I guess my father had always been pretty damn good at playing his cards close to his vest.
And, honestly, of all people, I was worried about telling him the least. Well, him and some of my uncles. Wolf, Pagan, Edison, and Adler in particular likely wouldn't even raise a brow to the information. They'd all led such colorful lives, had seen and done some terrible things. And I guess you could say the same for my father.
He had always been careful when telling us war stories, not wanting to get too gory on the details. But everyone else talked. And Iggy and I had a tendency to eavesdrop when we had sleepovers at the clubhouse.
There was the war, of course, and an untold number of bodies in the wake there.
There had been the time he saved my mom.
More bodies.
There was a story I caught bits and pieces of about there being a rat in his club and how he had handled it out in the back shed before the shed blew up one day, taking all the evidence of the bloodshed with it.
He had lived a very different life than most people. He was in charge of a ton of men who had lived similarly colorful lives. He didn't regard it the same way my mom and some of my aunts and even a few of my uncles would.
That didn't mean, though, that he had to like it.
Because no matter what, I was his little girl. Even if I had been on my own since I was sixteen.
So of course he wasn't going to let me go off on a job on my own. Not when he knew that was where I was going. Not when he had twenty or so men at his beck and call, ready to lay down their lives if he asked it of them.
That said, why would he send Vance? When West was clearly more likely handle such a unique situation? I didn't know his history per se, but it sounded like he had known his fair share of knock-down-drag-outs.
Vance was a biker. I was sure he did drops. He might have even dealt with some sticky situations, but things were relatively calm with the MC. There were no bodies hitting the ground. Vance was the last person who should have been coming with me.
Especially on this particular job.
This one—this was going to get bad.
Blood was going to paint the walls, make a river of the halls.
That is if I had anything to say about it.
This was the big one. The one I had been trying to pin down almost from the beginning. These men were the worst of the worst.
This would be ugly.
It was going to make me ugly.
Because I wasn't just doing a job, exacting a cold sort of revenge.
Oh, no.
I was going to enjoy this.
I was going to fucking love this.
I was going to take actual physical pleasure in pressing my blade into their throats, hearing them beg for mercy, then sinking that blade in, slowly, so fucking slowly, refusing them any fucking mercy.
They didn't deserve it.
I didn't want anyone to be a part of that.
But most especially, I didn't want Vance to be a part of that. To see me like that. To know just how dark I could get, how much joy I could gain from doing something so unimaginable.
I knew that Vance was still seeing the old Ferryn when he looked at me. And maybe there was more of her still hanging around than I realized, but this was a surefire way to show him just how much I wasn't like that anymore.
A part of me hated the idea that he would see the real me. And therefore, never be able to look at me again. At least not like he had looked at me the night before in bed. With sweetness. With tenderness. Like I was someone that could easily be loved, someone who could accept that kind of softness.
"He asked me because he knows I care about you. But I would want to come regardless."
"I don't want you to come."
"I'm afraid that is not going to be a factor."
"You don't know where I'm going. I could lose you—What?" I asked when he smirked.
"On that?" he asked, waving to my bike. "I mean, maybe you could lose me in some nondescript black sedan. But not on a bike."
"Vance, listen, this is going to be bad."
"All the more reason for me to be there. I'll have your back."
I won't lie, someone having my back on this one wouldn't be terrible. But that someone being Holden, who knew already how brutal I could be, how I could turn into a wild animal. Someone who turned into one himself so he didn't judge me for my claws and teeth.
Short of that, I would rather take my chances alone.
"You don't understand," I hissed, feeling a completely humiliating sting at the backs of my eyes. Like I was going to friggen cry. I never cried.
"Hey, help me understand then," he demanded softly, snagging my chin, forcing me to face him.
I swallowed hard, something that forced the lump out of my throat, letting all the words tumble out unbidden, unfiltered, raw and real.
"I don't want you to see me like that!"
"Like what?" he asked, brows furrowing, thumb moving distractingly up my jaw for a second.
"Ugly," I admitted.
"Ace, you could never be ugly."
"Not like that," I snapped, yanking away. "A different kind of ugly. Soul ugly."
"I think I know a thing or two about your soul by now, Ferryn. It's not ugly."
"It can be."
"Everyone's can be. We're all capable of angry and ugly and bitter."
"This is different. Most people's angry and ugly and bitter doesn't include blood splatter and screams for mercy."
"No. But I know that going in, Ace. And I know why you do it. And I'm fine with it."
"Fine with it," I scoffed, shaking my head. "Fine with it. You are fine with me grabbing a knife and slicing someone's throat right in front of your eyes? Even if he is unarmed? Even if you don't know what he did?"
"I do know what he did, though."
He didn't know about these guys in particular though. Some part of me actually wanted to protect him from it. The worst part of the world. The ugliest part of humanity.
"Vance..."
