by Celia Crown
I smack her hand away, and she pouts at me with those pink lips, “Don’t touch me.”
She smiles at my clipped tone, but she doesn’t touch me again as I sit up from the bed and the cover falls to my waist.
Looking down, there are white bandages wrapped around my chest as compression to help my bruised ribs heal. I touch the neatly wrapped bandage with writings on it, but they are more of drawings than anything.
It’s a goddamn devil design, and no doubt it’s from this girl.
“Are you thirsty? Are you hungry? Tired? More sleep—”
I shoot her a glare as her questions start another round of intense throbbing in my temple. I push that spot and feel my blood pumping under the skin as I close my eyes. The groan gets stuck in my throat when I knot my eyebrows in annoyance.
I always hated waking up to this; the headaches and pain in my body never get old. It’s a constant reminder that I have to be better, faster, and stronger than yesterday.
“I made breakfast,” Hera smiles, innocent and wide.
She does not have the face of a monster, but no one truly knows what a monstrosity looks like until they are cracked open to see underneath the façade.
“The toast is black though. I burnt it by accident.”
Scratching her head, she chuckles while her eyes curve with her grin. That toothy grin makes my guard lower involuntarily, and I shouldn’t let that happen because she’s a killer and a sadist. However, that pair of heterochromia eyes is not of a psychopath but of a sweet, young girl.
Too young.
“How old are you?” I demand, squinting my eyes to manage the headache.
She smiles wider, “I’m twenty-three! And I’m Hera. Nice to meet you!”
This girl is truly crazy if she can introduce herself as Hera with such blissful glee in her eyes. The Hera that I have heard about is anything but this manifestation of a young girl with an air of purity.
This is mind-boggling.
“Come downstairs for breakfast!” she giggles with a jump that lets her stand on her tiny feet.
I stare at her for a moment before throwing the blanket off of me to put my feet on the wooden floor. I’m naked from the waist up; my pants are still on, but everything else is gone from my body.
There is a strong scent of antiseptic on my body and some kind of yellow cream on my skin, but it’s dried above where I have injuries whether it is open wounds or bruises.
Hera skips out the door and turns to wave at me to hurry up with that permanent grin on her puffy cheeks. The baby fat on her face gives her a youthful appearance that completely counters the horror stories she leaves in her wake.
“Don’t mind the smell, burnt jelly is possible, and I just found out today.”
She twirls with her blonde hair forming a disfigured halo around her as she giggles throughout the entire flight of stairs. I slowly follow her down and question in my head how her tiny body can haul me up this long flight of stairs by herself.
The silent house has no movements for me to guess that there is someone else here, but those who know how to be stealthy can easily blend into the silence of the house.
“Who else is here?”
She turns her head up the stairs as I stop midway in case there is an attack at the corner of the wall where the stairs end.
“Just little, old me and grumpy demon man,” she says.
That innocent blink comes again, and I put my hand on my ribs again as a sign of protection against my internal organs. I need those to function properly to avoid an ambush attack from this devious woman.
I take the risk of stepping down from the stairs while watching out for anything out of the ordinary in the living room with a connected kitchen. Nothing special in the house stands out to me. Everything blends with one style, and it’s not the taste of a young girl like her.
It screams old farts.
This isn’t her house, and she wouldn’t be stupid enough to bring a stranger that can kill her into her own home.
She points to the kitchen table, “Take a seat! I have toast and jelly! I ran out of peanut butter, but that’s okay. We have pickles to go with it.”
The jar of pickles makes my stomach churn. There was blackened toast on the plate in front of me with a jar of strawberry jelly balancing a butter knife on the cap.
“Put that away,” I grunt out in discomfort as talking hurts my ribs.
She looks at the pickle jar and then at me before shrugging. Her back is turned to me when she bends over to put the jar into the refrigerator.
This is not the time for my cock to thicken at the roundness of her ass, but since when did it ever listen to me? It has a mind of its own, and this is the first time in years that it’s hard, and it’s not normal for a man as hot-blooded as I am to not be aroused at the sight of attractive women.
Nevertheless, that was the case until today with a girl way too young to be in my life. I feel like an absolute sick pervert for lusting after a girl half my age, but in the eyes of the law, she is legal.
It’s just wrong in my eyes that she’s so young, but I really want her thrashing underneath me.
“You don’t like toast?” she cocks her head in question, lips tipping down as she pouts softly.
Fuck.
My hand reaches for the ugly toast before I know it, and my tongue is cringing at the bitter taste when I bite into it.
What the hell am I doing?
I have no answer to that question as I swallow the dry bread with the glass of water already provided for me, courtesy of her when she beams at me.
It almost made the disgusting food worth it.
Hera is really a mystery wrapped in one tiny package, and I’m not afraid to open it to see her true self if she lets me.
She may look frail on the outside, but there is an iron wall beneath that naivety. Climbing is not an option, but I was never the type of man to do more work than necessary. I work harder with time limits; the long game is only played when my survival is at the hands of my own in the fighting ring.
