Vigilante

by Jessica Gadziala

  Which, in a way, made me an accomplice to at least three murders so far.

  A child sex trafficker, a serial rapist, and a pimp who beat one of his prostitutes so badly that she had to have her jaw wired shut to heal.

  I was okay with being a part of ending that.

  I knew, though, that someday, it would be over. Someday, Luce was going to need to retire, hand over the reins, find a different way to spend his time.

  And that was okay.

  We would figure that out together when it came to be.

  Luce - 3 years

  There was a long pause, Evan watching me with a face I suddenly couldn't read.

  "What do you think?" I asked, shifting feet, feeling uncomfortable.

  "More importantly," she said, still not giving anything away, "what do you think?"

  "These are the kinds of decisions that I believe we are supposed to make together," I tried. "You know, or that's what I've seen in movies anyway."

  That softened her face, making her lips tease up. "You know, I mean... it's not like you have to retire from your old job. This sounds more like a part-time gig."

  This was true.

  See, it started out innocently enough.

  I had been at She's Bean Around, having coffee like I did all the time, teasing Jazzy when she was between customers. Then in walked her man- Detective Lloyd.

  And Lloyd had been doing big things for himself over the past several years, making a name and reputation for himself.

  There were rumors of captain being a title he might be sporting soon, being one of the few members on the force who wasn't in someone's pocket.

  "Alright," he said, dropping down across from me at a table, holding a reusable cup between his hands because Jazzy refused to give him paper because 'he's got two hands, and can wash out a damn coffee cup' or something like that.

  "Alright," I agreed, brows drawing together, my spine feeling a little stiffer.

  "Let's not sit here and pretend we both don't know who you are, and what you do."

  "Is this an official meeting, Detective? Shouldn't I have bracelets on?"

  He exhaled a breath, leaning back in his chair for a second, looking over at Jazzy who sent him a saucy wink that managed to make his hard face seem just a sight softer. "About what you do, this is me unofficially talking. About this next part, it is official."

  "Alright," I said, even more confused. "What's up, Lloyd?"

  "I work in a department full of fucking incompetents."

  "Not one for mincing words, huh?" I asked with a chuckle, knowing just how right he was about the force.

  "We've been known to hire consultants. Shrinks. Profilers. Artists. Fucking psychics..."

  I knew where it was going.

  And, oddly, my first reaction wasn't shock or fear.

  No.

  I felt... relief.

  "And what would my actual title be there, Lloyd?" I asked with a smirk. "Resident Vigilante?"

  He snorted at that, giving me the closest thing to a smile I had ever seen him give anyone other than Jazzy. "Cyber Crimes Expert Consultant should do." There was a short pause. "Consultants make fucking bank," he added, sweetening the pot.

  So, that was what brought me to informing Evan of the possibility.

  Sure, she was blissfully happy at the job she got at a local independent vitamin store, taking to supplements with the same enthusiasm she took to poisons. Except now, she had herself, her mother, Barrett, and me as her personal guinea pigs to try fixing whatever ailed us with her new vitamin regimens.

  And, yes, I made money - sometimes very substantial amounts of money - out of the Bitcoin accounts of scumbags I took out.

  It just wasn't steady enough.

  I wanted to know there was always going to be something coming to me.

  Even if it was on the other side of the law than I usually operated on.

  "You think I should consider it," I guessed.

  "I think that while it is nice that you came to me with this, that the decision is yours to make. It doesn't matter to me what you do for work. I just want you to be comfortable and happy with your choice."

  So that was how I became a Cyber Crimes Expert Consultant.

  Evan - 4 years

  I turned off the timer on my phone, looking down at the stick in my hand with an odd, strobe-like feeling in my chest and belly. I wasn't sure if it was worry, anticipation, hope, unease, or a mix of all of them. All I knew was it was making me even more nauseated than I already was. Which was saying something.

  I don't know what the hell happened.

