Crazy Beautiful Love by J.S. Cooper Read Free Book Online Page A

River Valley and always
took the cars we gave him. He either used them for parts or sold them through
an auto dealer magazine. However, recently he had been paying less and less and
acting shadier and shadier. I think it was because he didn’t like dealing with
me. He was used to my dad, who just took the money and shut up. By the end of
the night, Marty would have most of the money back, either in his belly as free
beer or as winnings from poker night with my dad and some of their friends. I
didn’t participate in either of those activities and Marty wasn’t too happy
about it. So now he offered less and less. In fact, the last time I had taken
him a car, he had given me a veiled warning: take the cash offered or the car might
make its way to a police parking lot in the middle of the night, and he’d hate
to see them catch the thief due to fingerprints. I took the money instead of
socking him in the jaw because he had his two henchmen next to him. But I knew
after that, I couldn’t take another car to him.
    “Where you going
to take it?” Jared questioned me.
    “I’ll have to
see.” My voice was rough and strained. “Anyways, I gotta help Vinny now. You go wait on the pizza and we’ll
talk later.”
    “Shit, I better go
outside and wait before Dad goes crazy at the pizza guy for ringing the
doorbell again.”
    “Yeah.” I nodded
in agreement. “Do that.” I watched as Jared walked out of the kitchen, down the
hallway, and out the front door, and I let out a deep breath.
    “What’s up,
Logan?” Vinny’s voice sounded worried.
    I looked up at him
with a weak smile. I had forgotten he was still in the room with us. “Nothing.”
    “Something going
on with Marty?”
    “Yeah, but it’ll
be okay.”
    “He’s shady as
fuck, isn’t he?” Vincent sighed and I saw that his fists were clenched. “You
let me deal with him, or all of us can. You, me, Jared, we should go down there
and show him that the Martelli brothers don’t play.”
    “We can’t go down
there and intimidate him, Vincent.” I shook my head, trying to talk reason into
him, even though his idea sounded good to me.
    “I wasn’t talking
about intimidating.” Vincent smiled a wicked smile. “I’m talking about using
him as a punching bag and not stopping until he cries like a bitch.”
    “We’re not going
to do that, Vinny .”
    “Pussy.”
    “Watch your
mouth.” I laughed. “You can’t afford to get caught for anything anyway, you
know what the judge said.”
    “Yeah,” he sighed.
“What are we going to do?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “We got enough
money for rent next month?” I could hear the concern in his voice and I was
angry. Angry that we were in this position, angry that I hadn’t been able to do
anything to make our lives better.
    “We got enough,” I
lied, not wanting him to worry. I knew what he would do if he knew I was
worried, and the last thing I wanted was for him to go to jail.
    “But not much more,
huh?” He sat back, still worried but less stressed. “You think you’ll be able
to sell the Toyota?”
    “Yeah.” I nodded.
    “We could always
ask Joey …?” Vincent’s voice trailed off, as I glared at him.
    “We don’t do
business with Joey.”
    “It can’t hurt to
do it this once.”
    “No.” I shook my
head vehemently. “We don’t deal with the likes of him.”
    “He’s not that
bad.”
    “I’m not going to
discuss it again. I’ve told you and Jared already. We don’t mess with Joey and
his boys.”
    “Okay, okay.”
    “You wanna go over this math now or what?” I opened the book
back up, and as far as I was concerned, the subject was closed.

 
    ***
    I heard Vinny and Jared snoring as I walked to the bathroom. The TV
was still blaring downstairs; it sounded as if my dad was watching Jerry
Springer. I checked my watch and realized it was four a.m. It was more likely
that he had fallen asleep on the couch with the TV on. I ran down the stairs so
I could turn it off, but saw