes fixed on the mirror behind the bar, watching their reflections as they talked.
Both were young—late twenties, maybe early thirties. One had a shaved head and tattoos crawling up his neck. The other wore a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. They ordered beers and waited until the bartender was out of earshot before leaning in close.
"You hear about the meeting?" the one with the shaved head asked.
"Heard enough. New boss is talking big, but I don't know, man. He ain't ready for what's coming."
"Nobody's ready for what's coming. The Kings think they can just blow up our spot and walk away clean? That's not how this works."
Brandon's grip tightened on his glass.
"Word is they're putting together a crew. Gonna hit back hard. Make an example."
"Good. I'm tired of sitting around waiting. We should've moved days ago."
The one in the baseball cap shook his head. "Can't move until we find the delivery guy. Boss wants him first. Says there's ten grand on his head."
Brandon felt the blood drain from his face.
"Ten thousand? For the guy who dropped off the package?"
"That's what I heard. Somebody saw him on a bike, but that's all we got. Medium build, brown hair, could be anybody. But the boss wants him found. Says he's the key to figuring out who really set us up."
"You think it was the Kings?"
"Who else? They've been pushing into our territory for months. This is exactly the kind of move they'd make."
The shaved-headed man laughed, but there was no humor in it. "Well, whoever this delivery guy is, he better pray the cops find him first. What the boss has planned for him..." He whistled low. "It ain't gonna be pretty."
Brandon set his glass down with trembling hands. He left a twenty on the bar—more than his drinks cost, but he didn't care—and walked out into the night, his legs barely steady beneath him.
Ten thousand dollars.
There was a bounty on his head. The Reapers were looking for him, and when they found him—if they found him—death would be a mercy compared to what they had planned.
He made it back to the motel room somehow, locked the door, and collapsed onto the bed fully clothed. Exhaustion finally won its battle against terror, and Brandon fell into a dreamless sleep.
---
The phone woke him at eight in the morning.
Not a text from the unknown number—an actual phone call, from a number he didn't recognize. Brandon answered with a groggy "Hello?"
"Is this Brandon Parker?"
"Yes."
"This is Maria from Burger Barn. We had someone quit unexpectedly, and I need you to come in today instead of Thursday. Can you be here by ten?"
Brandon sat up, rubbing his eyes. "Today? Yeah. Yeah, I can do that."
"Good. Don't be late."
The line went dead.
---
Burger Barn at 10 AM was a different beast than the quiet establishment Brandon had visited two days ago. The lunch rush was already building, a line of customers snaking from the counter almost to the door. The air was thick with the smell of frying meat and the constant beeping of timers.
Maria met him at the door with a paper hat and an apron.
"You know how to work a grill?"
"I can learn."
"Then learn fast. Tony will show you the basics. Try not to burn anything."
Tony turned out to be a heavyset man in his forties with the thousand-yard stare of someone who had seen too many lunch rushes. He spoke in short, clipped sentences and expected Brandon to keep up.
"Patties go on the grill. Two minutes each side. Cheese goes on thirty seconds before you flip. Don't touch the fryer until I say you can touch the fryer."
"Got it."
"You don't got it. Nobody gets it on their first day. Just try not to get in the way."
The next six hours were a blur of chaos and failure.
Brandon burned three batches of fries. He dropped a tray of buns. He put pickles on a burger that was supposed to have no pickles and had to remake it while the customer glared at him through the window. He slipped on a wet floor and nearly took out a rack of condiments. He got yelled at by Maria twice, ignored by Tony three times, and stared at with undisguised contempt by the other employees.
There were four of them in total, not counting the manager. Tony on the grill. A skinny kid named Marcus who worked the fryer and looked like he'd rather be anywhere else. A middle-aged woman named Patricia who handled the drive-through with the efficiency of a military commander. And a young woman—barely out of her teens, with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail—who worked the register and seemed to be the only one who didn't actively hate her job.
Her name tag read ELENA.
By the time his shift ended at four, Brandon was drenched in sweat, his feet ached, and he smelled like a deep fryer. He stood outside the back entrance, gulping fresh air, wondering how anyone did this job for more than a week without losing their mind.