  I had been on the Pill since I was nineteen.

  I never missed a day.

  It was a freak thing.

  But I was staring down at two pink lines.

  Luce and I, well, we never really talked about kids. Not about having them anyway.

  I was never one of those women with baby fever. I had never felt that "uterus crunch" I heard other women talk about when I saw a cute baby. That just wasn't how I was wired.

  I liked babies. I had bathed, fed, rocked, and sang to countless babies all around the world. I had seen some take their first steps, say their first words.

  I just never really thought about having one myself.

  I guess this was nature's way of saying ready or not, here it comes!

  There were three crisp knocks to the door, making me jump hard.

  "So, what's it say?"

  A snorting laugh escaped me as I looked up in the mirror to find myself smiling.

  Because I hadn't told him.

  I hadn't even whispered about thinking I might be pregnant.

  He had no idea I bought a test.

  I just... wanted to know before I got him worrying too.

  But, I guess, this was Luce we were talking about.

  He knew - and saw - all.

  I reached for the door, unlocking it.

  A second later, it pushed open, and in he walked.

  Four years later, and he was still in a black hoodie with white hood pulls. True, he wasn't weird with me about his scars anymore, but I think it was just habit. In fact, for his last birthday, I had gotten him a gift certificate to a local tattoo parlor where some guy named Hunter, who specialized in covering scars with tattoos, drew me up this huge, intricate, black & gray biomechanical piece.

  I wanted him to never see 'slave' when he looked at himself again.

  I was nervous giving it to him, but he had actually freaking... lit up.

  But he told me the piece needed an alteration.

  He wouldn't tell me what it was.

  Not until he came home with it on his skin.

  He had Hunter add a bright, red, vivid anatomically correct heart in the center. And, if you looked closely enough, you could see "Ev" in one of the valves.

  And me, well, I cried like a freaking baby.

  But he still was a fan of his hoodies.

  Quite frankly, so was I.

  "Well?" he asked, looking a little smug, like he was proud of himself.

  "How did you know?" I asked, turning the test away from his all-seeing eyes.

  "You've been pushing around your food more than eating it. You're pale. Your tits are sore. And, you know, you missed your fucking period, Ev. Kinda hard to not put all that together."

  "We never talked about kids," I said, tone careful.

  "It was never a factor before," he said, shrugging, reaching for the stick, and turning it over.

  "Luce..."

  He didn't speak for a long moment.

  Then his eyes raised, unreadable, as they often were.

  "Maybe we should keep the cabin in the woods," he said, lips twitching slightly. "If this is a girl, and some shithead ever breaks her heart..."

  "You can't murder and melt our daughter's boyfriends, Luce," I said with a genuine smile.

  "Wanna bet?"

  Luce - 22 years

  "No."

  "Dad..." Louana, who had been called Lou sinc
e pretty much day one said in that whining tone only teenaged daughters could truly pull off.

  She was the spitting image of her mother and grandmother- long and lean with shiny dark brown hair, tan skin, and delicate bone structure. The only thing she got from me at all was her eyes which were a little darker, a little more deep-set than Ev's.

  I can't read them, Evan had complained when Lou was seven and in a particularly bad phase of trying to pass off fibs as truths, just like I can't read yours.

  "No," I repeated. "That is a word that works in all languages. Including Brazilian Portuguese. Which you do not need to know since you will not be going to Brazil."

  "Everyone else is..."

  "Don't. Don't make me do it, Lou," I implored. "I will fucking hate myself if I have to use that goddamn phrase." Her arms crossed over her chest; her eyes went challenging. I was always out of my depths with her, and she knew it. Fuck. "If all your friends jumped off... Jesus Christ. I can't do it. Ev, you're up," I said, raking a hand down my face.

  "Lou, you know why we don't go to Brazil," Ev said, dropping down next to me, legs going up over mine.

