by Tia Lewis
I kept the gun leveled, my eyes squinted, my shoulders and legs apart.
The men continued to shout in panic—and then the racket stopped suddenly a moment later.
I stayed in position for five minutes or more, just aiming and waiting. I could have waited there for five hours if I had to. Patience, patience... I knew if I ran up the stairs, I would get shot at instantly. The only smart thing to do was wait and kill until I was the last man alive in the Drunk Harpy. Anything else was suicide. But as I waited, my ears stopped ringing, and my hearing returned. I listened, and I heard—nothing.
It was the sound of a bar that had been deserted, of a place that is void of human life. It was the abysmal sound of spineless men who longer wanted to kill and chose to run instead of getting a bullet in the back of the head. Drunk Harpy was now a battlefield emptying of combatants, only the murder of cowards and the brave few left. Only here, there was no ‘brave few.’ They were cowards, and I was surer than ever that I would be the last man standing.
But I was aware, too, that my hearing was not as reliable as it had been ten minutes ago. I waited an additional fifteen minutes, knowing that if they were still out there, one of the men would grow impatient, and someone would make a mistake. I waited until my hearing grew even stronger and I was able to listen to the distant traffic outside the bar, the pedestrians screaming, the sirens...
The sirens!
Now that I noticed the sirens, they seemed to wail louder and louder, shaking the walls of the basement. I wished that I could wait here for another ten minutes to make entirely sure that I was safe, but I no longer had that luxury.
I went to Quick-Toes, flipped him over, and reached into the back of his pants. I pulled out another pistol—a Smith & Wesson semi-automatic—and aimed the Eagle and the gun at the top of the stairs. My body protested with each step as I reluctantly walked up the stairs, each step creaking until I was in the lobby area of the Drunk Harpy.
I aimed at the bar, then at the tables, and at the chairs, but the place was empty. It was just like I thought. The gutless men had fled.
“Goddamn it!” somebody cried, their voice straining with an effort.
It took me a moment to realize the voice was coming from Boss’ office. Keeping the guns aimed, I walked toward the room, ignoring the sirens from outside that wailed around me.
There was no way that I was leaving the bar without my fucking money.
7
I crashed into Boss’ office like a whirlwind, smashing the door off of the hinges with my legs. The door blew clean off, both hinges wrenching free from the frame, and flew into the desk.
Boss was on his hands and knees, his fat belly wobbling as he struggled to lift my suitcase of money. “Damn it!” he cried, his weak, flabby arms jiggling as he pulled at the suitcase. “Damn it!” he grunted, trying and failing to stand up. The suitcase, heavy with millions, did not move an inch; it took a stronger man than that weak, fat fuck to move it.
I walked into the room and stood over the man who had once been like a father to me. The man who had taken me in when I had no one else; and the man who had conspired to steal my money and take my woman from me so that she could repeatedly be violated by those Russian motherfuckers. If I had ever felt affection for this man, it was dead, obliterated by his treachery. All that I felt when I looked at him now was a pure rage and hatred.
I saw my Heckler & Koch P30L pistol that was taken from me laying on a nearby table next to the wall that featured a portrait of generations of the Bianchi family. I quietly made my way to the table to grab my gun and holstered it back into my jeans.
“I see you have something of mine,” I said, leaning back down and gripping the back of Boss’ neck, my firm hand digging into the soft and sweaty flesh.
“Animal!” Boss yelled as I lifted him to his feet.
“Don’t act so shocked that I bested you and your men you pathetic piece of shit!”
I pushed Boss back into the desk, beside the ruined door and pointed the Desert Eagle pistol at his neck, pressing the barrel into the greasy folds of his neck. I watched his eyes go to the nearby table and the smiled at the disappointed look on his face when he saw that my pistol was no longer there.
“Where are my men!” Boss sniveled. “Where are they!”
“Sometimes, dogs don’t wanna die for their master,” I smirked, squeezing his flesh harder. “Sometimes soldiers get tired of dying because of orders delivered from the man on top.”