His phone buzzed.
DEPOSIT: $400.00
FROM: UNKNOWN SENDER
REFERENCE: EMPLOYMENT CONFIRMED
Brandon stared at the notification. Four hundred dollars for getting a minimum wage job. The texter's logic continued to make no sense.
But money was money, and he wasn't in a position to question where it came from.
---
Back at the Starlight Inn, Brandon paid for another night and retreated to his room. He turned on the television and flipped to the local news, searching for any update on his situation.
The warehouse explosion had faded from the headlines, replaced by a political scandal and a feel-good story about a dog that had been rescued from a storm drain. But there was a brief segment near the end of the broadcast that made Brandon lean forward.
"In other news, the gang violence that erupted following last week's warehouse explosion appears to have subsided. Police report no new shootings in the past forty-eight hours, though tensions remain high between the Reapers and the Eastside Kings. Authorities continue to search for a person of interest in connection with the explosion and are asking anyone with information to come forward."
The segment ended without showing his description again. Small mercies.
Brandon turned off the television and lay back on the bed, trying to process what he'd learned.
The violence had stopped—for now. But the police were still looking for him. The Reapers were still looking for him. And somewhere out there, a new gang boss was offering ten thousand dollars to anyone who could deliver Brandon Parker's head.
He stared at the ceiling until sleep finally took him.
---
The second shift was worse than the first.
It started with Marcus calling in sick, which meant Brandon had to cover the fryer—a machine he'd been explicitly told not to touch. Within the first hour, he'd splattered hot oil on his arm, dropped a basket of onion rings on the floor, and gotten into a shouting match with Tony over the proper way to salt fries.
"More salt!" Tony barked.
"I already put salt on them!"
"Does it look like enough salt to you? Does it?"
"I don't know, I've never—"
"More. Salt. Are those words too complicated for you?"
Maria appeared at Brandon's elbow, her expression thunderous. "Is there a problem?"
"No, ma'am," Brandon said quickly. "No problem."
"Then stop arguing and get back to work. Both of you."
By the time his shift ended, Brandon felt like he'd aged ten years. He stumbled out the back door and slumped against the wall, his legs refusing to carry him any farther.
The door opened behind him, and Elena stepped out, pulling off her paper hat and shaking out her hair.
"Rough day?"
Brandon laughed weakly. "That obvious?"
"You've got that look. The 'what did I do to deserve this' look." She leaned against the wall beside him, fishing a pack of cigarettes from her apron pocket. "Mind if I smoke?"
"Go ahead."
She lit up, inhaling deeply before blowing a stream of smoke toward the sky. "First week's always the hardest. Tony's a jerk, but he knows his stuff. Just don't let him get to you."
"Easier said than done."
"Yeah, well." Elena shrugged. "Nothing about this job is easy."
They stood in silence for a moment, watching the sun sink toward the horizon. Brandon studied her from the corner of his eye—young, maybe nineteen or twenty, with tired eyes that seemed too old for her face.
"Can I ask you something?" he said finally.
"Depends on the question."
"Why are you working here? You're young. You should be in college, or—I don't know—doing something other than flipping burgers."
Elena took another drag of her cigarette, her expression unreadable. "You really want to know?"
"I wouldn't have asked if I didn't."
She was quiet for a long moment, staring at the ember glowing at the tip of her cigarette.
"My dad," she said finally. "He was a gambler. Not the fun kind, the 'lose the mortgage payment at a poker game' kind. He'd disappear for days at a time, come back with empty pockets and promises that next time would be different."
Brandon felt something cold settle in his stomach.
"One day, he disappeared and didn't come back. Left me and my mom with a mountain of debt and some very angry people looking to collect." Elena's voice was flat, matter-of-fact, like she was reciting someone else's story. "I was sixteen. Mom got sick a year later—stress, probably, though the doctors called it something fancier. I dropped out of school to take care of her. Started working wherever I could to keep the lights on."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. It's not your fault." She flicked ash onto the pavement. "Point is, not everyone gets to choose their life. Some of us just do what we have to do to survive."
