| Frustrations

𝐉𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐒

JAMES

I stepped into my apartment to meet it as neat and perfect as I left it. It was so motherfucking clean that if you wanted, you could sleep inside my toilet. If you took into consideration what my apartment looked like, you'd say I was a neat freak. My sister would die a slow and painful death if she saw this place because she knows she'll never be able to keep up.

There were empty beer bottles neatly tucked in the corner of the living room. From where I stood, my kitchen looked as white as snow, all my utensils were shining as if a star had hit them or something. You couldn't find one microwavable plastic instant meal container anywhere in the kitchen sink, and empty cans of soda were nearly nonexistent around the house. Although I used them to quench my morning-after thirst, I made sure there were no traces of them on the counter.

The way most people saw it, I was a detective, not a domesticated pansy. I should have much better things to do with my time than cleaning, cooking, and doing laundry. But not to me. These things were priorities.

Talk about laundry... Everything was neatly ironed and piled in my wardrobe. The only dirty cloth I had was the ones I was currently putting on.

I glanced around the living room and smiled. This was what living was all about. I was sure I'll little princess, Vanessa could never keep up with this. It was another reason I didn't bring women into the house. They tended to fall in love after being pounded into oblivion on clean sheets.

I was a minimalist. If I didn't have a use for shit, said shit didn't get into my apartment. There were the basics every human being needed. Microwave, coffee machine, fridge—and it was a fucking state-of-the-art fridge with an ice maker. Because there was nothing more annoying than when you wanted to pour that first drink of the day and realized you were out of motherfucking ice. Happened to me once, and I maxed my credit card the very next day buying that damn expensive fridge. I'd been a happy man ever since.

There was a La-Z-Boy in the living room because every man needed a La-Z-Boy. I was pretty sure it was written in the Bible somewhere. And then, of course, there was my fifty-two-inch Smart LED television set to complement my Xbox One perfectly, and the state-of-the-art surround sound for those nights I decided to piss off the neighbors.

Naturally, there was also a black leather couch where I just happened to fall asleep five nights a week. The other two nights were usually spent in either my bed or a bed completely unfamiliar to me, next to a woman I'd familiarized myself with from the inside out, or rather, my cock did. Bottom line, my bed was used for something completely different than sleeping, until I discovered how much it drove them crazy.

Then, of course, there was the cabinet - the cabinet where I kept all my investigation tidbits. The very first thing I did when I moved inbuilt the huge cabinet, which I bolted against the wall. Carpentry was one of my many hidden talents.

Behind those cabinet doors was all the information I'd managed to gather on the Bologna family. That cabinet was like my own personal Holy Grail.

I walked into the kitchen to get some coffee but then discovered I was out. Picking up my credit card, I made to step out of the apartment but then I almost squealed like a fucking girl when I opened the door and looked straight into Romans' ugly-ass face.

"What the fuck, Roman?"

He walked right by me and into my apartment. "Heard you got suspended."

"Why don't you come right on in?" I flung the door shut and set down the black bag.

"I told you to drop it. And you just couldn't listen, could you?"

I turned and swung my car keys around my finger. "I guess doing what I'm told isn't something I've mastered over the years."

Roman took a seat on the La-Z-Boy. Motherfucker. Did he not know a man's La-Z-Boy was right up there with his woman? You didn't touch it, you didn't even fucking look at it, let alone use it.

"Why are you in my apartment?"

He leaned back into the La-Z-Boy, patting the armrests before gliding his hand up the smooth leather. Oh, the fucking horror.

"You're chasing after the wrong family." He said it so calmly like he was discussing the weather.

I crossed my arms. "Not like I care, but what makes you think that?"

He snorted. "Fucking rookie," he muttered. "You need to make it less obvious that you haven't been around here long."

I scratched my jaw. "First, fuck you. And second, fuck you. Third, I've been here for four years."

"Four years," he scoffed. "No wonder you're so fucking clueless."

I narrowed my eyes. "Please tell me exactly why the fuck I'm listening to you insult me in my damn apartment?"

"Because if you'd been here long enough, you'd know the Bologna have been around for the last fifty years."

"God, are you that old?"

"No. I just remember my grandfather telling stories about them, about Rovenuf Bologna."

"Dan's father." I'd done my homework. I knew the history of these motherfuckers better than I knew fifth-grade math.

Roman nodded. "They called him the Professor, a very intelligent man, just like Dante. He was more popular than John Wayne in the seventies."

I plopped down on the couch. "Is this why you're here, to give me a fucking history lesson?"

"As I said, you're after the wrong goddamn family. It's during the last five years that shit started to go wrong on these streets, am I right?"

I shook my head. "Wrong. Children started to disappear around two years ago, smartass."

He shook his head with the most annoying smirk on his face. "Children started disappearing long before that. But no one took notice because only about two cases a year got reported. It was two years ago that it got so out of hand everyone started to notice."

I moved to the edge of my seat, suddenly very very interested. "What the fuck are you saying, Anderson?"