by A. Zavarelli
He kisses me, and it’s soft this time. “No other woman comes close.”
“I just need to forget.”
I squeeze my eyes shut when they start to burn.
“Make me forget.”
“How, sweetheart?”
He brushes my hair back over my shoulders and kisses me all over. It’s full of reverence and this is how I know he’s really falling for me.
I have a definite falling sensation too.
Into a vortex that I can’t get out of.
“I don’t care,” I tell him, and it’s frantic. “I just need to get high. On you. On everything. I need to feel alive.”
There is concern in his eyes, but he doesn’t voice it.
“Whatever you want, baby doll,” he murmurs. “I’ve got you.”
Twenty-Four
Rory
Scarlett isn’t the sort of girl you take to the movies.
You don’t buy her flowers and chocolates to sweeten her mood.
You take her to an armory.
“What is this place?” she asks.
I don’t answer because I like watching her figure things out on her own.
The road up here is private. The land owned by our Russian mate Alexei. It’s in the middle of bleeding nowhere and the lads and I come up here from time to time to blow off steam.
“What the fuck are you doing?” she asks, and now she’s stiffer than a board in my passenger seat.
Something has changed, and as usual, I can’t keep up.
“You said you wanted to get high.”
“So you bring me into the forest?”
Fuck.
The forest.
Scarlett is tougher than nails, so it’s easy to forget sometimes all the hell she’s been through.
I point out the window and into the distance where the targets are set up.
She’s quiet for a minute, glancing at the targets, then back to me. Questioning me with her eyes. And it’s time we had this out.
“Scarlett, do ye not feel safe with me?” I ask. “Do ye honestly believe I’d ever do anything to hurt you?”
“No,” she says. “I know you wouldn’t do anything.”
Her voice is sincere, and it’s a baby step.
“Aye,” I answer. “Now, how do ye feel about blowing shit up?”
She smiles. “I want to.”
“Yeah ye do, baby.”
We get out of the car and I take her hand. She doesn’t fight me on this.
The bunker is underground, accessible only by fingerprint scan. I open it up and lead the way, Scarlett trailing behind.
A minute later, she’s in awe. Walking around the space and perving on the arsenal. I’ve never seen anything so hot as her checking out weaponry in her strappy black heels. They look like bondage on her feet and I’m hard and checking out her legs when she asks if she can throw a grenade.
“No.”
She pouts.
“What is that thing?” she points to the heavy artillery.
“That would be a bazooka.”
“A bazooka?” she shrieks and then tips her head back in a fit of laughter. “Of course your crew would have fucking bazookas.”
“We like to be prepared.”
“And what about that one?” she points to another.
“Flame thrower.”
“Right. And this?”
“That’s a Katana.”
“And what do you need a Katana for?”
“No real reason,” I admit. “They’re just cool as shite.”
She nods in agreement and traces her finger over the blunt edge of the sword’s blade.
Hard, so fucking hard.
“So what do I get to play with?” she asks.
I adjust myself in my pants and she catches me.
“Are you getting all hot and bothered?” she smiles. “Because I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t too.”
As much as I want to squeeze my cock back into her and fuck her in this room that isn’t what I brought her for. So I make the rounds and grab a few guns. Revolvers and semi-autos of different weights and calibers.
But then Scarlett points to an AK-47 on the wall.
“That one too,” she says. “I want to try it.”
Of course she does.
I grab a couple of those too and then load her down with ammo before I gesture her outside. We lay everything out on the wooden bench in front of the targets and Scarlett is antsy. Bouncing on the balls of her feet, fingers itching to touch.
“First things first,” I tell her. “We need to sort out your dominant eye.”
“Okay,” she agrees. “Tell me what to do.”
I stand behind her and reach for her arms, forming a triangle with her hands and then extending them.
“Have a look out there at that target,” I say. “And put it between that wee triangle.”
She does.
When she pulls it back, she says it’s her left eye. We test it a few more times to be sure and then continue.
“We’ll start with the Glock.”
I show her the basics first. The magazine and the trigger safety.
