by Marni Mann
“I’m going—”
“Arin,” he said, interrupting me.
The intensity was almost at the peak. “Yes?”
“Tell me about your daddy.”
“My daddy?” I said, sounding surprised, slowing the movement of my hand because of Huck’s question, the feeling dissolving so fast.
He turned my face, our eyes fixed.
His reminded me of Yellow’s.
Of the one I’d killed.
“Yes, Arin. I want to know all about your daddy.”
Twenty-Eight
Anonymous
Before
Do you know what it’s like to have someone you love get taken away from you?
I do.
You will, too.
Twenty-Nine
Shank
Before
After I finished my shower, one where some soap and water had actually touched my skin, I returned to my cell. There was an envelope sitting on my bed of blankets. I didn’t have to open it to know whom it’d come from. I could tell from the handwriting.
Fucking Anonymous.
I stared at it for a while. There was no reason to tear into it right away. Nothing written would change anything. I was in here. The threat was coming from somewhere outside these bars.
I was helpless.
But, so far, I was still alive, and the last letter had been a bunch of bullshit.
Half a day later was when I finally read it.
You will, too.
I smiled as I read the last word.
Lies.
All of it.
I was alone, inside this fucking prison, and I had no one on the outside.
You couldn’t take something from nothing. All this sorry-ass fool had was some paper, an address, and empty goddamn threats.
I wasn’t scared.
Mind games didn’t work on me.
But then a thought came to me. What if Anonymous is talking about the kid? That shit passed as quickly as it had come because there was no way they could trace the kid back to me. We didn’t have the same last name. I wasn’t on his birth certificate. We hadn’t been in touch for all that long.
Fuck them.
I tore the letter up, stuck it in the toilet, and flushed.
I didn’t give it my piss this time.
Anonymous didn’t even deserve that.
Thirty
The Kid
Before
Every time I think I know you, one of your letters arrives, and I learn I really know nothing at all.
Every time I think I know myself, I find out there’s a part of me I never expected.
A part I’m not sure I want to understand.
A part that hurts to think about.
The part I got from you.
But, when I look at myself in the mirror, I see me.
Normal old me.
Student. Skateboarder. Beach lover.
But I come from you, so does it mean I have another side, too?
Does it mean I’m capable of the things you’ve done?
Does it mean I’ll never really have normal?
I know my start was different than most. I know I lived in a prison. I know I was surrounded by death and blood and violence.
I know I loved a stuffed rat because of you.
I know all the things I inherited from my mother.
Now, I know what I inherited from you.
And it terrifies me.
You didn’t love my mother.
You really despised her.
I don’t have a problem with that.
My problem is what you did to her. How ugly you were with her.
What you took without her consent.
God, I hope that isn’t how she got pregnant.
I worry it is, that I was conceived during her fucking screaming.
I feel sick.
I don’t want to be you.
I won’t ever be you.
And I know I should probably stop writing you.
But I can’t.
At least not until I hear the rest.
Thirty-One
Shank
Before
It had been a month since I got the letter from Anonymous. They were full of shit, just as I had suspected. If their threat were serious, they would have already killed the kid by now. A month was way too long to wait, especially when you were dealing with an expert like me. Four weeks gave me time to plan and set things in motion and protect the kid if I were worried about his safety. I wasn’t. I knew that motherfucker had no idea the kid was my child.
Anonymous could suck my cock.
That wasn’t even the issue.
It was the kid and the fucking response he’d sent me. He was feeling all sorry for himself and weepy over what I’d done to his mother.
What the hell had he expected? For me to tell him that I’d fucked her on a bed of roses? That I’d taken my time and made sure she had gotten off?
Shit, that made me laugh.
Beard had needed screams, so I had given him some.
I had needed to come, so I had.
There was nothing wrong with what I had done.
And I didn’t give a fuck if I’d upset the kid.
He’d asked for the truth, and he couldn’t handle it.
That wasn’t my problem.
But, now, he wanted to hear more.
I picked up the small stack of paper and a pen, and I started writing.
Like I’d said in my last letter, Beard was back. The morning after he’d heard your mother’s screams, he was like a whole new fucking person. He tossed all the pills. He started sleeping. He showered regularly. He was alive again. And he never wanted to leave the prison. He wanted to work every single fucking day without any time off.
Now that he wasn’t burying himself in drugs, a hate boiled inside him. I got excited, just thinking about how fucking angry he had been back then. It was so bad, there were times the inmates would be lucky if they landed in my OR and not Beard’s. That said a lot, coming from me.
He’d always liked working at the prison.
But, now, he had a place to play.
Having Beard back meant Tyler couldn’t stay in her cell. And, because he’d returned to us so fast and he wanted to get straight to work, I had to get her the hell out of there.
I didn’t even have enough time to kill her first.