"Ferryn..." he mimicked, making a small laugh/snort hybrid escape me.
"We're getting close."
"Getting close to what?" I asked.
"To the real truth. If your stubborn ass wasn't so fucking guarded, we'd have gotten there already and we could be on our way."
My gaze fell from his, studying the tips of my shoes, scuffed from endless wears. The marks made it hard to get the blood out all the way. I should have gotten a new pair ages ago. But I had a hard time letting go, I guess.
Story of my fucking life.
"You're going to look at me differently after this. And I... I don't think I could take that," I admitted.
Then, too chickenshit to face the aftermath of my words, jumped on my bike, turned it over, and peeled off.
There was only a short moment before I heard him following behind me.
It was a long drive.
I hoped that by the end of it, I could pull myself together, bank down the burning thoughts, focus on the task before me.
Rough intel said four traffickers, but a likelihood of security.
And, yeah, that made sense.
Alone, the plan would be to take out the first couple as silently as possible moving through to get the others. If they ganged up all at once, I knew I was in over my head.
With backup, I could handle more. Providing I wasn't distracted by trying to look out for Vance.
It wasn't that I didn't think he could take care of himself. I was sure he'd been to the gym, had gotten into the ring with some of the guys, had maybe even taken some mixed martial arts classes with some of the teachers there. That, combined with pure survival instinct, meant that he could likely hold his own well enough.
But there would be a part of me that felt responsible for his well-being since the only reason he would be there was because I was there, because my father made him follow me.
I wasn't sure I could forgive myself if something happened to him.
N
o.
I couldn't think like that.
I couldn't let the doubts in, water them, watch them take root. Once they started growing out of control, it was impossible to see through them.
I had to focus.
I had to see him as an asset.
Because this was too important.
This was the most important job in my, erm, career.
"Alright," Vance said a few hours later at the second gas stop since we got on the road. "You're going to have to give me something," he told me, leaning back against the pump nearest mine.
He was right.
He couldn't go in blind.
"I don't have an exact number. But I am expecting five or six," I told him, figuring blunt was the best method. There was no sugar coating something like this. He would need to steel himself for what was to come.
"And we both know you've trained enough to take on four of them by yourself," he told me, giving me those dancing eyes of his. If there was any hesitance in him, he didn't show it.
"There shouldn't be any victims there. Not this time. This is more of like the traffickers' headquarters. They don't bring clients there. It... it makes things easier."
"I imagine so," he agreed, nodding.
"No one is innocent when you go in there."
"Got it."
"This is going to be inside an abandoned coffee place."
"Traffickers squat in abandoned buildings?"
"When they can get away with it. It's always better when nothing traces back to them. Abandoned buildings, foreclosed houses the bank hasn't put back on the market yet. They move around a lot, so places that don't require contracts work best for them."
They also really liked the sleep-and-fuck style motels that let paperwork slide if enough money passed hands. These guys, in particular, liked motels. Which was why it had been so hard to pin them down. I couldn't do what I needed to do in a motel. First, because of the obvious risk of being overheard. But also because of cameras and the likelihood of being seen by others in the vicinity.
When I was on a job where there were no victims to alert the police, it sometimes took weeks or months for the bodies to be found. Usually by then, the remains were horribly degraded, evidence swept or rained or hauled away by scavengers looking for a meal.
Which, well, was good for me.
I was careful. But modern advances meant that even careful people could get caught by a stray hair or drop of blood.
"What happens after the guys are taken care of?"
"Do you mean do I bury bodies?" I asked, watching as he shrugged. "I clean up any obvious signs of my being there. Which is hopefully not a whole hell of a lot. I wear gloves. My hair is relatively short. I try to avoid bleeding all over the place. So I just open a door or window and leave."
"Open a door or window?"
"To let scavengers in, to let the wind in."
"Wouldn't it be better to leave them closed so things don't start to smell?"
"Ever smell a decaying body?"
"Can't say I have."
"They smell for like a mile. You know when you are in the vicinity of one. Even if the windows are closed. Air escapes eventually. If the house is in a relatively congested area or something, I might forego the window or door. It really depends on how worried I am about evidence."
"Meaning how much blood you left behind?"
"You'd be surprised. Even with the odds against me, sometimes I manage to get away with just some bruises. These kinds of guys are generally more used to using guns, not hand-to-hand combat."
"Well, let's hope for that this time."
"No promises. You want to follow me in there, it could get dicey. You might be sporting some new scars when we get back to Navesink Bank."
"Lucky I got myself a girl who seems to dig scars, huh?" he asked, climbing on his bike, turning it over, cutting off any objections I might have had about him calling me his.
Because, well, I wasn't.
One sex session did not a relationship make.
And I wasn't exactly a relationship kind of girl anyway.