“I fired one like this,” she tells me. “And it wouldn’t fire a second time.”
That’s a conversation for another time.
“See this wee bit here. That’s the slide.”
I show her how it works and then explain the trigger.
“The weight of your finger needs to be evenly distributed. Ye need to fully depress this middle bit as well, or it won’t fire a second time. That’s the safety mechanism.”
“Okay.”
I hand it off to her.
“Aim it downrange and just get used to it in your hands,” I say. “The weight of it.”
She reaches out and grabs it, and it’s heavy in her small hands, but she handles it well.
“You carry this thing around on you all the time?” she asks in disbelief.
“Aye.” I smirk. “I do.”
“Jesus.”
“Bend your knees a wee bit.” I grab her hips and press a hand to her lower back. “Lock out your elbows and lean into the target.”
“How does it feel?” I ask.
“It feels good,” she says. “Now can I shoot it?”
Scarlett likes to feel powerful. There’s nothing more powerful than this. What she’s about to feel.
And I want to give that to her.
I teach her everything I’ve learned over the years. Everything Niall taught me. I show her the parts and how they all work together. I explain the difference between the revolvers and the semis and she feels the difference in recoil between them.
She’s a semi type of girl, she decides. And unlike the physical self-defense I tried to teach her, I actually have her full attention this time around.
Scarlett’s a good student. She’s by no means a pro, but I’m confident that she’ll be able to defend herself should she ever need to pick up a gun again. She learns quickly and follows my instruction well. Soon, the target has chunks of debris flying out as she hits it over and over again.
When we get to the AK’s, she’s surprised how easy they are to use.
“Why do ye suppose third world countries give them to child soldiers?” I ask.
She frowns, and I don’t want to dampen the mood, but I also need her to understand this is real. The lads and I have an arsenal, sure, but we don’t live in the Wild West and we don’t go around shooting them every chance we get.
We pack up, and she’s quiet.
“Ye did a grand job of it,” I tell her.
“I liked it,” she says. “You were right. It does feel like a high.”
I nod, and I know what she’s thinking about. Who she’s thinking about.
“I need their names, Scarlett.”
“No,” she says. “You don’t.”
“I can’t help you if ye aren’t honest with me. If ye don’t trust me.”
“It’s not about trust,” she says. “I’ve
sown these seeds, and you can be damn sure that I’m the one who’s going to reap them.”
“Do ye have any idea what it’s like to hurt someone you didn’t mean to?” I ask.
“No,” she bites back. “Every person I ever hurt was because I wanted to.”
I sigh, and it only incites her further.
“I know you think you’re going to save my soul, or whatever. You Irish boys are big on that. But you can’t save what isn’t there, Rory. You think I’m going to regret it, but I won’t.”
“You can’t know that,” I argue. “And I won’t stand for ye to do this.”
“You don’t have to allow me anything,” she says. “I’ll do what I want. With or without you.”
I grab her by the waist and hoist her up onto the bench, pressing my body between her legs as I cup her face in my hand. I don’t know what to say to her to make her understand. It’s the same argument we’ve been having for months.
She’s still throwing a tantrum because I wouldn’t let her kill the butcher.
For all of Scarlett’s strength and stubborn will, she can’t see what lies beneath. Her fragile heart. The one beating in her chest right now, beneath my other palm.
“You kill people all the time,” she whispers to me. “And you’re still good.”
“It’s not that simple,” I tell her. “You didn’t know me before.”
“Before what?” she asks.
“Before my father. He was my first. The first kill.”
She’s quiet, her eyes moving about my face, and some of her walls crumble under the weight of my admission. So I tell her the thing I haven’t said aloud to anyone, even my brothers in the syndicate. I confess my sins to make her understand.
“He had a heavy hand. Sometimes with me. But especially my mammy.”
“You shouldn’t be telling me this,” Scarlett whispers.
There’s worry in her eyes. Worry that this thing between us- this constant push and pull- is getting stronger. Bigger. And she can’t stop it.
I don’t want her to stop it.
