Savage: A Second Chance at Love Read online

  I guess that’s why they thought they could get away with it. Get away with pulling the tiger’s tail. They shoulda left this particular beast asleep. Now they can reap what the fuck they sowed.

  2

  Nick

  My life has been fucked in one way or another since I was seventeen. That’s when I lost the girl of my heart and my life derailed off the course I’d set for myself.

  We had an argument over some dumb shit. She went away mad and I got stupid. I got drunk and slept with the wrong fucking girl, she got pregnant and I got stuck.

  My kid needed a dad, he didn’t care that his old man fucked the wrong piece and got fucked and I’m not the one to leave my seed out there without me, so I did the right thing.

  Broke my fucking heart, but a man must be a man even if it means losing the one thing that means more to him than anything else in this life. So for thirteen years I’ve existed, not lived, not truly.

  Because I wasn’t the man I had always seen myself becoming. How could I be? She wasn’t there. I’d fucked up and someone else was in her spot. The only heart I had left was for my son, and the job.

  I kept that part of myself locked off in darkness the whole time she’s been gone. I cheated the woman I was forced to marry out of the love that’s due a wife, because in my heart I had only one.

  Dee and I weren’t in love or at least I wasn’t in love with her, but we learned to tolerate each other. And for two fucked up kids who didn’t know what we were doing, we did okay by our son.

  The dreams of playing in the big leagues died along with everything else I’d had planned for my future. But my son was worth it. I’d loved that little boy with everything in me from the day he was born.

  Everything had been for him; including the way I’d pulled myself together after my heart had been ripped out of me and all I wanted was to lay down and die.

  I kept my head straight, went through the academy which had always been my back-up plan and made it to Lieutenant in less than seven years.

  The fact that it was my need of her, the one I’d lost, that made me so good at my job was nobody’s business; I did the job.

  Those days and nights when thoughts of what I had lost rode me hard, those were the times when I put my all into the job. I’m no cheat so there was no way I was gonna go there no matter how much I longed to back then.

  I gained a rep on the force; I got shit done. People took notice, this time the wrong people. While I was cleaning up my city streets, some motherfucker was plotting how to take me down.

  I was getting too close to the heavy hitters and because they knew they couldn’t buy me off, they decided to end me.

  They got their wires crossed the night they decided to come after me. I wasn’t home; I was on a stake out ten miles away. My wife and kid weren’t so lucky.

  I got the call while in the middle of one of the biggest busts of my career. That was the day Nick Sheridan died and Savage was born.

  I still remember everything about that moment as if it were yesterday. It will never leave me. And where once, the people of this city, their safety and wellbeing were the force behind my need to serve and protect. It was the memory of that night, the sights and sounds, the raw emotion that now fueled my new purpose.

  There was blood on my hands now, but I refuse to take the blame. Refuse to share responsibility for what I had become through no fault of my own.

  How can you ask a man to live his life as a protector of the innocent and not expect him to avenge his own when one of his was taken in such a vicious way?

  I put the shit I was working on away since the memories were riding me hard and took a moment to breathe, to remind myself that I was still alive, before leaving the room.

  I went back over the day in my head and made sure that I’d done all I needed to before packing it in. I could make one more dry run but nah. I didn’t get this far by going off the new course I’d set myself in even the smallest way.

  I knew all I needed to know and if there were any surprises I’d deal with them as they come. Failure was not an option.

  Lights out. I had put myself on a strict regiment. There was no room for error, one slip up and it could all blow up in my face. I didn’t mind getting caught, but not before it was all over, not until I made them all bleed.

  That’s not entirely true, I do care; because beneath all the darkness was the glimmer of hope that I would have her in my life again. It was the only thing keeping me going, the only reason I hadn’t lost it completely.

  I closed my eyes and dreamed. It was the only time I let myself go to her. In the privacy of my dreams she accepted me as I am. There were no recriminations, and all that was in the past was forgotten.

  She was the only thing that kept the nightmares at bay. The visions of my son, his little body torn and shredded…

  3

  Nick

  “Sheridan let us go through the door first this time will ya, that’s what they pay us for.” I ignored the head of the fugitive task force as we hit the door to the house where the suspect was thought to be hiding out.

  I’d been looking for this little motherfucker for four days; his bitch ass was hiding out at his girl’s place. I had no plans on following orders though. I haven’t done that in quite some time.

  I was pissed that they had got the drop on him before me. Though he wasn’t on my list, he and I needed to have words. My way of getting those words to come forth wasn’t exactly legal, so the less eyes on me the better.

  “US Marshalls let me see your hands.” The noise these guys make alone was enough to put fear in a criminal’s heart, but I know this piece of shit and he has no heart.

  While they were posturing I was kicking in doors. “Fuck it Sheridan-Vasquez cover him.”

  I heard Marcus the lead of the team that had been sent out to find my perp give that order but kept going. If they didn’t want me to do me then they shouldn’t have called me in on this shit.