There was no denying, though, as I got on my bike and led us out of the parking lot, that there was a part of me that was buzzing with the idea of him claiming me. Even if the other part of me knew it couldn't happen, that he would revoke his feelings as soon as this job was done, that he was a good man and I couldn't subject him to being in a relationship with someone like me.
"Where is the coffee place?" Vance asked when we finally reached the town we needed, but I had driven us right up to a patch of dense woods.
"Through the woods. We're hiding the bikes in here so no one sees them," I told him, climbing off mine, leading it into the woods a of couple yards, flipping up the seat to dig around in the storage compartment. "Here," I told him, handing him a pair of gloves I hoped would fit him. "And here," I added, giving him one of my spare knives.
"West gave me this," he told me, showing me the hunting knife.
"Nice." It had a good blade. Thick enough to withstand multiple stabs if need be, not likely to break off in the bone. "But take the backup too. I always have a few even though I prefer my karambit. You never know what might happen in a fight."
"Got it," he agreed, slipping the extra knife into his boot which was a decent place for it. I kept one there as well. "So this is it? We walk through the woods, we sneak into the building, and we get to work?"
"Pretty much," I agreed, rolling a crick out of my neck, trying to take a few breaths in, chasing away the familiar surge of adrenaline. It could be useful in the right amount. It made your reflexes faster. It made you sharper. But too much could make you lightheaded, could make your heart race, could convince you that you were having a goddamn heart attack. "You need a couple minutes to prepare yourself?"
"I've had hours for that," he told me. "I think I'm good."
He wasn't.
And I hated that he might never truly be good again.
Because of me.
Because he felt the need to protect me.
Because my father made sure he did.
It was too late for regrets, though. This was going to happen. We would have to deal with the fallout after.
A few minutes later, we stood at the other end of the woods, looking at a building that had seen better days—white siding splattered with green, chinks taken out in more places than you could count, the back screen blowing around in the wind, creating an eerie clapping noise every few seconds. It would made good sound cover.
There looked to be a light on in a back room facing us, away from the road where someone might see it and report it.
"Ready?" I asked, feeling the fire start to burn through my veins. Strong. Familiar. Effortless.
The planning, the waiting—I sucked at that. And maybe an argument could be made for me sucking at the aftermath sometimes as well.
But this?
This, I was good at.
This was why I had worked so hard to turn myself into a weapon.
"Yes." There was certainty in his voice, something I found comfort in.
"Hey Vance?" I called, looking at his lovely profile for a moment, not wanting to feel anything, but getting a stab of need so hard it nearly brought me to my knees.
"Yeah, Ace?" he asked, looking over at me.
"These guys?" I started, jerking my chin toward the building. "They aren't just normal traffickers."
"No?" he asked, brow furrowing. "Do they have a specialty or something?"
"Yeah," I agreed, jaw so tight it was hard to even get the words out. "Toddlers."
As soon as the shock on his face faded to rage, I knew it was time. I knew he was at my level. I knew he could do it.
Finding the back door locked, I slit the screen, crouching in the open space to work on the lock while Vance clapped the metal against the building so no one suspected anything was amiss.
Feeling the lock disengage, I tucked the kit away, giving Vance a nod.
He pushed the door
hard against the other side of the building as I pulled the handle.
And just like that, we were in.
Vance moved in at my six, both of us holding our chosen weapons, glancing around the darkened space.
My footsteps—this time, our footsteps—always sounded like thunderclaps when I was tip-toeing through an abandoned, nearly silent space.
There were voices coming from the back where we'd seen the light.
From the sound of things, a poker game. If you took a deep breath, you could smell the cigars, the cheap vodka.
A door opening right between me and Vance nearly made gasp erupt from me.
"H..." the guy started, jerking back at seeing us in the shadows.
I went to move, but Vance proved faster, clamping a hand over the man's mouth, jerking him back against his chest, holding his head arched backward by the top of his hair.
Then he did it.
He gave me a nod.
He gave me permission to bleed a life out right there on his chest.
Not much of a life, one that lured children out of cars, pulled them right out of grocery carts when their parents looked away, and then sold them to the highest bidder to endure hell until their bodies gave out. But a life. Something Vance likely held as more valuable than I did.
There was a moment's hesitation before I saw him go to reach for his own blade.
But I couldn't let that happen.
It was my kill.
If he thought he could handle all my ugly, I had to show him, to prove him right or wrong.
It doesn't take long to bleed out.
Longer than the movies, of course.
It wasn't a slice and instant death.
If you are good at what you do—and I am—you sever the trachea below the larynx, something that prevents the initial shocked screaming. But the killer was making sure you got that carotid and jugular, preventing new oxygenated blood from reaching the brain, and making the blood flow easily from the brain until there was unconsciousness and then death.
If you are standing there watching it happen like we were, it felt like hours passed as you waited for the body to slump, for the life to leave the eyes.
The Rise of Ferryn Page 17