by Sonya Jesus
“Careful, 327.” His jaw clicks, and he slants his eyes in my direction. The hardness in his glare drives the movement in my fingers.
I pull the lever of the door. Locked. Shit. “Breaker.” This is some sick game.
He swings his door open and steps outside. I slide to the other side of the backseat and test the door. It’s child locked too. Crap. I stretch my body over the driver’s seat, attempting to reach the unlock button.
The door swings open.
My foot gets stuck under the armrest as I crawl forward. Breaker’s hands curl under my elbows, forcing me out of the car. I stumble to get my bearings.
“Relax, Lyla.” His arms hold me up.
My secret is on the tip of my tongue, but I don’t see how him knowing I lost one of our babies will help him or me. Vanishing twin syndrome. They did an ultrasound and found one heartbeat but two gestational sacs. Before he gave me something to sleep, the doctor said the dead fetus would either bleed out or get reabsorbed by his twin or me.
I still have the ultrasound in my drawer. At the time, I didn’t think I’d make it to see Sawyer’s sibling be born, but it doesn’t mean I don’t picture the baby. If Kelsie was sent there to spy on me, she must have told him I am pregnant.
I tried Stone’s way, but maybe I need to give up and beg. So I bend my knees to kneel and plead for both of us.
He tugs me up. “What are you doing?”
“Don’t do this again, Breaker. I’m…” I trail off, remembering the ugly truth of the baby farm. I would become nothing more than 327, and my kid—his kid—a calf with a price tag. I almost give in and allow my unborn child the opportunity to live, but then I glare at the man who is staring at me—waiting for me to finish—or waiting for something. A thought silences my tongue. He might decide to keep it and raise a monster. I can’t have that.
His grip tightens on my elbow, nearly crushing the bone. “Run—”
I cut him off. “I’m not running, Breaker. I’ve been running all my life. If you want to kill me or send someone after me,” I yank my arm out of his hold and lean against his car, “then I’ll make it easy for you. I’m not going to run and have you hunt me down.”
I glance in the distance. Just some train tracks divide the woods.
“I won’t chase you.” His eyes soften, and he steps closer toward me. “I won’t search for you. I won’t even remember you.”
I flinch at his last words. He’s beautiful and twisted, and my heart roars for something more than this before I end. I give in and speak, “I don’t understand you.”
“I never asked you to.”
“You stalled, saved me from the branding the other girls endured, and set me free only to have me chased down.”
“Would you rather have been pumped with hormones and waiting in line to be impregnated?” he bellows. “Do you know what happens in the meantime? Guys fuck them until they’re bruised and bleeding, until they grow tired of them and move on to the next one, because they can pump their blanks into them as many times as they want, and when they’re taken to the clinic and shot up with the latest sperm donor, that doesn’t save them.”
My eyes widen. His confessions come before he sets his prey free. “I’m not surprised. You made me watch The Butcher kill them one by one.”
He steps closer and stands in front of me, feet wide apart and ready to catch me if I run. “We have a strict no bruising the pregnant heifers, but they are still used. They are blow-up dolls for grown men to play with. Ones that cry and beg and plead, and don’t require batteries.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“The Butcher is not the one you should’ve feared. The guy with the scar running down his face would have been a far worse death sentence. He would have killed you a little bit every day, worn you down until you deteriorated, and even sleep wouldn’t give you a reprieve. You would beg for death, and no one would give it to you because you didn’t have a choice.” He steps closer, closing the distance between us, and reaches out to tuck a strand of my hair.
I flinch away from him, refusing to let him put one more finger on me.
He drops his hand and slides it into his pocket.
“How do you get away with this?” If I’m going to die, I have no reason to hold my tongue. “How have people not found out?”
“None of them live to tell the story, and our clients are smart enough to keep their mouth shut.”
The woman with the emerald eyes, who Scar murdered in front of me, comes to mind.
“Most of the people who hire us are women. You would have been an incubator. Her egg, your egg, someone else’s egg, it wouldn’t make a fuck of a difference, as long as you pushed out a baby with one of their DNAs. Trust me, the weeks after pregnancy and few before, when you’re fat and grotesque or all stretched out, are the only moments of comfort. It’s a vicious routine for people like you, so I took mercy on you.”
“So you thought chopping me up into pieces was the better idea?”
“I wanted you gone.” He sways his head back and forth, bouncing ideas back and forth. “You wanted to leave.”
“Mercy?” I shook my head. “Being hunted down in a forest was your version of mercy?”
“I honestly wanted to let you go.”
“Right, so you could chase me down.” I wave my hands in the air, gesturing to the last place I’m going to see. “And finish me here?”
“No, I let you go because a part of me wanted you to escape. To live and have a normal life. I couldn’t take you out of there without—”
“Looking weak.”
He nods shamefully, and my body tightens in response. I wasn’t expecting that answer. His moments of remorse don’t make him better though. “You and your monsters disgust me.”
