by T. L. Cannon
Ethan’s heart pounded in his chest as he waited for Jared to show his hand, quickening even more as he saw his father's hand briefly hesitate over his cards. Then with, slow, deliberate movements, Jared moved his cards to the center of the table and turned them over.
Ethan stared blankly at the four and seven of spades as the dealer slid, the remainder of the community cards over to join them.
“A straight flush. Mr. Halifax wins.”
The words sent a surge humiliation through Ethan's body.
Kira’s heart wrenched painfully inside her chest as she watched Ethan’s shoulders slump in the face of his defeat at his father’s hands. She had never seen him look like that before. Gone was the dashing rogue whose unwavering confidence alternately thrilled and infuriated her, in his place sat the wounded little boy who’s mother, as well as his self respect, had been cruelly snatched away from him by the abusive hands of Jared Halifax. She wanted to cry for him, to comfort him. To avenge him. For the first time she both felt and fully understood the powerful emotions that drove Ethan in his quest for revenge against his father for, in that moment, she could have killed Jared Halifax with her own two hands for what he had done.
“It seems that, like your mother, you overestimated the strength of your hand,” Jared remarked, twisting the knife sadistically as he gathered his winnings in front of him. “But don’t look so down. At least, unlike your bitch of a mother, your stupidity didn’t cost you your life.”
Ethan lunged from Jared as if propelled by a spring, scattering cards, chips and players as he dived across the poker table. Sending Jared and his chair crashing to the ground, he straddled his father, wrapping his hands tightly around the old man's throat. Donovan and Kira dashed to his side in unison, attempting to pry him off of Jared.
“Let him go!’ Kira pleaded as she clawed at Ethan’s fingers, desperately trying to peel them from around Jared’s neck. “Please!”
The fear that Ethan heard in Kira’s voice penetrated the blinding rage that had clouded his mind, causing his grip on Jared to loosen just enough for Donovan to pull him off.
“Get out of here!” Donovan demanded as he dragged Ethan to his feet.
Ignoring Donovan’s orders, Ethan continued to glower over Jared as he coughed and wheezed, looking like he was gearing up to pounce again.
“Let’s just go,” Kira implored as she grabbed Ethan by the arm and pulled him towards the door.
Ethan angrily jerked his arm out of her grip. It was bad enough that she had been witness to his humiliation, there was no way that he was going to accept the pity that he heard in her voice. “No. You stay here with your date,” Ethan said, practically spitting out the last word before storming to the door, the sound of Jared’s wheezing laughter mocking him as he exited the room.
Stung by his unexpected rejection, Kira watched in pained silence as he rushed out of the room to lick his wounds, alone.
“That boy is just like his mother,” Jared chuckled as he rubbed at his throat, clearly amused at the ease with which he had pushed Ethan's buttons. “Way too emotional.”
Rising to his feet, Jared straightened his disheveled sports jacket and smoothed down his snowy white hair as he cast an towards Donovan. “But you don’t have that problem, do you?” Jared observed, taking note of Donovan’s restraint during his taunting of Ethan.
“Not anymore,” Donovan replied, recalling the time not long ago that he too had been baited into nearly snapping his father’s neck. He had learned from that incident and vowed never to repeat it. Death is too good for Jared. When Donovan finally exacted his revenge against his father he wanted the old bastard alive to experience every agonizing moment.
“Then why didn’t you play against me instead of Ethan.”
“Because playing poker requires a certain amount of bluffing and I never bluff,” Donovan tossed carelessly over his shoulder as he strolled towards the door.
“Why do you keep sending your brothers in to do your dirty work?” Jared asked, a hint of unease underlying his voice. “Why don’t you just take me on yourself?”
“That day is coming, old man, and when I do take you down, you won't be getting back up,” Donovan said as he paused at the door, chilling Jared with an icy glare. “And like I said, I never bluff.”