“You won’t kill me you worthless bastard!” Boss laughed. How did I ever respect this man? I wondered. Why did I ever think that this man was tough? That he should be respected and looked up to? Did I really put my life on the line for this weak man and the Bianchi family, the same men who had turned their backs on me?
I pressed the barrel of the gun deeper into his neck.
“You wouldn’t dare take someone out who’s been there for you and took you in. I raised you into the man that you are today! I made you the best hitman in South Boston! You’re the Animal because of me!”
“Fuck all of that! You took my money, and you would’ve sold my woman back to her fucking rapist,” I growled, spit and blood spraying from my lips. “You probably would’ve raped her yourself, you fat fuck.”
Boss wickedly laughed.
“This is funny to you, motherfucker?” This was the end. I was sure of it. Somehow, I found the thought comforting.
Fury took over me, and I pushed the barrel of the gun between my knuckles, lifted my fist, and punched Boss in the face in the bridge of his nose. Bone crunched, and he cried out loudly as he brought his right hand to his nose.
“Ahhh! My nose!”
I aimed the Eagle at Boss’ left hand and pulled the trigger, firing twice.
BANG! BANG!
His hand disintegrated with each shot, crumbling to bloody thick pieces. I was too blood-crazed to care about the numbing ringing in my ears, about the sirens heard dimly through the echoing silence.
“Ahhh! Ahhh! What are you doing to me, you ungrateful fucking bastard!”
I aimed at Boss’ other hand and pulled the trigger, firing twice again.
BANG! BANG!
His other hand fell to pieces and tears fell down his cheeks in streams.
“Jesus!” he wailed, staring down at his bloody stumps. “Stop! Stop!”
“Now you’ll know how it feels to be helpless, just like she did,” I snarled, aiming the gun at Boss’ shiny-shoed feet.
BANG! BANG! Click-click...
I threw the empty clip from the Eagle to the ground and grabbed my pistol from my jeans. I shot Boss’ foot once more and then aimed at the other foot.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Boss fell forward onto his knees and looked up at me like a priest looking up at a vision of the devil. Blood oozed from his hands and feet—whatever remained of his hands and feet anyway.
This man had tried to kill me and subject my woman to sexual abuse by returning her to the Russians. I wanted him to suffer, bleed out slow and regret the first time that he ever thought about taking what’s mine.
“I took you in!” Boss blubbered. “I saved you!”
“Yeah, you did,” I said, kneeling down, so I was eye-to-eye with the man. Boss could play the victim and the blame game all that he want, but it was too late to go back now. He needed to pay. “That’s why I’m not going to kill you. You’ll live the rest of your pathetic life without your limbs. You’ll live weak, meek and scared. Just like Tess was. And you’ll know, one day, that what you wanted to do to her was wrong. She’s not meat. She’s a fucking person. She’s my fucking woman!”
“All of this for a wet hole,” Boss cried as blood continued to ooze out of his limbs. “All of this for a fucking…”
I threw my entire body—every stone-hard muscle of it—into the punch, hooking my arm around and hitting Boss across the side of the jaw. There was a sound like a saw being dislodged from wood as Boss’ jaw dislocated. He instantly fell sidewa
ys, his head lolling to the side, and laid on his side like a sleeping child, his chest rising and falling softly, his eyes fluttering open and closed as he started to lapse into unconsciousness.
I gripped Boss’ shattered leg with one hand and pulled him across the floor, clear of the money, leaving blood smears on the ground. I walked around to the suitcase, unzipped it and looked down at the money. There it was: everything that I had worked for my whole life, the product of three hundred confirmed kills; the pricey fees that I had demanded to turn my heart into a husk and become a shadow of the man that I used to be.
I zipped the suitcase up and hefted it onto my shoulder. I didn’t know where the black duffle bag was, but that was inconsequential to me at that point. I had my money, and that was all that mattered.