He chuckles derisively and steps forward, blocking my face. His finger jams into his chest repeatedly as he says, “You think I’m the monster?” His face is red, and his voice reverberates through the night air. “I’m not the worst monster!”
“You’re the person who creates them. That’s worse.”
And I always choose worse.
His hands latch on to my hair, and he snaps my head back. My throat closes at the thought of water being tipped down my throat. He brings his face down, his teeth nearly nipping at my ears when he harshly whispers his confession. “I’m the person who controls them, Lyla. I hire the worst of the worst and give them freedom to do what they want within my walls, but only with my permission!”
“Ah.” I cross my arms to hide my trembling fingers. “You’re the monster tamer and that makes you redeemable?” I spit back.
He releases my hair. “Why didn’t you go to the police if you think I’m so bad?”
“Because I couldn’t.”
His eyes narrow on me. “Time for truths.”
“I wanted to! But I had a feeling you had people on the inside looking for me. It was safer to keep my mouth shut.” I look around. “But knowing you would kill me, I wish I had gone. I wish I had told them all about you before you cleaned out your farm.”
“So, you overheard?”
“No, but that’s what guys like you do, right? Eliminate loose ends.”
“Guys like me?” he echoes back. “There’s not many like me.”
Arrogant to the end. “You want me to be scared of you.”
“Are you?”
“Yes,” I answer honestly. “But not because I’m afraid of death.”
“Well, considering you’ve begged me to kill you a few times, I figured that. So why is it that you’re scared of your monster tamer?” His voice dips at the ownership.
It almost makes me feel good. But it’s just a trick.
“You make believe there’s more to you than Breaker Beneventi.” I pause for a second and shake my head. “That’s not true. I’m afraid of you because, despite all the horrible things I know you do, I still like you, and that’s all sorts of fucked up. You murder women, you sell infants, you kill people because you have a b
ad day, or someone disagrees with your point of view. You hire men to violate women and you set them free, just so they can be caught. You killed your fathers, blackmailed your brother and sister. You have no loyalties, except to yourself, and I seriously doubt you are capable of loving anyone besides the person who looks back at you in the mirror!”
“That’s where you are wrong.”
“Are you going to tell me you love your family? That you loved someone for being who they are and not because you loved what they could do for you?” I take his silence as cue to keep going. “You do all of this for money that you don’t need.”
“Wrong again,” he chimes in, “but please keep going.”
“You killed the woman who helped me, the closest thing I’ve had to a mother because you wanted me back. You’re the most selfish, egotistical person I have ever met in my life. And yet…when you look at me, like you’re looking at me right now, I see the human behind the devil, and it scares the fucking shit out of me.”
“I should scare you. I should fucking terrify you!” His shout echoes in the night air, chilling me to my core. “I had a gun to your chest. I’ve held your life in my hands for months. I had orders put in everywhere, waiting for you to report us,” he says with all honesty. Probably to scare me. “I thought you had gone to the Feds or…”
“To the Cabralis?” I ask, remembering Addie’s confession in the car and the time we had alone. Always pretend like you know more.
“You know Magdalena?”
Who? “Addie filled me in on everything. I should have gone to The Commission.”
“You should have.”
And kill the father of my child? “That would make me a monster too, and I might be a lot of things, but I’m not a murderer.” Just stupid for loving one.
“But I am! And if you had gone, we wouldn’t be here! And this wouldn’t be torture.”
His anger drives the anxiety in my system, tingling its way my extremities. Flight. Survive. It screams. But for what? To live another day and die tomorrow? “But we’re here now! End the torture, no one’s going to miss me.”
“That’s three times you’re wrong.” His hands cup my arms, holding me in place. “But you’re right. You living is torture.”
Tears flow down my eyes. I’m so tired of being scared to fall deeper in love with the man who keeps breaking me.
“No, don’t do that.”
“What? Love you and hate you?”
“Stop looking for reasons to love me, because I’m not allowed to change. This is who I am; this is how I have to be. I’m never going to stop being a murderer or part of this world. I’m Breaker Beneventi, but you can be anyone else, and I can help.”
“What?”
“Go.” His hand slides up my arm to cup my cheek, his palm cold and touch hesitant. “Go away from here. I promise it’s not a game, and no one is going to come for you.”
“You don’t want me here?” That shouldn’t hurt so much.
“I want you alive.” His touch gains confidence, and he brushes his thumb over my tears. “Take all the feelings you have for me and hold on to the memories you hate. Remember me with those if you have to, but don’t think of me as someone you need to come back to. Run as far away from me as you can and don’t come back here. Don’t step foot over city lines.”
“I don’t understand.”
“When you’re here. I can’t think of anything else but having you close to me, and when you’re gone, I’m obsessed with finding you. We’re going to be the death of each other if we stay together. If I continue to want to be the man you see, I’m going to hurt you with the truth. Because I am the monster. I’m the devil of the streets, and I don’t want you in my hell.”
Now he’s fucking poetic? “I fucking hate you.”
“Good. Hate me better.”