  “Come outta there you fuck.” Asshole was hiding in the closet. So much for being a big-shot crime lord wanna be. He almost shit himself when he saw me standing over him with my glock pointed at his head.

  “You have the right to remain silent…” I read him the spiel as I clamped the cuffs on him and walked him out. He was screaming that he wanted anyone to take him but me, too bad.

  “You’re lucky they’re here, but you and me, we’re gonna dance later.” I whispered the words in his ear before placing him in the back of the car. Fucker almost jumped right back out. “That’s a good idea run. Give me a reason to shoot your dumb ass.”

  I waved to the guys as they headed back to their vehicles, shaking their heads. No doubt the captain was going to hear about this, but what’s he gonna do? I got the job done.

  “Eh, don’t leave me alone with this guy he’s crazy.” He was talking to the wind because I was long gone before the last word left his lips.

  He would know what I am, what I had become, better than my colleagues. Word tends to travel fast among the criminal element like wildfire when there’s a rogue cop on their ass.

  They may suspect, but there’s no proof and I mean to carry out my last act before suspicion becomes a surety.

  I’m pretty sure there were whispers as to who was taking them out one by one like clay pigeons, but they’d never make it stick. I wasn’t dumb enough to hit the obvious first.

  Those in the know had their suspicions as to who it was that had put the hit out on me that went south. My superiors, those who weren’t dirty as fuck, knew the work I’d put in to bring down the criminal element in this town. These same men knew me so well they’d never expect what I’d become.

  What they didn’t know, and I did, is that the man I’d been hounding for the past eighteen months was more sophisticated than that. No, he hadn’t come at me straight on. Not the way most people would expect.

  Instead he’d rallied his sworn enemies and convinced them that I was their common headache. Suddenly men who’d
been jockeying for power and leaving a trail of blood a mile long in their murderous wake had found something to bond over.

  I’d learned all this in the last few months after the tragedy. It had been painstaking work but I had been able to piece it together.

  It was something I had been keeping an eye on before shit went to pot. I’d seen the shift in movement among the gangs, but too late I realized what the new camaraderie between the different factions meant.

  I knew my guy, the one I was after was aware that I was this close to dismantling his franchise of drugs and death. I also knew that the only way he could know how close I was-was if he had someone on the inside.

  That was the hardest pill to swallow. That one of my own, one who’d taken the oath same as me, had betrayed that trust. Had set the shit in motion that had brought about the murder of my son.

  I’ve been going after those men one by one, each one ratting out the other just before I took the shot that would end his life. This one got off easy, we had company; some of his buddies hadn’t been so lucky.

  Those who hadn’t died-yet, had seen the wrong side of my fist before I brought them in. The mayor was ass deep in complaints about my misconduct; he could get fucked for all I care.

  I knew there was no way he was gonna fire me. I had a get out of jail free card. I could piss on the national monument in broad daylight and no one would touch me.

  I made a detour before taking the asshole back to the precinct. On a side street just outside of town, hidden by brush and a lonely dead end path, I pulled my piece and turned to face him.

  “Where the fuck is he?” I pushed the nozzle deep into his forehead and smelt the fear and sweat that was coming off him in droves.

  They’d all been the same. Tough guys who didn’t give a second thought to taking a life always resorted to punk ass little bitches when facing their own demise.

  “I don’t know man, I told your boys before…” His eyes were wild and squirrely, like he’d been dipping into his own supply a little too much lately. I guess fear will do that to a man. I pressed the cold hard steel harder against his sweating flesh.

  “Do I look like I’m playing with you? Where the fuck is he? I know you know, you two are thick as thieves you know where he is.” My finger on the trigger refreshed his memory and he started spilling. Fucking chump.

  “Hey Sheridan, the task force said you left more than an hour ago.” My captain met me halfway through the bullpen.

  “Uh huh.” I kept going because I wasn’t interested. It was coming on end of day and I had already wasted more than enough time on Jose Aguilar. He was just one more piece to the puzzle, but nowhere near the top of the food chain. If he had been he’d be dead.

  “Listen son, I know you’ve had a hard coupla months but you can’t keep doing this. If this one is as worked over as the last few I don’t think we’ll be able to spin it. Their lawyers make a stink on the evening news and then the commissioner and the mayor get in my ass about your actions.”

  He was singing to the choir. I’d already heard that and every variation on the theme and it hadn’t phased me. Maybe the day would come when they’d catch on and stay the fuck out of my way and let me do what I had to.

  I kept going which made him sigh hard. I knew he knew there was nothing he could say to stop me. If he only knew what the fuck I was really up to he’d shit his pants.

  A few scrapes and bruises on a perp was par for the course, and yes maybe I went a little harder than most. But who the fuck was going to lose sleep over some drug peddling asshole getting a fist to the face or a boot up the ass? Maybe if I’d played the game this way all along my son would still be alive.

  “Sheridan, are you listening to me? I don’t have time to be cleaning up behind you. We’ve got to figure out who this asshole Savage guy is and get him off the streets before he makes us look like more of a fuckup than he already has. The chief wants you on that by the way.”