  "Alejandro has been dead for, what, over twenty years now. I don't think we have to worry about his enemies, Mom."

  So, we had decided, when she was old enough, to be brutally honest with Lou. She had grown up to be mature, level-headed, rational, able to put things in boxes, and analyze them accordingly. She knew of Alejandro, what he had done to her grandmother, how he had taken Ev and raised her, what he had done to women all over the world, and what he did for work.

  "No, neat," Gabriela said softly, but there was steel in her voice too. "Tell your friends that Turks and Caicos is lovely this time of year."

  We didn't want to keep Lou locked up and away from the world. Evan wanted her to have the luxury of travel like she had growing up. As such, twice a year, every year since she was two, we had been choosing places to visit. This was done with extreme scrutiny of locations that might have any ties to the late Alejandro Cruz.

  Lou had seen some of the most beautiful places of the world, had played with children of all different cultures, had - and this set my teeth on edge just thinking - as she was older, flirted with boys her age across several continents.

  But Brazil, while Gabriela's and Evan's homeland, had always been strictly off-limits. Because of Alejandro, sure, but also what I had done while I was there.

  Was that maybe fair to Lou?

  No.

  But it was just how it had to be.

  Lou's brow rose, eyes - which I could read since they were just like mine - going curious. "You would pay for Turks and Caicos?" she asked in all her eighteen-year-old excitement.

  Ev shot me a look, and I shrugged. "If it means you won't even think about visiting Brazil until you're, I don't know, thirty, then yes, we will happily pay for Turks and Caicos."

  This declaration was followed by a squeal that made Diego squawk loudly. "Oh, hush," Lou said, shaking her head at him. "You're just jealous because you can't go. Okay. I'm going to call everyone."

  She scrambled off, and Gabriela gave us a nod as she moved back into the kitchen where she was cooking a massive Sunday dinner.

  "You know," Ev said, resting her head into my shoulder. "We did pretty well with her. You know, considering I was a poisons expert and you a vigilante killer."

  "I'm almost offended she came out so normal," I agreed, making her laugh as my arms went around her.

  "We're going to have to tell her about what we did in Brazil eventually," she said, being a voice of reason.

  "Sure, but I just bought us another twelve years before we have to open up that can of worms."

  "That's true," she agreed, kissing my neck. "You do know she is bringing her boyfriend on this trip, right?"

  I didn't.

  Because I generally chose not to think too hard about that guy, believing whole-heartedly that not a single guy on earth would ever be worthy of her.

  Then again, lowly old me got Ev, so who was I to talk?

  "Fuck... I do still have some lye laying around downstairs, right?"

  XX

  Keep turning for a sexy excerpt from Luce's Lovers fan fiction website.

  BONUS MATERIAL

  Luce'sLovers//writing//fanfic//erotica//pg.26

  - Scene 18. @ Work -

  He wasn't supposed to be here.

  I told him the last time in the alley.

  It was over.

  We couldn't do this anymore.

  It was wrong on every conceivable level.

  But there he was regardless, in the doorway of the shop, the rain cascading down the back of his already drenched shirt, making it cling to the muscles beneath. My eye slipped down to his arm, seeing a bead of water sliding down the intricate red and black tattoo that covered almost every square inch of skin. I had to force my gaze back up, not let it wander downward toward the fly of his jeans, knowing I would find his cock straining against the thick material, begging me to go to him, drop to my knees, and suck him deep.

  Yes.

  Eyes up.

  I needed safe places to look.

  Like his jaw.

  There was scruff there, a good three day's worth. It would scrape across my inner thighs, leaving beard burn on the silky skin for days after, as he moved inward to find my clit, sucking it hard like he knew I liked.

  Crap.

  Okay.

  The jaw was most assuredly not a safe place.

  Edge of the ear, then. Yeah, that was as tame as you could get.

  Except I knew from experience that he hissed and sank his fingers into my ass when I traced that spot with my tongue, when I nipped it with my teeth.