Then I heard Boss’ bloodcurdling laugh. “If I die… there will be… a hit out… for your head and that English whore will die too. Mark my words.”
I walked back to Boss, reached back into my jeans, grabbed my pistol and aimed it at his head.
I was ready to finish him off.
Boss continued. “If I die… they’ll know it’s because… you killed me, and they’ll come… after you. Trust and believe… there will be a hit, Liam. Just like there was… for Danny.”
“The Russians killed Mr. McGreevy.”
Boss laughed again. “You foolish bastard! Who the fuck do you think ordered the hit?” He looked at me like I was stupid, grinning the entire time.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
Danny McGreevy was Boss’ right-hand man and the prized accountant of the Bianchi family. I knew Boss was merciless, but it was beyond fucked up that he would knock off someone who was supposed to be a friend. Why would he have ordered a hit on Mr. McGreevy? The only thing that I could think of was that he did it for money and for power. Boss already had access to Mr. McGreevy’s thick black book that held all of the financial records and contact information of the Bianchi family connections so it only made sense that Boss wanted him eliminated so that it would only be him at the top.
“You son of a bitch,” I growled as the picture of what had really happened became crystal clear.
“There can only be one Boss… and that’s me.” he snickered.
As much as I wanted to put a bullet through Boss’ head, I couldn’t do it. That would be too easy. Too quick and far more than he deserved. I wanted him to suffer agonizing pain as he bleeds out in his office.
Instead, I spat in his face and left the room. I made my way into the bar, and though sirens were blaring and death was all around me, I couldn’t help but smile. I smiled because soon Tess and I would be in England and all this shit would be over. I smiled because soon Tess and I would start a new life together. I was tired of being an ‘Animal.’ All I wanted to do was be a man who loved his woman.
The force with which this desire struck me was shocking. I had never wanted anything like this, especially not something this emotional, this focused on love, emotions, and the future. It may have only been less than a week, but whatever spell Tess had cast on me had worked its magic. I would never be soft or weak, but I couldn’t deny that something soft was making me vulnerable. What surprised me, even more, was how little that I wanted to fight it.
But standing around here, grinning like a fool with a death wish, wouldn’t get me back to Tess any quicker.
I shoved my pistol into my jeans, covered it with my blood-stained T-shirt and made my way to the door and out of the Drunk Harpy.
My woman was waiting, and I couldn’t wait to get back to her.
8
I squinted at the sunlight as I emerged onto the street.
There was a group of about twenty people at the opposite end of the road, and the sirens were loud in the air, as though the police were just beneath the sidewalk, the sound of their presence blaring through the concrete. A Black man with a big afro and prayer beads hanging from around his neck clicked his tongue and pointed at me.
“Look! Look!” the man wailed, pointing at the blood-covered ghoul who’d just emerged from the torture chamber. The crowd paused for a moment, gazed at me, and then broke into an outright fray as they overreacted in panic.
I ignored them and ran past the gawking pedestrians and away from the sirens, into the nearby alley, and toward Tess. I moved past trash cans surrounded by rats, past graffiti, and jumped over a homeless man. I darted through the alley, sirens growing quieter behind me, taking solace in the fact that the onlookers would find it difficult to describe me. I was so soaked in blood and sweat that I looked like a wild man; my hair was scraggly, jet-black but matted. It looked like I was wearing bracelets on my wrists because the zip ties had penetrated my skin so deeply.
Tess, Tess, Tess, I thought as I ran, panting heavily.
My heart was like a war drum in my chest. I had never wanted to reach somewhere as badly as I wanted to arrive at the Mustang, as badly as I wanted to reach Tess. The sirens, the trashcans, the raised voices of the people on the street, the rats and the flies and the stench of blood and filth—all of it paled when I thought of Tess, waiting for me in the car, worrying about the sirens and hoping that I had not been killed.