***
Kira frowned at the sign taped to the door of the elevator in the lobby of her apartment building, the words scrawled in both English and Chinese not only conveyed that the elevator was out of order but also let her know that an already horrible evening had just gotten even worse. Channing had unceremoniously deposited her in front of the building like a bag of garbage he couldn’t wait to get rid of after spending the entire limo ride to her apartment building silently pouting with undisguised annoyance. Not that she could blame him after the way she had behaved at the VIP room. What man wouldn’t be annoyed by his date’s attempt to bail on him with another man? Kira inwardly cringed at her own rudeness. It was bad enough that she had used him to gain access to the VIP room to begin with, adding a good dose of public humiliation into the mix was inexcusable. All-in-all, the entire evening had been positively dreadful and she couldn’t wait to crawl into bed and put it all behind her. However, it appeared that she would have to wait. Grimly, she wondered just how long it would take her to hike fifteen stories worth of stairs. With a weary sigh she realized that she was about to find out as she headed towards the door marked “Exit”.
Kira had made it up three fights of stairs when she first heard the door of the fire escape open and shut behind her. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw a shadow moving towards her in the dimly lit stairwell. Unease rose in her gut and then quickly subsided. With the elevators out of commission it stood to reason that she wouldn’t be the only person using the fire escape, even at this time of night. Still, as she heard the sound of heavy footsteps rapidly approaching behind her, she found herself increasing her pace as she ascended the stairs. The clack of her high heel shoes as she increased her speed echoed loudly off the walls of the narrow stairwell. The first tremors of panic ricocheted through her like a bullet when she heard the pace of the footsteps behind her pick up in accordance with her own. Once again she increased her speed and once again the person behind her did the same. Before Kira could even process what was happening, she found herself being chased up the stairway.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Propelled by pure adrenaline, Kira kicked off her cumbersome shoes in mid-stride and raced up the stairs as quickly as her feet would carry her. She was acutely aware of the sound of footsteps rapidly advancing on her but she didn’t dare look back to see how far away her pursuer was. All she knew was that he was gaining on her, fast. If she could just make it out of the isolated stairwell and onto one of the residential floors, help would be only a shout away, she told herself as she barreled up the steps. She was only a few steps from the seventh floor landing when she felt the ground suddenly fall out from beneath her, sending her knee crashing into the concrete step that her foot had missed. The howl of pain that instantly burst out of Kira’s mouth morphed into a screech of terror as she felt a strong, masculine hand grip her ankle. She barely managed to put her hands out in front of her to break her fall as she felt herself being dragged down the stairs. The rough surface of the concrete scraped painfully against the palms of her hands as she slid face down towards her assailant. The sound of her own screams bounced violently off the walls and rang loudly in her ears as she felt herself being flipped over onto her back and pinned helplessly to the incline of steps by the weight of the man straddling her. The gangly Chinese man looming over her couldn’t have been anymore than twenty years old and appeared to be covered from head to toe with tattoos. Even in the murkiness of the stairwell she could see the deadness in his dark eyes as they stared menacingly down at her, sending a chill down her spine. That chill became a shudder when she saw him pull a small switch blade from inside one of his black, combat-style boots. Her screams rose to piercing level
s as she saw him raise the knife in the air and flick his finger across it’s trigger, causing the long, sharp blade to suddenly spring free with an ominous snap. Then, just as suddenly, Kira felt the man’s body being jerked away from the upturned hands she was using in a futile attempt to push him away, freeing her from the weight of his body.
