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this.” He was at a loss. Jessie knew the fingers of suspicion would point at him and the Turks would be looking for blood if the gunmen took their drugs. They would spill his blood first as a lesson to everyone. The Turks were brutal bosses and they didn’t tolerate failure.
    Jinx could see the fear in his eyes and he ruled Jessie out as the culprit for now, but he knew one of the men in the room was involved. They had to be. No one else would have the affront to pull a gig like this. It was an inside job. There was no doubt about it. The poker table slid easily to one side and the chips clattered as they spilled onto the floor when the gunmen moved it. Jinx had won forty-six grand in the last hand against Leon, and two muppets were about to waltz away with the lot. He didn’t care about the drugs, they were for someone else to worry about, but he was sick about his winnings being taken from him at gunpoint. There would be hell to pay when he found out who was responsible.
    “What’s the safe code, Jessie?” One of the gunmen asked. He sounded calm and collected.
    “Thirty-two, twenty-six,” Jessie closed his eyes tightly as he lied. He was giving them the wrong code because the safe was alarmed. If they entered the wrong code, the bells would ring. Jessie hoped the alarms would alert the small army of armed heavies that were drinking in the club, and they would come to their rescue and annihilate the gunmen. It was a calculated risk.
    “You are lying to me. I know the code is forty-six, thirty-two, Jessie,” the masked man corrected him. It was a trick question to see if Jessie would tell the truth. He walked behind the big Welshman and took a pair of pruning shears from his pocket. He held the Uzi in his left hand and used his right hand to place the shears over Jessie’s ear.
    “What the fuck are you doing?” Jessie hissed. The shears snapped closed and snipped the top of his ear off. Jessie hadn’t been expecting the pain; he fell forward, screaming. Blood flowed through his fingers and down his wrist from the savaged appendage. A kick in the ribs knocked the wind from his lungs and silenced him. The music in the club drowned out any sound from the poker room. The gangsters looked at each other helplessly.
    “You are dead men,” Leon growled.
    “Spend the money wisely and leave the country,” Dava advised them. “Trust me, I will find you.”
    “Take the money and fuck off!” Jinx growled. He was the closest to Jessie. The gunman grabbed the injured man and pulled him upright. Jessie’s eyes looked into his, pleading, but there was nothing Jinx could do for now. “I’d spend it quickly if I were you.”
    “Shut up, Jinx, or I’ll put a bullet through your brain. I can think of a few of your customers that would have a party if you croaked it, eh?” He shoved the muzzle of the Uzi into Jinx’s back. “Jessie lied to me, so I’ve had to teach him that there is a consequence to that. The next lie will cost him another ear, then his nose, then his fingers, and so on.”
    “I have the stake money from the safe. There is one-hundred and sixty thousand here.” The second masked man said as he stuffed a bundle of fifties into his bag. Jinx clocked his accent as local. He was from Liverpool, which meant he would be easy to find. Someone had sold them the Uzis. There were a handful of arms dealers in the city who could obtain automatic weapons. Several of them were in the room already. That would narrow his search down.
    “Good, now, Jessie, I need the code for the lockbox beneath the ice machine, please.” The masked man said calmly. He was as cool as could be.
    “If I give you that number, I’m as good as dead anyway.” Jessie sucked in a deep breath and steadied himself as he answered. “Do what you have to do.”
    The gunman stepped forward again and placed the shears over Jessie’s remaining ear.
    “Last chance, Jessie.”
    “Fuck you,” Jessie whispered and closed his eyes.
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