That is the only future that I took the time to plan out, but everything else is short-term and quick in secession.
I’m debating whether finding the real Hera would be a long-term or short-term plan.
Who is to say that this isn’t the real Hera?
There are people out there who are born psychopaths; nature versus nurture has nothing to do with pure evilness when the debate doesn’t consider that it isn’t genetics and environment that brought out the evil in a person.
Sometimes evil is just there even if the parents are perfectly normal and the house they grew up in is peaceful.
Hera plops down on the chair in front of me, hooking her palms under her chin with big eyes gazing at me with expectation as her lips part with a giggle.
She’s a little too happy. I have never seen anyone this giddy watching a man eat breakfast before.
“How is it?” she asks, anticipation brightening her eyes.
Those gorgeous colors are fucking with my head, and I want to kiss her plump lips so badly. This burnt toast is doing things to me, or she has drugged me. I have never felt this way before and not even the most scantily-clad woman has garnered a look from me.
“It’s shit,” I say; the honest opinion has her gasping in horror.
Her tiny hand flaps across her heart, eyes wide at my rude comment as she sits her ass back down. The stammering and gasping show a new side of Hera that I can confidently say no one has seen before.
I’m the first.
My gut is hardly wrong these days. We have gone through a lot together, and my gut has saved me more times than I can count.
“You’re lying!” the denial in her voice becomes a whine.
“Never cook again,” I growl through clenched teeth.
This shouldn’t even be counted as breakfast. It’s food from hell and how the hell can she chew on that dark piece of break is beyond me. It takes me everything to not chuck mine into her fac
e, but she looked so happy when I ate it, and my heart is working together with my brain to coerce me into finishing the bread.
The water helps the process of getting rid of the chunks in my throat and washing away the burnt taste.
I leave the jam to the side, untouched and unwilling to open it.
I can practically smell the sweetness, and I hate sugar. It makes my teeth ache for a long time.
“What am I supposed to do when I’m hungry? You’re so unreasonable,” she huffs, smearing jam on her top lip when she bites into her toast.
It’s not a toast anymore. This is an atrocity that needs to be at the bottom of the trash.
“I will cook for you,” I say without thinking.
The pause in both of our movements is the same as her doe-eyes widen at me. Then her lips are spread in that adorable grin.
“No—”
She cuts me with a squeal, “I want tortellini!”
I snap back at her, “You eat what I make.”
What I meant to say is that I’m not going to cook for her, not because I want to, but it’s because I’m not going to stay in the same vicinity as a killer who skins people alive.
Sleep is next to impossible knowing that she can turn into a psychotic sadist again.
“I don’t want lettuce, pumpkin soup, or vinegar!” she nods with firm lips.
She’s a picky eater, and I didn’t expect that, but I’m learning things about her that aren’t accessible to the public’s knowledge and perception of Hera.
“Anything else?”
She either doesn’t hear the sarcasm in my voice, or she actively ignores it with pure ignorance. Hera begins to list all the things that she absolutely hates, and most of them are healthy greens that she needs.
“This is why you’re so short,” I pointed out dryly, finishing my cup of water as my body lacks hydration.
I should worry about her poisoning me, but she wouldn’t go through all the trouble of giving me the chance to win my freedom back just to kill me with a toxin.
She has a more long-term goal.
I’m going to find out, but I can’t ask her straight out without risking the possibility that she would lie to me and hide the truth even harder for me to find.
“Short—!” the choked gasp of appalled and exasperation is distinct, “I’m normal; you’re just freakishly big.”
Nothing about Hera is normal.
“Everyone has their own tastes. I just happen to have more dislikes than others,” Hera tears apart her toast with her white teeth.
“You don’t eat nutritious food,” I remark dully, “You aren’t growing.”
“I stopped growing a long time ago,” she mumbles while stuffing her face with the rest of the bread.
She chases down the food with her own glass of water before standing up quickly. Her short legs move around the table towards me, and I stand up as an instinctive reaction.
This is when I realize just how tiny she is.
She barely comes up to my chest. I know I’m bigger than an average man and my muscles scare a lot of people away.
Hera stands there with her hands on her hips and tilts her head up awkwardly, “Why are you standing up?”
“Why are you over here?” I shoot back with a glower.
She rolls her eyes, “I can’t reach you when you’re touching the ceiling.”
Suspicion crawls on my skin. My shoulders are pulled uptight as I tower over her smaller body.
“Why?” I ask again.
“Trust me.”
She has the audacity to say that when we both know what she is capable of with those tiny hands of hers. I had felt the power behind those fingers on my neck when she pressed down on my windpipe during the gas attack, and she could have killed me then with all the other scumbags down on the first level.
She didn’t, though. Hera left me alive and unharmed while the people below me were screaming in agony from rats chewing on their flesh. It was truly a horrifying sight of being swarmed with rats and defenseless against their advances due to the numbing agent that had spread through the entire building.
