Read Played: “Sometimes you never know who is playing who, until the damage is done." for Free Online Page B

cautiously walked over to the dimly lit bar and sat down. Behind him the taller of the two toughs moved to the backdoor and set the deadbolt.
    “Don’t! Don’t do it!” screamed out the guy in the chair, just before getting belted again.
    “What is it of mine you wish to drink?”
    “Jameson,” Cools replied, wondering what this is all about, wondering if he had made the right choice.
    “Do you…eh…know who you are speaking?” asked the old man, while pouring a glass.
    “No,” Cools replied, speculating as to why he would. The man’s face was wrinkled with hardness and age, sagging of sadness, and the home to soft, soulfilled eyes, yet a face he’d never seen.
    The old man took in a steady breath and ran his broad fingers through his thick black hair, combing it back, and stated, “I didn’t think so. Eh…you must be new, so I will fill you in with words and drink…You, drink.” He motions for Cools to start sipping. “My name Sergey Khruschev; I own this bar.” With that he slowly gestures his hand toward the other two and says, “These…eh…are my boys: Jorge and Koladiva.”
    His words end in silence, just long enough for everyone to strangely look upon the obvious question in the room.
    “And the guy in the chair?” Cools asks.
    Sergey points to him accusingly. “He…eh…is a cockfuck. He needs taken care of! He’s done unthinkable thing; he…he…”
    Then, before the old man could finish his words, he broke down, lowered his head, and wept in his hands.
    Cools turned his attention to the guy in the chair. What did you do? Even through the guy’s bloodshot eyes, he could see guilt and shame all over him, and Cools knew this was more than an unpaid debt. He finished his glass and asked Sergey to pour him another, partly because he needed one and partly in an attempt to get down to it; it had always made him nervous to watch another man cry. Sergey complied like a generous servant and waited patiently for him to drink it down; he then composed himself and began to explain.
    “His name Reuben. He is a Jew,” Sergey said in a crackling tone, pointing with an old shaking finger. “And he is kind of bum. So he marries my daughter, Sasha, and she is…eh…how you a say?—non-attractive of a woman. So we accept him as one of us. We think him as family, treat him all the same. Then also Sasha has my grandson, Nico, from previous marriage…eh…she is widower from. So my Nico is four years in age, and he complains of this, so we go Sasha’s house. We find videotape…videotape of him and Nico! He molests! And not just touch…I mean, eh…this motherfuck puts his cock in my Nico, and for this he will die today!”
    With that Koladiva hit the child molester again.
    “No!” Sergey yelled at his sons. “This officer needs a quiet time to think his mind through.”
    “You can’t kill him! I can’t let you kill him!”
    Sergey just shook his head, assuring Cools he is not a man to be told what he can and cannot do. “And who are you to stop me?”
    “Then, what…are you going to kill me? I’m a police officer!”
    “What I have set to do…I will do today, my friend. But only…eh…the guilty needs to be punished.” Sergey’s words reverberated in the room, followed by a moment of disoriented stillness, confusion.
    Cools, trying to process everything, picked up the bottle of Jameson and went to a learned comfort zone—staring into the bottle, watching the brown liquid move back and forth. Sergey offered him a cigarette, but he didn’t respond. Rather he slowly reached into his pocket and pulled out his own, never taking his gaze from the swirling fluid. He lit up and took a deep drag, searching the bottle for answers. “We have to take him in. With the video, he’ll go to prison for a long time,” Cools pleaded, offering the better solution for both himself and the child molester in the chair.
    “No!” Sergey yelled. “So he can live his days…eh…jerking off to my Nico.