stant in All Other Thingsby

  Fakeminsk ([email protected] ; https:///fakeminsk)

  “Friendship is stant in all other things

  Save in the offid affairs of love:

  Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues;

  Let every eye iate for itself

  And trust no agent.”

  Much Ado About Nothing

  Chapter 01: Doing the Right Thing“You’re doing the right thing,” Agent K said. “Something good.” Her name ecial Agent Katherine Smith, and she was my guardian angel. I’d taken to simply calling her K. It annoyed her, which is why I did it. Tall and slender in a sleek grey suit, she stood by me and her grip on my shoulder was strong as she looked down and straight into me. “Trust me.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said. Easy for her to say. She wasn’t the oepping in front of a packed courtroom in front of Jeremiah-fug-Steele, acg him of murder. This guy wasn’t some backstreet thug who’d knocked over a liquor store. He was a rich—terribly rid powerful—extremely powerful—man, a pharmaceutical magnate and all-around nasty piece of work. The media mill ed out endless rumours that had him involved in all kinds of stuff. Shady stuff, you know?

  He was also my boss.

  Don’t get me wrong. I don’t scare easily. Growing up, I got involved in some pretty heavy shit, the kind of shit you bury deep and do your best tet about. I’m not particurly proud of my past. I’m not ashamed of it either. But if the people I know now found out the stuff I’ve done? That’d probably be the st of the few friendships I enjoyed.

  Now, one of the few uionable wisdoms I’d cultivated from my youth—a lesson learhrough pain and loss—was knowing who -not- to fuck with. I knew better than to mess with a mean bastard like Jeremiah Steele. Squealing on him was asking for a whole world of pain aribution. Agent K reassuring me I was doing the right thing sort of missed the point. I knew full well what I’d gotten myself into and I had my own goddamn reasons for doing so, and it being the “right thing” wasn’t really one of them.

  See, I’m a mean bastard myself. I really am; I’m not a nice guy. Now, being an asshole has done me well in my current line of work. It’s a different world than when I was a kid – but not that different. Back then I ran with a gang and did… other shit. Now I’m a director for NeoPharm, I mih exed all that shit and it only takes a peek beh the surface to see this corporate existence isly holding the moral high ground. Sure, there’s the Saville Row suits and Nikke Sekkei offices and the fountains might as well spew Moet for all the spicuous wealth on dispy. Eveer, there’s always some fine, young piece of ass walking through the offi a tight skirt and heels, ready to cash in a fine meal, a few stiff drinks and the right line of chat food fubsp; But all that corporate respectability’s nothing more than a thin veneer id over the self-serving pricks and ba politics going on, the relentless, empty grabbing at power ah, like el sprayed over a pile of dogshit.

  Seriously, I thought I was an asshole, but then my old pany got bought out by NeoPharm, and our new corporate overlords? They made even me feel good about myself. And yeah, NeoPharm. You buy their products. You’ve got their vae inside of you. They saved the world, apparently, and now it’s the boss’s fgship holding pany and I swear, sometimes it feels half the world’s a subsidiary of Jeremiah fug Steele’s corporate empire.

  I was starting to look for another job when it all started, this whole, twisted fucked up series of events. If only I’d gotten out faster. I’d taken my time looking for a job. The Earth was still barrelling headlong into self-immotion, pgues and pandemics ran rampant and people were more fucked up than ever by the i, by drugs, by their own hopeless expectations–but fuck it, the ey was strong and a healthy pay check made me picky. I just didn’t want to work for a scumbag like Steele. Like I said, I’m an asshole but even I’ve got my limits. Some things I just won’t do. I’d like to think I’ve got a, you know, code or something, although that makes it sound far grahan what it is. It’s not like I’ve ever sat down and thought it through or made a book of it. Trust me, I’m not that clever. It’s not the bloody Hagakure or anything like that. I’m no damned samurai. But I know what I think is right, and what I think is wrong.

  For instance, I’ll never backstab a friend. Ever. Way I see it, that’s the worst thing a man do, because a friend--a real friend? One you trust with your back?--is the most valuable thing you’ll ever have in this world. When you get down to it, there ain’t much I wouldn’t do for a friend. This I’ve learhe hard way, and even if I’ve not got that many, I take care of the ones I’ve got.

  And so, yeah, I didn’t his Agent K telling me I was doing the right thing. I mean, I saw Jeremiah fug Steels blow some guy’s head off, right there oop floor of our corporate HQ.

  Did I same ‘some guy’? Ha! Geio Antazzi wasn’t just some guy, any more than Sakura was just some girl I once worked for. And yeah, I said Antazzi--that guy, the son of Antonio Antazzi, mob boss and underworld psychopath. Geio: the apple of his father’s eye, the billiolden boy, the one who’d gone legal and done good.

  Seeing those two together carried all kinds of implications. The video footage off my phone made those implications crete: underworld es, the intimidation and murder of corporate rivals, the movement of highly illicit substances across internal and iional borders. And then there’s the stilting dialogue overheard betweewo befeio became a red smear across the floor; the clip of Steele unloading three bullets into the other man’s head was the stuff of the prosecution’s wet dreams.

  So, yeah, ce to take down the bad guy? Especially when that guy’s your boss? Of course I’m going to do it. Even if only half the rumours are true, the guy had it ing. Agent K figures that with my testimony there’ll be enough on Steele to take him down, and hard, especially with all the extra inquiries that’ll be unched into his shady dealings. And if the legal system doesn’t get him, she figures, then the backsh he’ll suffer from his allies and enemies should do him in. Even a man like Steele has to worry about the likes of Antazzi. Agent K seemed to have some kind of personal grudge against that Steele which was fine by me.

  Me, I’m not so sure anything I say or show in that courtroom’s going to make much differenbsp; Men like Steele, they get away with murder and theft and worse the way a sexy girl with a pretty smile dodges a speeding ticket.

  So why do this?

  Two reasons: because I ’t stand the fucker; and because of Tom.

  Now, pissing off a guy like Jeremiah Steele get you worse than killed. I was, in some ways, an ideal didate for bearing witness against the man. I’m lucky, I guess, that I don’t have any family to worry about. Mom and I arely close; or to be more precise, as far as she’s ed I disappeared or died years ago, and I doubt she cares. I didly have a lot of friends, and the few I’d sider close I hadn’t seen in years. More to the point, they take care of themselves: any dumbass going after them will deserve whatever they get.

  And as for me--well, fuck it. I felt strangely ambivalent about walking away from my job, my do, and the shit I’d accumuted over the past ten years. I’d worked hard to get where I was, a some pride in that. Yet at the same time, I felt like I could just walk away from all that shit and not miss it at all.

  So, yeah, normally the thought of putting myself forward for something dangerous wouldn’t have me too worried. After all, even though I haven’t had to in years, I knew I could make myself disappear if necessary. It’s one of the few bes of a messed up childhood: you learn to take care of yourself.

  This was different, though. This was Jeremiah Steele.

  I’ve rubbed shoulders with the powerful before, with the but nobody in this guy’s league. The dude’s seriously dangerous. Vengeful. Even if only half the rumours are true, you don’t get away from this guy. Unfortunately, rumours are usually only half the real story. In my experie’s the really scary stuff that people don’t know about.

  Really, my only real in all this is Tom. I dragged him into this and if anyone finds out he’s fucked. He’s way out of his league with this shit, and yeah, I feel guilty fing him into this. But if I do this thing, hopefully he’ll e out okay and escape Steele’s attention.

  “You ready?” K asked.

  I took a deep breath. “Yeah.”