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Chapter 589 Collecting
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Eric was beginning to have doubts about Liam. It was kind of a soft name and he wanted something more macho. Bruce had been a very masculine name. The more he said the name "Liam" in his head, the more he thought it sounded effeminate. Fiestas weren't the most macho of cars, so he needed to compensate with a macho name. He had already ordered the car online and it was being delivered in two days. Electric blue. And then it hit him. He would name it "Jax" after the SAMCRO VP. He was dreamy, had bright blue eyes almost the same shade as the car, was macho and oozed testosterone. Yummy.
Bruce loved it when Jax changed his oil. His engine always had a special purr afterwards. As much as Eric would love to get his hands on the man, he suspected Jax was ramrod straight and would beat his ass if he made a pass at him. His Ford Fiesta would just have to be his human Jax substitute. He could hardly wait for Jax's first oil change by Jax. He moaned mentally imagining the experience.
Eric stiffened his resolve to get the money out of Carl to pay for Jax. If he didn't get it, he was ready to threaten him with the gun he'd stuck in the waistband of his Dockers. He'd untucked his polo shirt to cover the gun.
He pounded hard on Carl's door to set the tone for the meeting.
"Get in here," Carl said frowning at Eric with irritation.
"I'm here for the money you owe me."
"Did you go to the police station?"
"Yes." Eric wisely decided not to mention that he didn't bring the gun to the police station because he didn't want Carl to know about the gun unless he needed to threaten him with it.
"Like that?"
"I tucked my shirt in," Eric said defensively.
"No, you idiot," Carl snapped. "Your face."
"My face looks fine," Eric said outraged. "My make-up artist friend fixed me up."
"Where did you get him from? Dik Tok?" Carl asked mentioning the Dark Web gay porn site that Eric told him he posted on sometimes.
"No. He used to work on my movies."
"Your face looks like it's melting."
Eric pushed past Carl in the foyer and ran to the hall bathroom. The eyebrow wax had melted but not evenly so one eyebrow was mostly still there and the other one was gone. His make-up hadn't aged well either. It was splotchy and cakey. Hell, he could have done a better make-up job with his eyes closed. He had even paid his friend to do his make-up. That was the last time he was going to use him again.
Eric returned to the foyer, but discovered Carl was no longer there. He found him in the study pouring himself a Scotch.
"Son of bitch," Eric said. "In my bathroom, the make-up looked fine. Maybe when I was at the police station, it was OK. It was a couple of hours ago. Maybe it just didn't wear well," Eric finished hopefully.
Carl raised an eyebrow.
"Kind of doubt that. Did they say anything about your appearance?"
"Shit!" Eric exclaimed. "That's why they took a couple of pictures of me."
Carl shut his eyes and shook his head.
"Yeah, that explains it," Carl said sarcastically.
"If they know I set my car on fire, they will try to get me for insurance fraud," Eric wailed.
"Did you file a claim yet?"
"No, I was going to do that tomorrow."
"Go ahead and file the claim. The cops in Charming aren't very smart."
"If they try to arrest me for insurance fraud, I'm not going down alone," Eric warned in a low growl similar to the one he used in some of his movies.
Carl looked at Eric and smiled. It chilled Eric to the bone. He was one scary dude. Lucky he had his gun if he had to get rough.
Carl went over to his desk, reached in his top desk drawer and pulled out a bundle of money.
"Here is your money," Carl said.
"How much?"
"Twelve thousand. It's more than your worth, but I'm feeling generous."
Eric tried to hide his glee. He'd been hoping for eight thousand. He was actually going to turn a profit between his insurance claim, the money he took from Carlos and the down payment Carl had given him for the Knowles job, he was going to make some decent money on this.
"Fine," Eric said snatching the bundle of bills out of Carl's hand. "Let me know if you need me again."
"Yeah, I'll do that," Carl said again using sarcasm.
Eric left Carl and felt like dancing down the sidewalk to get to his rental car. He could hardly wait until he parked the hunky Jax in his garage. Everything was perfect as long as the cops didn't arrest him for insurance fraud. And then Carl was going down with him.
"
Author's Note: I made up DikTok for this chapter, but since I didn't try to access the Dark Web to check it out, I could be wrong and it might already exist.
The future chapters will feature a lot of short chapters because there are a lot of short scenes that need to happen and each chapter is told solely from one character's POV.
Some plot twists ahead.
