Pareto's Principles

Pareto brings it on himself, see. He comes home from work early with a grin on his mug and romance on his mind. He doesn’t question why his beloved Delilah isn’t downstairs ready to receive her sweet amore. He just charges straight up that wooden hill and dives head-first into the boudoir.
His problems start when he sees his sweet little girl riding Mickey Teeth like he’s some wild, untamed bronco and she’s the darn tootinest cowgirl at the rodeo. Pareto’s first mistake is losing his shit over some no good gash-for-cash gold digger. He delays the consequences of his actions by dragging his true love’s 18” double-ender off his pretty posy duvet and using it to set about Mickey’s skull.
Mickey tells it like he was too surprised by the weedy little clerk raging at him with a giant rubber dick to do anything but grab his strides and stride. He says he was two blocks away, face covered in muff juice and blood, before he even thinks about shanking the dude. Me and the boys reckon he just got a little hot and bothered from that giant cock so close to his face, but that’s by the by.
Pareto, testosterone flowing in his wage cuck veins for the very first time in his life, makes his next mistake the second Mickey Teeth is out the door. He grabs a handful of his Sullied Rose’s glorious golden locks and drags her down to the kitchen. She’s naked as a jaybird and ready to finish the rooting she’s been taking for the past hour. Pareto doesn’t give a shit. Instead of throwing her over his over-priced Niagara dining table and finishing her off with a good old fashioned hate fuck, he sits her down, reaches for the bottle of scotch he’s been stashing ready for the day he becomes a man and sinks a quarter of the go-juice in one long swallow.
Delilah knows her number’s up and if she doesn’t think faster than she opens her legs for all the bad boys while Pareto’s working, she’s going to lose her cushy home and all the benefits of hooking up with a big shot accountant. While he’s drinking, she’s thinking. By the time he’s pulled the bottle from his lips, she’s leaking from the eyeballs and throwing herself at his feet.
“Baby,” she says, down on her knees, grabbing the leg of his PT01 Slim Fit chinos.
“Honey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Liquored up, room starting to dance before his eyes, Pareto feels a stirring in his slacks. She’s naked, sweating, and glowing with carnal pleasure. He sees her pretty little rosebud teats are as stiff as the time they did it in the snow, après ski of course, and he thinks about grabbing the back of her head and impaling her full, red lips with his meaty maleness. Unlucky for him, he’s an idiot. His moral outrage and disbelief are so strong he takes another step along the short line of fuck ups that brings him to my door.
“Just tell me why you did it,” he bellows, slurring the words more than a little and swiping for that delicious bottle of single malt.
Delilah’s played her fair share of chumps over the years. Pulling her hands over her tits, she rocks back on her toes. She’s a smart girl though, she spreads her thighs a little to show off her sex-gorged box. She’s a Renaissance sculpture of wanton vulnerability and the look in Pareto's eye confirms it.
She starts talking, spraying bullshit all over the walls, the floor and the ceiling. The creative little minx spins a yarn where she’s the victim in a loneliness-induced experiment gone bad. If he didn’t work so late, if he wasn’t away on business all the time, she’d never have looked for a way to dull the pain. The addiction wouldn’t have set in. The drug debts wouldn’t have mounted up. The alternative payment plan wouldn’t have been offered if he had just taken a few more evenings off.
Figuratively speaking, Pareto grabs a spoon and starts swallowing her effluvia. He grins through every mouthful, sucking down each corn-laden nugget she produces. He knows it’s all his fault. He’s married to the job. He’s male. He’s not a real man. He’s turning into his father.
That last thought comes with an audible crack. Pissed off his head, Pareto reaches for the empty bottle, pushes his Dolce & Gabbana Lifestyle eyeglasses up the bridge of his pointed nose. When the bottle fails to deliver, he slams it against his granite worktop and demands the name of her supplier. Delilah breaks. The bottle does not.
She’s never seen him drunk before. Never seen him this mad. Truth be told, Delilah’s getting hot around the haunches and it’s taken her by surprise. The sultry sphinx blurts out a name and parts her thighs like a biblical ocean.
“Donnie Yip,” she says, her heady state of sexual arousal lasting exactly one half of a second before she realises what she’s done.
Pareto doesn’t say another word. He staggers on his heel through an about turn that ends up being a three-pointer in a narrow country lane. While his teetotal brain is fighting through the fog for which of his colleagues cooks Mr. Yip’s books and where exactly they meet for Chivas and hookers, he’s mildly aware of the woman on his arm begging him not to go.
