HARRY POV
With a cigarette raised to my lips, I took a slow puff and nodded as I listened to Niall explain to me who this guy was that we were about to go meet. Louis was on the other side of me, lighting one for himself before he tossed the carton back to me to stuff back into my suit jacket pocket. He was trying to quit so he never carried them on him anymore, but I was now five years into the awful habit and I liked it. I wondered why I hadn't ever bothered with it before.
"Alright, fuck–" I exhaled the smoke and rubbed my eyes with the back of my knuckles, starting to lose my patience with Niall's rambling. "What the fuck is his name again?"
"Liam Payne," Niall answered.
"How'd you meet him? Just give me the short version of whatever the fuck you were just saying."
"I saw him dealing in Hackney, outside of that club by the river where we're usually doing business."
"Okay, and who does he buy from?"
"Well, he, uh...he buys from us."
Louis and I both stopped on the sidewalk to look at each other, like we needed to silently confirm that we both just heard the same thing.
"I know it sounds bad, but hear me out," Niall chuckled.
"Niall," I shook my head. "Why the fuck would we try to do business with someone who's ripping off our shit? I should kill him, that's what I should do."
"No, but he's good," Niall insisted. "He's got like a whole clientele, so I figured we should just hire him as our own."
I took another hit, letting Niall believe I was thinking about it when all I was really thinking was how I was gonna kill this guy and when. "Alright, let's meet him, then."
With a somewhat satisfied smirk in Louis' direction, Niall led us two buildings down to the pub we were meeting the guy in. It was a dark and lonely place, only three guys sitting at the bar and a middle aged couple sat toward the back. I assumed the one guy sitting at a table alone was who we were meeting.
He didn't stand for us, and I couldn't tell if that impressed me or pissed me off when I was pretty sure Niall must have told him who I was. Either way we sat down, filling up the other three chairs around the square table. I sat across from him.
"So what do you want?" I asked, straight to the point. Formalities weren't really my thing anymore.
"Uh," he cleared his throat and ran his hand from the back to the front of his head, over his short brown hair. "I was sort of under the impression you all wanted something from me."
Right off the bat I didn't like his accent, I didn't like the innocent little look on his face, and I didn't like the way he thought I could ever want shit from him. It didn't help that I wasn't in the mood for a meeting like this right now, but when was I ever in the mood for anything, lately?
"We don't want anything from you," I said. "You have 30 seconds to tell us what you want, or we leave now and I kill you the next time I found out you're dealing our shit."
When he looked to Niall for help, Niall helped him because that was the kind of guy he was. "Alright, listen. He doesn't have the resources to make his own shit, but he wants to get involved. He's got like fifteen people he sells to now, so we add them to our list and keep growing our roster."