Ethan’s arm wrapped tightly around the throat of Kira’s attacker, pulling him down to the landing below. The man retaliated with a sharp, forceful jab to Ethan’s diaphragm, winding him just enough to cause him to loosen his grip around the man’s neck. Ethan just barely managed to leap back from the path of the knife as the man swirled around and savagely swiped it at him. Moving backwards on the narrow slab of concrete, Ethan edged to the top of the stairway that led down to the sixth floor landing as the man advanced on him, adroitly tossing the knife back and forth between his two hands as he moved. When the attacker took another swipe at him with the knife, Ethan managed to grab hold of his arm and, using his own body as a fulcrum, flipped the man over his back and down the stairs, sending him crashing down to the sixth floor landing. The sound of the man’s neck snapping reverberated within the small space with a sickening crack, alerting Ethan to the fact that he was dead before he even reached his crumpled body. Just to be on the safe side, Ethan placed his fingers against the man’s carotid artery.
“Is he dead?” Kira asked as she stood looking down at Ethan from the top of the stairs.
“As a doornail,” Ethan replied as he made his way to her. Seeing the dazed look on Kira's face, he began to gently rub his hands up and down her trembling arms, “Are you ok?”
“I think so,” Kira answered weakly, her voice strained from screaming.
“I never should have left that VIP room without you,” Ethan angrily reprimanded himself as he brought his hands to her face, brushing her hair out of her eyes as he carefully surveyed her from head to toe.
“You had no way of knowing that some random wacko would attack me.”
“There was nothing random about this attack,” Ethan said grimly, quickly wrapping up his inspection of Kira before making his way back to the body below.
Kira followed him down the stairs. “What do you mean?”
Ethan squatted down next to the dead man. Pulling a wallet out of the man's back pocket, he began to thumb through its contents. Coming across a driver's license, he read the name of the dead man. “What I mean is that ol' Seng here, followed you from the casino.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I followed you from the casino too.”
“You did what?”
“I followed you from the casino,” Ethan repeated, noting the look of dismay in her eyes. “Don’t worry, I wasn’t spying on you and your date. When I left the VIP room I noticed one of Gan’s men following me. I managed to ditch him in the crowd on the ground floor and then waited outside for you and Channing to leave and, sure enough, you two had a tail as well. I tried to call you on your cell phone to warn you but it kept rolling over to voicemail.”
“I turned it off in the VIP room and forgot to turn it back on,” Kira explained as she looked down at the corpse lying broken at her feet. “Gan sent this guy to kill me? Why?”
“Because he recognized us both from the hit on Xiao. When he saw us both show up at the VIP room he knew he’d been identified as the shooter.”
“That’s why you didn’t want me to go with you to the poker game,” Kira concluded, shame causing her face to redden. “I should have listened to you. It’s my fault this happened.”
“We can argue about who’s fault this is later. Right now we need to stash this stiff before somebody sees us with it.”
“Shouldn’t we call the police?
“Do you really want to spend another night at the police department answering questions about yet another dead body?”
“Not really, but that’s still no excuse not to call the cops. Unless you think that you could get into trouble for killing him.”
“I’m not worried about the police. I just don’t want Gan finding out that his guy is dead just yet.”
“Oh,” Kira said, not knowing why it should matter when Gan found out but figuring that this wasn’t the time for a drawn out question and answer session. “In that case, there’s a small storage room on every residential floor in this building. We can probably stick him in there, but only for little while.”
“A little while is all we’ll need,” Ethan assured her as he opened the door leading to the sixth floor corridor and poked his head inside. Satisfied that the coast was clear, he used his foot to keep the door propped open and then bent down to grab Seng by his lifeless arms. “Grab his feet.”
Ignoring the throbbing pain in her knee, Kira obeyed his instructions as she and Ethan carried the dead body down the hall as quickly and quietly as possible, praying that none of the people who lived on that floor would get the sudden urge to take a late night stroll. When they finally reached the door of the storage room, Ethan fished out a set of lock picks from his back pocket and proceeded to make quick work of the flimsy lock, inspiring Kira to actually be grateful for his criminal inclinations for the first time ever.
“Now what are we going to do?” Kira whispered as Ethan closed the door to the storage room and relocked it, leaving Seng's body safely tucked away behind some boxes inside.
“What we always do in my family when we happen to find ourselves with an inconvenient corpse on our hands.”