So, while Diego distracted him, Toy and I carried her out. Then, once she was away from the building and in a car Toy had rented, Diego fixed the feed on the monitor, so it showed all the cells. The audio and video that had been recorded of her was deleted off the separate server and saved to a thumb drive.
I kept that thing in my fucking pocket.
Once Toy and I got her out, I took a few days off. I told the guys Toy and I needed some time away, and we were headed to Caracas. Really, we were looking for a place to put Tyler.
After a few stops, we finally found something. It was a small shack a couple of miles from the prison. It had a bedroom and a bathroom and a kitchen. That was it. We didn’t need big. We just needed a place to store her until I could figure out what the fuck to do with her.
You see, I didn’t kill in Venezuela unless it was at the prison.
I couldn’t kill her in the States. That was far too risky.
I’d have to transport her to somewhere in South America.
But, over time, that proved to be tricky. Beard was involved with the flight plans and the scheduling. He knew who was in the plane at all times, and he was friends with the pilots. I could have come up with a lie and had everyone on board without them knowing whom they were lying about. But I’d learned over the years that people were terrible fucking liars.
So, until I could come up with a plan, Toy and Tyler were going to live at the shack, and Toy would make sure she didn’t escape. I hated having him there. Hated not having access to him whenever I wanted, hated I’d had to hire another sweeper to replace him.
I’d had
no other choice. He was the only person I could trust to do this.
Every day, I visited. I brought them food and clothes, whatever they needed.
We didn’t let Tyler roam around freely. We put her in a cage, just like a fucking animal. It gave her enough room to sit and switch positions. Fuck, it wasn’t all that smaller than the cell I lived in now.
For a while, things were perfect.
But that didn’t last.
Tyler woke up one morning and puked. She was sick the whole day, and by the fourth morning, it hadn’t gotten any better. Toy thought she was pregnant. I thought he was fucking crazy. She’d already been pregnant and lost Beard’s baby. I’d seen the paperwork from the hospital to confirm it. And, since she’d miscarried, I doubted if she’d fucked anyone. She’d barely even left her apartment.
To please his ass, I bought a pregnancy test. When I got to the shack, I ripped the top off the box and stuck both sticks through the bars. “Pee on these,” I growled.
She looked like shit. The whole place smelled of vomit. Toy had torn off half of his T-shirt. He’d wrapped it over his nose and mouth and tied it behind his head. I didn’t blame the guy. I wouldn’t be able to sit here and smell her all day and night either.
“Can you get me the bucket?” She pointed at the white plastic trash bin that was by the kitchen sink.
That must be what Toy gave her to piss in. I’d never been around to see that.
I had to open the latch and the small door of the cage to get the bucket inside.
She didn’t even try to get out before I locked it.
She was such a good inmate.
She uncapped both sticks. Then, she dropped her pajama pants and squatted over the bucket. The tests were side by side in her hand, and she put them underneath her.
“That’s it,” I told her, watching the yellow spread over the stick. “Get all the pee out of your dirty cunt.” When she was done, I said, “Give them to me.”
She handed them to me through the bars.
The box said the results would take five minutes, so I told Toy to follow me to the bathroom, and I locked us in.
He lowered the T-shirt from his mouth and said, “I’m telling you, man, she’s pregnant. I know it deep down.”
“Toy, stop with this fucking bullshit.” I set the tests on the sink and turned toward him. “She kept her lunch down. She’s fine.”
He shook his head, his hands moving to his waist, as he stared me down. “No, she didn’t. I forgot to tell you, she puked that up, too.”
“Maybe she’s making herself gag, hoping we’ll feel pity for her and let her out.”
“I’ve watched her, Shank. She turns white before she gets sick. Making yourself gag doesn’t cause your skin to change color.”
I hated the tone of his voice.
I’d hurt him, and I hated that even more.
I paced to the stall shower, the toilet, and back. “She caught a bug or something.”
“How?” he asked. “She doesn’t leave the cage. She even takes a shit inside that fucking thing. And, if she caught something, she would have gotten it from you or me, and neither of us is sick.”
He was snapping at me.
I didn’t deserve that.
I wasn’t the idiot in this shack. That was all her.
I faced him, my teeth clenched so hard, I thought one of them would crush into dust. “There’s no way, Toy. No fucking way, so get it out of your head.”
He moved over to the sink and lifted both tests into the air.
The small windows at the top gave us the answer.
Pregnant.
“There must have been a way,” he said. “Because she’s fucking pregnant, just like I told you she was.”
I punched the mirror above the sink, and the glass shattered all over the room. “I fucked her once, Toy. Once.”
He put his hand over my mouth to silence me. “Stop. I don’t want to hear it.” When he realized blood was dripping from each of my knuckles, he placed a washcloth over my hand and wiped the cuts.