  What did he just say? I didn’t look back at him for fear the look on my face might give something away, but this one I didn’t see coming.

  “On what?” I kept my voice neutral as I finally turned to face him since he was like a dog with a bone and kept on my ass.

  “Figuring out who this Savage guy is of course.” Not even by the twitch of a brow did I show my surprise at those words, neither did I slow my pace as I turned and kept going towards my office.

  “You’re gonna have to tap someone else for that one Cap, I have a shitload of work on my plate already. We’ve only just tapped into the cartel. This shit is gonna take a long time to clean up. I can’t just leave things now and move onto something else.”

  “This is coming from the top you don’t have a choice.” He’d lost his fucking mind.

  “I quit.” I turned around as if to leave the room. I actually felt a weight lift off my shoulders.

  Maybe this was for the best. It would certainly free me up to do what I had to without the interruption of work. But the shit was short lived. I barely made it to the door before he burst my damn bubble.

  “Would you calm the hell down? What’s gotten into anyway? Ever since…” He broke off at the look I threw him and held his hands up as he backed away.

  “Sorry that was out of line, but you’re the best guy we have and our city is under siege, we need you on this.”

  Once those words would’ve meant something to me. It would’ve been to me an acknowledgement that the work I was doing actually meant something.

  That the time I put in to make the city safer, time I’d taken away from being with my son, that that sacrifice was actually worth it. Now, I couldn’t give a fuck.

  “No, as far as I’m concerned he’s doing us a favor. Those fuckers he took care of were nothing but plagues fuck ‘em.” I turned back to my desk and rifled through the papers there wishing he would get the fuck out already.

  I wasn’t in to long drawn out conversations these days, not the way I used to be. I’d cut myself off from everyone else, using this place only as an information center.

  I had more access to the info I needed here, than if I had walked out and tried doing it on my own. Will that change after I’d killed the motherfucker that was actually behind my family’s death? Who knows? For now the love I once had for the job was a dead cold thing that I never look too closely at.

  I guess you can say in some ways I blame the job for the death of my son. Not the job itself, but the fact that I hadn’t been allowed to handle things the way I wanted to.

  The fact that my superiors cared more about looking good in the press and not getting the stink of an outcry from the high dollar lawyers who represented the dregs of society on them, than they did about bringing down these assholes.

  “What am I supposed to tell the chief and the commissioner?” Was he still here?

  “I really don’t give a fuck what you tell them, other than that if they don’t let me do my job I’ll walk. Either way they’re gonna need someone else to clean up their mess.”

  A little bit of the anger I’d been holding in check seeped through. I’ve been very good at keeping that shit under wraps, showing just enough as was expected from a man who’d just lost everything. No not everything but pretty damn close to it.

  “Their mess? How do you figure?”

  “How do I figure? If they weren’t playing fucking footsies with these fucks my family would still be alive as well as a whole slew of innocent people.” Was he really going to stand there and act surprised? Like he didn’t already know this shit?

  “You think the public doesn’t know that Carlo’s money is what makes him untouchable by the law? That he sits down at the table with the fucking politicians and other bigwigs of this city? How the fuck do you think that looks? Now they want me to protect him?”

  “Nobody’s asking you to protect the criminal element, and by the way there has never been any proof that Carlo Rossi is involved in organized crime…”

  “Stop right there. Just because
some slicked up lawyer got him off twice that does not pull the wool over anyone’s eyes. We all know he’s dirty as fuck and the answer is no. I hope he ends up hanging from his balls somewhere with his ass ripped the fuck out by a hedge saw.”

  “Dammit Sheridan, you are supposed to uphold the law. This vigilante asshole is breaking every law there is and making us look bad in the process. The public is now singing his praises like he’s fucking superman or some shit, this needs to stop.”

  That was as good a description as any I guess, though I had no need to be compared to the caped one. It didn’t matter to me that half of the city appreciated my efforts; I wasn’t doing it for them. This was for purely selfish reasons and that shit didn’t bother my ass one bit.

  “Well, it won’t be me stopping him. If you do catch him tell him I said thanks.” I guess that was about as much as he could take for now because he turned and walked away shaking his head.

  4

  Nick

  Oh the fucking irony. If this shit wasn’t so real I’d find it funny. Now they want their ‘best’ on the job. Where was that same fervor when I wanted to go after the ones who’d brought this about both barrels blazing?

  I chose not to give them any more thought than necessary after he left, since all that did these days was piss me the fuck off and take me out of my zone. I couldn’t afford to give them anything of myself I was already stretched thin as it is.

  I wrote up the paperwork for the bust from earlier tonight with a bitter taste in my mouth. This one was just a low rung henchman but he was still part of the organization I was working hard to bring down.

  It had taken a lot of hard work but I was able to piece together who had put the hit out on me. Since then I’ve been picking them off one by one. Who wasn’t dead was looking at a long stretch behind bars. But the main guy, the one who’d orchestrated everything, him I was saving for last.