I shake my head, and he stills my head by trapping it between his strong hands. “I don’t want you here, Lyla.” He reaches behind his back, retrieves a folded manila envelope, and hands it to me. “It doesn’t matter who you were, or who you’ve been, this is the only thing that matters now.”
He releases me. I take the envelope and pull out the contents.
I hold it in the lights of the car. Money. Driver’s license. Passport. Birth certificate. All fake. When did he get this? I slip everything back in the folder and shove it in Breaker’s chest with all my strength, but he doesn’t budge an inch. “What happened to the woman who had this name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why are you giving me this?”
“Because I love you, and I don’t fucking want you here.”
Love me? “You expect me to believe you love me?”
“No,” he says while reaching into the back seat and grabbing a bag. He opens it and places the envelope inside. “I don’t expect anything of you, just like you should not expect anything of me. Ever. Now disappear and have a happy life, Liana Corsa.”
He hands me the bag. “Follow the tracks for thirty minutes. There’s enough money in there to get you set up and hold you over until you can work something out for yourself.”
“That’s it. You tell me you love me and tell me to get out of your life?” I shake my head and come clean. “I’m going to need another set of identities, for an infant.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re going to be a dad,” I confess while searching him for a reaction. “My HCG is lower than normal and I…There were two, but I lost one.”
“Because of me?” he whispers.
I don’t answer.
His lips are on me. Chaste and quick, at first, like a farewell between two people who barely know each other. But then reality crashes in on us, and tears stream down my cheeks, sliding between our touching lips and tainting our kiss with sorrow. The tingles in my toes and the spark of heat along my spine turn to ache—unbearable, throbbing aches—that stiffen and paralyze my muscles, locking his body with mine.
I know we have to let go, but it’s so hard to fall apart when he’s breathing strength into me.
So when he begins to pull his kiss from me, I trap his lower lip between my teeth, gently tugging him back to me, for one more. One more, please.
With our last kiss, we exchange a promise to try, or a plea to stay, but it ends in a final goodbye. He pries his body from mine, and I exhale the air in my lungs between chattering teeth.
His palm cups my cheek, and I sway my head, so it feels like a caress. He brushes the tears and whispers, “This changes nothing.” His tone is clipped but not because he’s angry at me. He’s pissed at who we are, at the life we have to lead apart from each other. “Walk along the tracks. Someone’s going to be there waiting for you.”
“Who?”
He drops his hands and steps back. I stare at the dirt ground. “Someone who understands.”
Then he gets in his car and drives away, leaving me to face the world alone. I watch the glow of his taillights disappear into the distance until I’m mostly cloaked in darkness. The faint light of the distant overhead street lamp illuminates the bag on the ground.
I walk to it and slide the long strap over my shoulder before unzipping it a bit to peer inside to find a flashlight, some money, and clothes. Probably Kelsie’s bag, I think as I wipe my tears and turn the light on and begin the track to my new life.
When I reach the graffiti walls of the tunnel, the train passes through. I stop as panic sets in.
Breathe, I tell myself as I shine the light inside from a distance. My mind runs rampant as my hand trembles.
My breaths shorten when I see a figure emerging from the tunnel.
“Mercy?”
Her voice calms me down.
24
Blood & Bone
Breaker
The steering wheel crushes beneath my grip as I turn my car back on the main road. No one’s on the road, and no one’s picking up their damn phone. I dial Stone’s number one more time.
He finally picks up, “What?” he
growls sleepily.
“I need you to try to call Hayden. He’s not picking up.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s doing me a favor.”
A soft grumbling noise that sounds too feminine for him filters through, and he hangs up. I drop my phone in the passenger seat and jam the heel of my hand into the center of the steering wheel, honking at no one. The road is empty, like I wish my head was.
The phone sounds, filling the silence. I reach over and hit the speaker phone.
“Hayden’s not picking up. He’s probably with Kelsie.”
Stone doesn’t know I messaged Hayden and asked him to help 327 disappear. He also doesn’t know I made a mistake. “He’s not with Kelsie.”
“How do you know?”
This isn’t going to go well. “Kelsie’s with Franco.”
“I’m sorry, what?” he darts out quickly. If Stone was in bed, I’m sure he isn’t anymore. “Like murdering him?”
“We had our meeting.”
“Right…”
“It didn’t go well.”
“Are you stretching this out for a reason, or are you trying to piss me off on purpose?”
“You’re going to be pissed. Because I fucked up.”
“Shit, Breaker. What did you do?”
“I was angry, and Kelsie said she was leaving with Hayden. She gave me an ultimatum, and she wouldn’t help me, after everything I did for her, so I wanted to teach her a lesson, and Franco one too. So I let Franco play with her, but forbade him to go far.”
Even as I say it, I realize this is absurd. Franco doesn’t play, he massacres.
“Franco’s not picking up, so I need you to head out to The Farm and make sure everything is okay.”
Silence.
“Stone?”
“Where are you going?” he says after a few minutes. The beeping of the key fob sounds in the background.
“Who cares where I’m going? Do what I say.”