Finally, I emerged onto the cul-de-sac. At first, I was shocked by how unchanged it was. Though it was pandemonium about five blocks down, the pedestrians at the end of the street walked up and down the street as though nothing was wrong. Nobody looked down the road, nobody pointed at me and shouted, “There!” It was quiet, almost peaceful. There were mothers pushing strollers, men in workman’s uniforms and two old people using walkers to make their way down the street
As I ran toward the car, a black crow landed on one of the branches of the brown-leaved tree, tilting its head and cawing at me. I found himself wondering if it was the same crow from the motel, the one who’d watched me from the other side of the road. Maybe death is following you, brother. Maybe it has infected you, like a disease, I heard my brother Kevin’s voice say.
I pushed the thought away; it was absurd to consider it, but I couldn’t ignore the coincidence.
But when I reached the car the thought came back full-force.
The driver’s seat was empty.
A sensation like a punch hit me in the chest, and I started struggling to suck in breaths.
“Tess!” I called, my voice cracking. “Tess! Tess!”
I turned around, and my eyes darted around the road, flickering wildly at the curbside and the trees and the balconies up above to make sure that Tess wasn’t hiding anywhere and waiting for me to reappear. I even ran to the back of the car and popped the trunk, but there was nothing inside but her suitcase. I shoved my suitcase next to it and slammed the trunk closed.
“No! No! Tess! Where are you?” I practically screamed as I walked around to the front of the car.
I opened the door and looked at the floor, near the foot pedals, frantically searching for any sign of her or clues to what had happened while I was inside of the Drunk Harpy. All I could think was that she had run away. That all of the violence had been too much for her, and she had not been able to take it. She’d run because she didn’t want to be near a black-hearted hitman any longer. Maybe she didn’t want to deal with my asshole tendencies and inability to be the man that she wanted—a man who was open and honest about his past. I couldn’t blame her, and I figured that it would be only a matter of time before she gave up and said fuck it. I was a complicated and broken man who had no idea how to start loving a woman openly and honestly. I was a contract killer and a prisoner of my own state of mind. I knew that I was detached and emotionless, living in darkness and not some prince charming that women dreamed would deliver their version of “happily ever after.”
However, I loved Tess. Yes, I loved her, and part of me kicked myself for refusing to admit it for so long. And now she was gone. But where would she run to? And why now? Why not run from me before when she had the chance?
“Fuck,” I growled, the sirens growing loude
r in the distance; it sounded as if the whole police force was descending on the Drunk Harpy.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” I was starting to panic.
I climbed into the car and looked down at the passenger seat. I was about to look away when I saw her eyeliner. It was the tool which made her eyes so dark, sultry, and alluring. The cap was off, and it rested on its side on the leather seat. I reached down and picked it up, and that was when I saw the scrawled word, written in quick strokes, almost illegible. But I could have read that fucking word in any circumstances:
Zharkov.
I opened the door and looked around the street, carefully searching for anyone who was watching me or any of Zharkov’s soldiers that could be hiding out, waiting to follow me. I crouched down near the gutter a few yards from the car, and there, I found it: the cap to the eyeliner.
I had only ever felt like this once before in my life, and that was when Kevin was killed. It was a feeling that can only be described as empty, destitute, frantic, and despondent. It was as though all the positivity, all the warmth and the hope and the—love—had been combined into a soft ball that had sat within my chest. And now a line had been lowered down my throat, a hook sunk deep into the ball, and the softness wrenched up my throat, choking me. I took a few steps back and clasped my neck, panting through gritted teeth, rage and despair brewing like a fucking cocktail inside of me.
For a moment time stopped. Everything stood still. I wasn’t a hitman, I wasn’t covered in blood, and I wasn’t even a man. I was overcome with a feeling of pure, unadulterated longing. The shadows of the trees seemed to warp and transform into a shadow of images of Tess, taunting imitations of her beauty that reached out to me, beckoned me…and moved me beyond belief. I was about to lose it…
“Stop it,” I grunted, running a hand through my matted hair, my hand coming away slick with sweat and blood. “Stop it. Get a fucking grip.” I tried to state it coldly even though I was burning up inside.