  Ear was out too then.

  What was left?

  His hair?

  Yeah, no. I liked how that looked with his face buried between my thighs while he devoured me with his tongue, penetrated me with his fingers. And I liked how it felt between my fingers when he was buried deep inside me, riding me hard and fierce.

  "Daya," he growled.

  He always growled it.

  He never said it in a normal tone; it was always in that deep, primal, sexy rumble that made my insides turn to mush, made all my defenses crumble.

  "You shouldn't be here," I forced myself to say, knowing it was useless, but trying to put up some sort of defense.

  I needed to stop being so weak.

  I needed to stop giving into him.

  There was nothing wrong with a nice fling with a man.

  But Luce was not just any man.

  Luce was a vigilante.

  He was the vigilante.

  He took out the scum of the earth.

  And then he came to me, cock hard, body hungry, smelling of blood and death and primal need.

  But I told him as I shimmied back into my panties in the alley beside my apartment building the last time that it was, in fact, the last time. I couldn't keep doing this. I couldn't keep coming (both literally and metaphorically) when he crooked his finger.

  I needed to find some willpower.

  I needed him to respect my - admittedly very wobbly, hardly standing - boundaries.

  It was wrong.

  Normal women weren't turned on by men who showed up with someone's blood still under their fingernails, smelling of the smoke from bonfires of charred bodies.

  What was wrong with me?

  But then he moved inward, reaching behind him to turn the lock on the door and flip the closed sign. There were three hours until closing. True, it was a Wednesday night in November, and that meant we would likely be dead until closing and that I was, essentially, just being paid to sit and write, but rules were rules.

  The Creamery was supposed to be open until ten.

  Though, if there was anything I had learned from my time with Luce, he always made me somehow think it was a good idea to throw the rules out the window.

  Still, I moved behind the counter, wiping the surface with a rag I had dropped
there, despite it being as clean as it had been when I wiped it five minutes before.

  I had a feeling it wouldn't be quite so clean within another couple of minutes.

  "Luce," I said, meaning for it to come out firm, but hearing only a breathless need in my own voice.

  "Yeah, that's what you're going to be screaming in a minute. Bend over that counter," he demanded, stalking around the side where a small, hip-level 'employees only' door was situated, ignoring it, and coming in behind said counter with me.

  All the air seemed to rush out of my lungs as he came up to me, making me angle my head up to keep eye-contact.

  A drop of water slid down a strand of his dark hair and free fell until it found a home.

  Under the collar of my shirt.

  Down between my breasts.

  A shiver coursed through my system, making his eyes heat all the more. I'd swear the ice cream in the freezers beside us started melting.

  "I don't have patience for games, Daya," he ground out, hands going to my hips, sinking into the softness hard, turning me, then shoving me down over the counter, my ass up in the air.

  I could feel his soaked body press in behind me, wetting the back of my thighs.

  I shouldn't have liked it.

  When he came in and demanded things, when he pushed me into the positions he wanted.

  I barely knew him.

  I didn't even know his full name.

  I had never seen him in daylight.

  He only ever spoke to me directly before and while fucking me.

  Then he zipped and left.

  I should have felt used, disgusted with myself, something.

  But all I felt was turned on.

  His hands left my hips, grabbing the waistband of my jeans and panties, and yanking down hard, the material scraping over my skin because, apparently, Luce didn't have time to mess with buttons or zippers.

  Except his own.

  As he freed his straining cock.

  "Ass up!" he demanded when my hips dropped slightly. A slap landed hard on my right butt cheek, the sound bouncing off the walls in the small shop, the pain radiating through me, making another stab of desire pierce my core. I felt his cock swipe against the spot that was likely bright red from his hand, making a wet trail of pre-cum mark me. "You want my cock, Daya?" he asked as his fingers slid between my thighs to stroke up my wet pussy, to find my clit and pulse his fingers against it.