Delilah’s worried, absolutely shitting-bricks-terrified. Pareto’s closing on the front door, shoulders squared and jaw set with a rigidity she hasn’t seen since she slid down Pareto Sr’s love log. On top of that, her One True Meal Ticket has grown enough of a vestigial nut sack to ignore all the pleading, commanding and demanding tones she’s trained him to obey over the past five years of affluent illicit adventures.
“You cannot stop me, my love,” he says, the garbled words barely recognisable as English.
“I demand satisfaction from that hoodlum!”
Pareto’s always wanted to say those words. Finally getting them out of his mouth gives him enough strength to shake the woman off his Egyptian cotton shirt sleeve. For the first time in his life, he feels like a man and once this business with Yip is through, he’ll damned well tell Pareto Sr. he’s trying out for RADA.
Delilah watches Pareto slam the door behind him. Naked, moist and about as shocked as she’s ever been in her life, she starts to sob. Gulping sniffles turn to full-on wailing as she realises just how bad things are. It’s not the fact Pareto’s about to get himself murdered, it’s that the dumb fuck hasn’t whisked her up the aisle and ensured that she’d get his money once he’s in the ground.
Pareto’s brain kicks in along with the engine of his S-Class sedan. His inner hero whispers a reminder that Johnson meets Yip for booze, broads and business at the Yellow Lotus. Grinning like a pedo at preschool, he races to the club with murder on his mind.
Me, I’m none the wiser. Taking a break from watching the door to Mr. Yip’s private lounge, I’m stood in the rain smoking a Benson and chatting with Candace. The first I know of this whole thing is Mickey Teeth’s naked feet slapping wet concrete, open wounds on his scalp leaking claret all over his not-so-pretty face.
“Maybe get back to work, eh?”
Candace switches a glance between me and Teeth, nods her pretty little head and goes back inside. While she does that, I check the nine-iron I’ve got digging into my armpit and fix a grin that roughly translates as ‘fuck off’.
“Your mum catch you smoking again, Mick?”
Teeth throws me a look that says he’s somewhere on Mars. He makes for the door but I cut him off with an outstretched arm. Mickey’s got a foot on me, but when he looks down and sees who I am, he raises his hands like he’s up for some patty cake and slows to a stop.
“Sorry bruv,” he says, wiping gravy out of his eyes and flicking it to the floor.
“I’ve had a dick of a night.”
I don’t laugh. I’ve got no context. Besides, the roar of a suped up engine is pushing a pair of headlights in my direction and I don’t know whether to zig or zag.
Screeching brakes make the decision for me. Skidding tyres squeal against tarmac and the silver Mercedes slides up to the curb with the precision of a champion line dancer.
“The fuck?”
Mickey shows off his penchant for understatement while the driver swings open his door, throws out a leg and manages to fall flat on his face.
I relax a little as the goof scrambles to his feet, slip my hand out from under my arm when he drops to the deack again. I try not to laugh but it’s impossible when the drunken dick catches his chin on the door of his cock extension and manages to lose a couple of teeth in the process.
I’m still laughing as he crawls through the gutter, climbs up the curb and finally manages something resembling a bipedal stance. The skinny fucker fixes his double glazed stare on me then opens his mouth and starts yammering.
I don’t catch a word of what he says, but I can see he’s spitting silver spoons even though they’re dipped in something that could start fires.
“Look mate, I can’t let you in,” I say, holding out a hand and trying to be nice.
“Why don’t you go home? Sleep it off? Maybe give the missus a good spank.”
The guy’s attitude magnifies by about a thousand. His pointed nose rises toward the storm clouds and his massive, spectacle-stretched eyes spring wide enough to cover the street. I can see I’ve made a bad choice of words, even without Mickey standing next to me saying:
“Uh, bruv.”
I must be getting sloppy in my old age because I don’t expect the stinking drunk to move so fast. I barely see him cross the distance to Mickey. I keep my hands off my gat and my mouth shut because although he’s gutless I’ve seen Mickey take down blokes twice his size when he’s forced into a corner.
I get an inkling something’s not right when Mickey starts screaming. I know it's all gone to shit when his looping intestines hit the floor with a loud splat. I’m fucked if I know where the Poindexter pulled his knife from, but it makes no difference. All of a sudden I’m back in Helmand. The rain’s gone. The sun’s cooking my brains and Mickey Teeth’s getting done by The Muj.
On damaged instincts, I shove my hand under my arm and drag the shooter into play. The guy’s so busy carving Mickey up for Eid it takes nothing to draw a bead on his gurning mug. Smooth as a greased viper, I pull the trigger and send his brains spraying over the rain-soaked floor and his shiny new Merc. At a guess, I’d say the spread was 80/20.