“Toy,” I mumbled, pulling his fingers off my lips, “we have to talk about this.”
“No, we don’t. You already know how I feel about what you did. That’s enough.”
“I didn’t do it to hurt you.”
“Hurt me?” His tone changed again, now mimicking the word he’d just barked. “Don’t you see what you’ve done?” He shook his head while a few tears dripped off his chin. “I know you don’t, and you never will. It’s just who you are, and that fucking kills me.”
He was upset.
That bothered me.
But, beyond those tears, he knew I’d had no choice. I’d had to get Beard back, and fucking Tyler had been the only way. It wasn’t like I’d wanted to fuck the cunt.
“You’re going to be a father,” he said. “And it didn’t happen the way I wanted it to.”
His tears were starting to do something to me.
Something I didn’t like.
They were making me feel.
And, the feeling in my chest, I just wanted to get rid of it.
But, every second I stared at him, I was reminded of what he wanted.
A child.
He’d made that desire very clear during a phone conversation before he moved to Venezuela, and I’d made my dislike toward children just as clear. It was the only disagreement we’d ever had. The fight had ended with me on a plane, headed to San Diego, and lots of booze and makeup sex once I arrived. We hadn’t spoken about it since.
We weren’t going to talk about it now either.
I snatched both tests away from him. I went to the cage and yelled, “You’re pregnant!”
“I know.”
She was in a ball in the corner, rocking on her ass.
“You know? How the hell do you know?”
“I felt the same way when I was pregnant with Beard’s child.” She turned white. Then, she leaned over the trash bucket and puked. “I didn’t get morning sickness.” She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I got all-the-time sickness.”
“Whose is it?”
She moved the bucket away and wrapped her arms around her knees. “Yours.” Hair covered the top of her face. She looked at me through the strands. “I was so worried The Achurdy would somehow find me and send me somewhere, and my baby and I would die.” The ball she was in seemed to tighten, and she stopped rocking. “Funny, all of that happened anyway, all because of you. Congratulations, Shank. You raped me, and now, you’re going to be a father.”
I kicked the cage so hard, her head slammed against the top of it.
“Say that again, and you won’t have a tongue left,” I warned. Then, I looked over at Toy. “I want her dead right fucking now. I want that thing inside of her dead, too. I want you to reach up into her cunt and tear the thing out and put a fucking knife through it.”
Toy said nothing.
Neither did Tyler.
I walked the hell out and went back to the prison.
A father?
Fuck that.
And fuck her.
I had the prison. I had Toy. I had Demon. I had my babies.
I didn’t want a fucking child.
But, the next day, I got a call from Toy, and he gave me some news.
News I hadn’t wanted to fucking hear.
As I folded the letter and put it in the envelope, I thought about Toy. I had been so young when I met him. Hell, I had been young when I lost him, too.
He was the only guy I’d ever dated.
We’d gone through so much shit together.
We’d survived.
Then, we’d gone through more shit.
Fuck, I miss him.
Thirty-Two
Huck
Arin stood at the foot of the bed with her hand still pressed against her pussy. She’d been rubbing her clit and finger-fucking herself. That was seconds ago. Now, I was sure the orgasm had died before it reached its peak. Her body was rigid. Our eyes we
re locked while my hands held her face, so she couldn’t look away.
Slowly—so goddamn slowly—she began to process what I’d said.
“I want to know all about your daddy.”
Her hand dropped from her cunt. Her body loosened and stiffened again. And then an expression passed over her face. Not of anger. It appeared as though she were upset. “You followed me?” Her voice was full of disbelief.
“I didn’t follow you, Arin. One of my security guards did.”
She shook her head, her arms lifting and crossing over her chest to hide her tits. “Why would you do that?”
“Why? You were fucking trafficked to Bangkok, and you thought I’d just let you run off into town without making your safety my top priority?” Her lips opened, and I stopped her before she could say anything. “I can make sure nothing happens to you while you’re in this brothel, but once you’re outside, providing security is the only way I can make sure nothing happens to you out there.”
She gazed at me like I was attacking her, like I was the enemy, like I had done something wrong. “You didn’t think that was important to tell me?”
“I don’t need to run my plans by you, Arin.” When she tried to move away from me, I grabbed her arm, and I repeated my question, “Who is this daddy of yours?”
Silence.
That was all that passed between us.
Doesn’t she see that I’m trying to protect her? She’d already gotten in the wrong hands once; I wouldn’t let that happen again.
If she wasn’t going to answer me, I needed to try something else. So, I eased off her face by removing my hands and said, “Why did you lie to me?”
“What are you talking about, Huck? I didn’t lie to you.”
“You told me you had no one to call in the States. But you have someone, and his name is Daddy. And you obviously didn’t want me to know you were calling him because you didn’t use the phone I had given you. You used the one in the market.”