Brandon thought about Lily. About the school trip she was supposed to go on, paid for with money he'd gambled away. About the house that was being foreclosed. About the future he was building for her—a future of debt and disappointment and broken promises.
Is this where she ends up? he wondered. Working a job she hates to pay off her father's mistakes?
The thought made him want to vomit.
"Hey." Elena was looking at him with something like concern. "You okay? You went pale."
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine." Brandon pushed himself off the wall. "Just tired."
"Get some rest. Tomorrow's another day of Tony yelling about salt."
She offered a small smile, and Brandon found himself returning it despite everything.
"Thanks for talking to me."
"Don't mention it. Seriously. This place is depressing enough without everyone treating each other like strangers."
---
The evening shift ended at nine.
Brandon was walking toward the street, already planning his route back to the motel, when he heard voices from the side of the building. One of them was Elena's.
"I told you, I'll have it by Friday."
"You told me that last Friday." The second voice was male, low and threatening. "I'm getting tired of your excuses, sweetheart."
Brandon moved toward the sound without thinking.
He rounded the corner to find Elena backed against the wall, her arms crossed defensively over her chest. A man stood in front of her—big, easily six-two, with the build of someone who used his size to intimidate. He was leaning into her space, one hand braced against the wall beside her head.
"Hey," Brandon said. "Everything okay here?"
The man turned. His face was all hard angles and cold eyes, the face of someone who hurt people for a living.
"Walk away, buddy. This doesn't concern you."
"Looked like it might."
"Brandon, don't." Elena's voice was tight. "It's fine. Just go."
The man smiled, but there was nothing friendly in it. "You heard the lady. Walk away."
Brandon didn't move. "I'm not leaving her alone with you."
Something shifted in the man's expression. The fake smile vanished, replaced by something uglier. He stepped away from Elena and toward Brandon, rolling his shoulders like a boxer loosening up before a fight.
"You really want to do this? Over some girl who owes money she can't pay?"
Brandon's fists clenched at his sides. He thought about the gun back in his motel room. About the skills he didn't have and the fight he couldn't win.
"Stop." Elena pushed herself off the wall and stepped between them. "Both of you, just stop."
She turned to the man, her expression hardening into something Brandon hadn't seen before. Something that looked almost like resignation.
"I'll have your money by Friday, Vic. I promise. My mom's disability check comes through Thursday. I'll bring it to you myself."
Vic studied her for a long moment, then glanced at Brandon with undisguised contempt.
"Friday," he said. "Not Saturday. Not Sunday. Friday. And if you're short again, we're going to have a different kind of conversation."
He turned and walked away, disappearing around the corner without looking back.
Brandon exhaled. "Are you okay? Who was that guy?"
Elena spun to face him, and the gratitude he expected to see wasn't there. Instead, her eyes were blazing with anger.
"What the hell were you thinking?"
"I was trying to help—"
"I didn't ask for your help." She jabbed a finger at his chest. "You think you're some kind of hero? You could've gotten yourself killed. Vic doesn't mess around."
"He was threatening you."
"He threatens me every week. It's fine. I handle it." Elena's voice cracked slightly, but she pushed through. "You want to help? Mind your own business. I've been dealing with guys like Vic since I was sixteen. I don't need some middle-aged burnout getting in the way and making things worse."
The words hit harder than Brandon expected. He stepped back, raising his hands.
"Okay. I'm sorry. I just thought—"
"You thought wrong." Elena's anger was already fading, replaced by exhaustion. "Look, I appreciate the sentiment. I do. But you don't know my situation, and you can't fix it. So just... stay out of it. Okay?"
She didn't wait for an answer. She turned and walked toward the street, her shoulders hunched against the evening chill.
Brandon watched her go, the weight of her words settling over him like a second skin.
Mind your own business.
Easy advice. Impossible to follow.
He turned and started the long walk back to the motel, Elena's story echoing in his mind with every step. A father who gambled. A family in debt. A daughter working to pay for sins she didn't commit.
The parallels were impossible to ignore.
Is this what I'm leaving for Lily? he thought. This life?
He had no answer. Just the cold night air and the distant sound of sirens and the growing certainty that whatever game he was playing, the stakes were higher than he'd ever imagined.