Content Warning: Adult themes and violence.

Siro stumbled through the door, head swimming, eyes blurred. Blood oozed through his fingers as he held his side and took a seat at the bar. He pulled the coat he’d stolen closer to his body to hide the wound from view. It was bad.

It was a Tuesday. Dim orange and blue lighting and leather stools reeked of loneliness and regret. It was a shithole. There were two lone stragglers at the bar and three tables taken up by small groups of early morning drinkers. A vague cowboy theme permeated all the signage, though little to no real decorations matched that aesthetic. The rustic appeal was due to age rather than style. Siro chose this spot so that Jason could get to it quickly.

“You don’t look so hot, mister,” the woman behind the counter stated. A redundant and stupid social expectation to point out the obvious to start a conversation. That type of comment normally annoyed Siro, but he was too drained to feel anything but pain.

“I’m fine. Scotch, neat,” he said.

“You want some ice with that?” she asked.

“What does neat mean?”

She looked shocked at his curt response. He knew that wasn’t what she had meant. He rose and limped to the restroom. Lucky for him, the door had a lock on it. The cracked and smudged mirror showed a man clinging to consciousness. A blackened eye, a slashed cheek, a torn collar. His forearm throbbed from where he’d landed on it. Siro eased the coat off his shoulders to inspect the hole in his side.

A bullet had gone straight through on his right, a hair below his ribs. Since he wasn’t dead, it hadn’t hit anything too vital. The quick wrap he’d done already needed to be changed. He braced himself as he prepared to pull the cloth off the bleeding orifice. A piece of children’s clothing, a small, once pink and white T-shirt, was drenched in blood. Peeling it off hurt like hell. The hole burbled, leaked, and dripped all over the floor and himself. He didn’t have any bandages with him. He clenched his jaw as he stuffed the hole with hand towels from the broken dispenser. Washing his hands was pointless. No matter how hard he scrubbed, he couldn’t get the red tint off.

Siro exited the bathroom and returned to the bar. His whiskey waited for him, no ice in sight. The bartender was nowhere to be seen. He sat back down and took a large gulp. It stung his cut lip and burned as it went down. She’d given him the cheap shit. He supposed he deserved that. The already bare bar had emptied in the minutes he was locked in the bathroom. It was just him and his pain now.

The door opened the second his ass hit the barstool. The whiskey hadn’t worked its magic yet, he didn’t have the energy to turn. But a brief feeling of relief came over him as the newcomer’s footsteps came closer and closer until they were directly next to him.

“You look like shit,” Jason said as he sat down on the adjacent stood.

“Help me,” Siro said. He chose to ignore the comment for the second time tonight.

“What happened?”

“Job went south; I need to lay low.”

“How?”

“I stay at your apartment in Amber.”

“No, how did the job go wrong,” Jason asked. He sounded irritated already.

“Doesn’t matter.”

Jason looked him up and down, his eyes rested on the crusted blood that had come from underneath his coat.

“Looks like it does,” he said.

“Where’s that bartender? I need another drink,” Siro said.

“You said you had an easy way to make a lot from a little work,” Jason retorted. “This doesn’t look like a little work.”

“It was supposed to be. I got lied to,” Siro said.

“What was the job?”

“A snatch, that’s all they fucking said.”

“Kidnapping? You didn’t tell me.”

“I needed the payday.”

Siro lied. He hadn’t told Jason because he knew Jason wouldn’t have wanted to take a job with so few details and so large a payday attached to it. He’d have called it too good to be true.

Jason shook his head. “Don’t give me that. You aren’t that careless.”

“I need you to get me out of here. It’s bad. I can’t be seen for a while.”

“I’m not helping you if I don’t know what happened.”

Siro didn’t answer.

“Fine, you’re welcome to wait here for the cops.” Jason stood up and took a few steps towards the door.

“It won’t be cops coming.”

Jason stopped. “Who?”

“Enforcers.” He couldn’t see him, but his instincts told him that his buddy tensed up at the word.

“Siro, what did you do.”

“I didn’t know it was the Don’s daughter.”

It was Jason’s turn to be silent.

“The hit was the hotel on Elm. They gave me a room number and a name, Abigail. He told me she’d be alone. Fucking liar. No clue she was a kid. Didn’t know she’d be young enough to need a nanny or mom or whoever with her.”

Siro looked up at the ceiling. The multicolored lights mixed into a serene, muted purple. He saw only red.

“Christ, Siro. What did you do?”

Silence.

“What did you do?”

“I panicked.”

“How’d you get out?”

“Window. They boxed me in. I took a round in the crossfire. I grabbed a shirt to stuff it and jumped.”

“Where is the daughter now?”

Siro said nothing. He put his head in his hands.

“I’m getting sick of repeating myself.”

“I couldn’t get her out.”

“She’s in the hotel? That’s fine. This is salvageable.”

“She saw my face.”

“Ok, you have a witness, plus the mom. Not good but they’ll tighten security and that will be that. Lie low and it’ll blow over.”

“There’s no witness.”

“What?”

“She saw my face. So did the mom.”

When he closed his eyes, all Siro could see was her face.

Jason understood.

“What the fuck?”

“I panicked. You’ve got to help me.” Siro’s voice was muffled as he spoke with his head on the countertop.

“Why the fuck did you ask for my help? I don’t want to be involved in this.”

“I didn’t know what else to do.”

Siro couldn’t tell what was happening in Jason’s head. He still stood behind him. Siro’s vision was blurry.

“The enforcers, they had to have seen you if they shot you.”

“I killed the one who hit me and his partner. Backup came, but I jumped out the window. I doubt they got a good view.”

“But they could have.”

“They probably didn’t.”

Jason took a deep breath.

“I don’t know what to do man I panicked,” Siro said. He sobbed.

“Hey, it’s alright. You can lay low in Amber for a while, and it’ll all blow over soon.”

“Thank you.”

“Now come on, let’s go. We should leave while it’s still dark out.”

Siro lifted his head, hopeful for the first time tonight. It was the last thought he had.

His body went limp; head slammed down on the bar as his ass slid off the seat and crumpled to the floor. He never heard the bullet.

Jason put his gun back in its holster. He took his phone out and snapped a picture of Siro’s corpse. The counter and the shelf of liquor behind it were covered in viscera. He didn’t need to worry about the bartender; he’d already paid her to take the rest of the night off. He took a rag, wet it with vodka, and wiped off the stool and the area of the bar where he’d sat.

The front was locked and the sign said closed. Jason exited through the backdoor and prayed that the Don would be happier that he killed Siro than he would be mad that he was Siro’s first call for help.

Editor: Michelle Naragon & Shannon Hensley