Whatever the drug is, it’s so powerful that it knocked me down.
“I don’t,” I tell her.
Hera huffs and waves her hand down. Against my better judgment, I lean down with skepticism and apprehension coursing through my blood as I get a whiff of her soft and feminine scent.
She smells just as good as she looks.
What is there to hate about her?
I can’t find one imperfection in her other than the part of my brain screaming psychopathic terms that relate to her. Everything else pales in comparison, but her eyes are never changing.
They move with power and stealth, but they shine with naïve curiosity and playful innocence too.
Her soft lips smoosh on my jaw; I didn’t lean down far enough, and she can’t reach up on her toes, so we met halfway. I can feel her kiss through the scuff on my jawline, but I pull back in shock with my eyes zeroing in on her trusting eyes that show confusion.
Hera seems to be so susceptible to attacks; her guard is down, and she’s just a simple girl for now.
“What was that?” my voice pulls a sneer, lips parting to show my sharp canines.
She blinks owlishly, “A kiss.”
“What for?” I press further, taking a step back for space even if my body is calling me an idiot.
A big part of me wants to take her into my arms and have her tiny body squish onto my old, more muscular body. The difference in texture would surely be welcomed, but this is real life, and real-life has problems that the world of daydreams doesn’t.
“Thank you for not trying to kill me?” she says as her voice trails off.
“Are you telling or asking?” I frown at her words.
I wasn’t planning on killing her anyway. My body is just on active duty of protection from all kinds of danger.
“Telling,” she replies, “Anyway, I want to show you something!”
“Wasn’t that enough?” I clear my throat, crossing my arms stubbornly when she gestures me to the couch.
It’s a dingy and worn couch that has floral prints on it; the smell of mothballs suddenly became a complementary scent to the burnt toast.
This is one shitty house.
She sighs heavily and tugs on her hair, “Don’t be a recalcitrant statue.”
“Come on, demon-man,” she waves her hand and pats the seat next to her with an expectant look on her face.
Reluctantly, I shift my weight and walk towards her as the dull pain in my ribs reminds me that the freedom on my tongue is still fresh.
I’m a free man.
Damn, it does feel good.
I opt to stand at the edge of the couch while I hear her mumble an insult towards my stubbornness. It’s not the rigidity of my attitude, but it’s precaution around her.
My body refutes that thought with rigor when a strong pulse of soreness hits me, so I sit down at the arm of the couch.
The TV turns on, and it’s the news channel. A news reporter is broadcasting the newest uproar of Philadelphia about a man contracting anthrax, and he isn’t responding to treatments.
News networks wouldn’t be vultures if they didn’t dig for information, and they did find the name of the man.
Abel Callahan.
I nearly choke on air when they zoom in on Abel being reeled out of a building and into an ambulance with a quarantine plastic over his gurney.
My head snaps to Hera, and her eyes are already on me with her pretty smile casts a ray of sunshine into my incredulous and stunned body.
“It’s a gift for your first day of freedom!”
Hera is truly insane.
Chapter Six
Hera
One of the benefits of waking early is watching Damon work on his body.
A couple of days have passed, and he has healed abnormally fast considering he had bruising and minor bleeding on his muscles near his ribs, but he’s abl
e to walk around and do the heavy lifting in a matter of twenty-four hours.
The rest of the days were just getting used to the freshly-healed wounds when he told me that he had never had a day without feeling pain.
Damon is hardcore.
If it was me, I would have been whining and demanding medication to ease the ache. I hate pain, but I love inflicting it on my enemies; it’s a weird combination that works well with me.
I’m not the one writhing on the floor in agony; they can yell all they want, and no one would hear them. Interruptions are dealt with before I start, and I have eliminated more than a handful of times where I wouldn’t be able to take out the people who were responsible for the deaths of my family.
I planned too long and too hard for a simple distraction to ruin my plans.
“Don’t you ever get bored?” I ask as I bend down to look at Damon doing his pushups.
My elbows are supported on my knees while I lay my chin on my open palms, “You do this every day.”
“I have to keep up the routine,” he grunts, throwing himself down again.
I let my eyes wander down his sweaty back. The tattoos swirl on his back with tasteful art which connects to his arms. The grooves and sharp contours of his muscles ripple and are taut from a two-hour intense workout in the basement.
I get tired just by looking at him, but he’s hardly breathing heavy. There is a shortness of breath, but Damon still counts how many he has done.
I stopped counting in my head when my eyes traced down to the pair of black tight pants that he wears when he works out. I find that the elastic band around his narrow hips tugs dangerously low.
He’s teasing me. This foul man isn’t playing fair.
He knows I get distracted when he walks around the house, practically displaying his body.
Damon has every opportunity to leave the house and call for backup from the Callahan family to have me captured, but I don’t see him going back to that mob family any time soon.
If not ever, he has his freedom for days, and it’s the brightest that I have seen him. I don’t have anything to compare his new presence to, but the fact that he’s not miserable in the ring makes everything ten times better.