“What's that?”
“Call Donovan.”
***
Kira glanced down at her hands as she waited alone in her apartment for Ethan to return. The throbbing in her knee had finally subsided and, although her palms were red and stung like hell, they didn’t appear to be bleeding. Her body shivered at the memory of them scraping against the concrete as she was being dragged down the stairs by Seng and then snapped to attention at the sound of Ethan entering the apartment, using the key she had given him to let himself in.
“How’d it go?” she asked as she jumped to her feet.
“Smoothly enough,” Ethan said. “Donovan and I loaded him into a laundry cart and rolled him down the stairs to the ground floor then out the fire exit door leading to the alley behind the building.”
“Wouldn’t that cause the alarm to go off?”
Ethan arched an incredulous eyebrow at Kira in response to her question.
“Of course. You disabled the alarm,” Kira answered her own question, feeling stupid for even asking it.
“Temporarily. Then it was just a matter of loading Seng into the trunk of the car that Donovan parked in the alley and then away he and Donovan went with nobody else the wiser. Fortunately for us, you appear to be living in a community of early risers who are all safely tucked into their beds at a reasonable hour.”
“Lucky us,” Kira said as she collapsed back onto the sofa. “What is Donovan going to do with him?
“Don’t worry about my brother,” Ethan replied, pointedly not answering her question. “This isn’t his first trip to the rodeo. Believe me, he knows his way around a dead body.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Kira replied with a shudder as she recalled Donovan’s coldly stated intentions to make Seng’s death look gang related. She didn’t even want to know what that meant which was just as well since Ethan clearly had no intentions of telling her.
“How are you holding up?” Ethan asked as he sat down on the sturdy wooden coffee table in front of the sofa, positioning himself directly across from Kira.
“Better then Seng,” Kira noted grimly. “If you hadn’t come along when you did he would have killed me. It was beyond stupid of me to show up at the VIP room tonight.”
“You’ll get no argument from me on that.”
“Gee, thanks.” Kira frowned. “You sure know how to boost a girl’s wounded ego.”
“I’m more concerned about your wounded body,” Ethan said quietly as he gathered Kira’s hands in his and ran a cool, soothing p
alm over her irritated skin. “You look like you got pretty banged up in that stairwell.”
Kira felt her entire body relax in response to Ethan’s gentle touch. “Just a few bumps and bruises that’s all.”
“You could have been killed,” he said softly as he stared down at her hands, marveling at how small and delicate they looked compared to his.
“But I wasn’t, thanks to you. So thank you.”
“For what? Abandoning you to a bunch of killers back at the VIP room?” The softness that had been in his voice suddenly turning harsh with self-reprimand.
“You didn’t abandon me. I didn’t go there with you, remember?”
Ethan released Kira’s hands and rose abruptly to his feet. “But you should have left with me. If you had, Gan’s man wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near you.”
“You don’t know that,” Kira pointed out as she watched Ethan begin to pace the room in his agitation.
“Yes, I damn well do!” Ethan barked, his anger directed at himself. “If I had just left with you like you wanted me too instead of running out of the room like a spoiled brat throwing a temper tantrum, none of this would have happened.”
Kira stood up and walked over to where Ethan was pacing, placing a hand gently on his arm in order to stop his movements. “We both made foolish choices tonight so I guess that makes us even.”
“Not exactly since your foolish choices didn’t cause you to blow millions of dollars on one hand of poker.”
“You and your brother have plenty more money where that came from.”
“The money is beside the point.”
“I know it is. After seeing you with your father tonight, I think I’m finally beginning to understand what makes you tick.”
“Is that so?” Avoiding Kira’s gaze, Ethan spoke in a voice that was barely above a whisper.
“Yes, it is. At first I saw your desire for revenge against Jared as nothing more than an obstacle between us. Something that was more important to you than me. Something that kept you trapped in the past and away from me.”