“He was a drunk and a slob and a leach who couldn’t hold down a job. And he’d come home and take it out on her. He did it for years. I’d hear her crying in the bedroom at night. She told me not to concern myself with it, for her sake.”
“So I didn’t. I stuffed it down and took what he doled out to us, provoking him so he’d give it to me the worst. I thought if he went after me, it would stop him from going after her. But it didn’t.”
“Rory…” Scarlett’s clinging to me, begging me not to continue.
“I was thirteen. And I was so fucking angry. Full of rage and hatred. For him and for everything. And one night he came home, started having at it. I was tired. And I was bigger by then. Stronger too. I listened to him slap her around for five minutes before I just snapped.”
I look right into Scarlett’s eyes and admit the truth.
“I beat him with my bare hands. And when I finished, there wasn’t a thing left of his face.”
“You’re good,” she insists. “You are, Rory.”
“It never goes away,” I tell her. “I’ll never get that image out of my head. The blood off my hands. My mammy has never looked at me the same way since. I had to leave.”
She isn’t telling me I’m good anymore.
“It felt good to kill him, Scarlett. But it changes you forever. I won’t allow ye to live that way. I don’t want ye to be like that.”
“I’m already worse,” she insists. “I’m the worst thing you ever could have come across.”
“You aren’t.”
She reaches up and grabs hold of my face, crushing her lips to mine and crawling onto my body. Clinging to me in a way she’s never done before.
It isn’t sexual. It’s something deeper. A primal need to feel safe.
“You might think our codes are ridiculous,” I tell her. “But we take care of our women. I’m going to take care of you too. That means righting the wrongs that have been done to ye. Tainting my own soul so that yours will stay intact. I want to do that for ye. And I want you to let me.”
“Rory.”
She’s kissing me now, all over my throat and my face. Distracting me with sex the way she always does.
“Take me back to your place,” she pleads.
“Not until you give me at least one name.”
She groans out her frustration.
“Just give me a day,” she says. “One day, Rory. I’m trying. I am. But I’m not ready.”
I nod, because it’s the best I’m going to get from her.
Twenty-Five
Scarlett
As these affairs typically end when faced with the evil queen, it’s off with his head.
While the world spins round and evolution takes place bit by tedious bit, there are some things that never change.
Trip’s family summer house outside of New Haven is one of them. It is a mummification of memories. The tomb of nightmares and final resting place for my childhood.
And I was a child, then.
Still innocent and wide-eyed and naïve.
I left here a different person.
I crawled my way out of that shallow grave, and I left all those childish notions- along with my heart- to die the death they deserved. I emerged with an armor that wasn’t there before. A hard-outer shell embraced me and I was reborn.
That shell has served me well.
But it doesn’t make my stroll down memory lane any easier.
The soil feels the same beneath my feet- bare- because I want to be in the right mindset. I want to relive those memories and change the way I feel about them.
The air is cool, the forest still.
This place is a dead zone. Nothing around for miles.
There is a man-made lake behind the house where Trip used to hold ragers throughout the school year.
I never made it to any of those parties.
The only party I’d been invited to was private. On the night of the initiation.
Trip still comes here often, or so the report I have tells me. He spends entire weeks binging on cocaine and cheap vodka, even though his father’s liquor cabinet is stocked with the finest whiskeys that money can buy.
It would lead almost anyone to the same conclusion. That Trip is as sick in the head as Alexander. I wonder if he fantasizes about that night too while he fucks his paid whores. If he comes up here just to relive it.
As I wait in the darkness of the lounge room, I wonder if we’re really all that different. For years, I’ve done nothing but fantasize of my revenge. I’ve watched them stumble over every hurdle I’ve thrown their way while they went about their lives as if that night never happened.
Rory wants me to believe that there is something in me worth saving. That if I cross this boundary, I will regret it.
But he’s wrong.
Because when I snuck out of his bed in the middle of the night, glancing over my shoulder at his sleeping face, nothing had ever been so clear to me.
There are some boundaries even I am not willing to cross.
And bringing him into this, using him as a soldier for my cause, is one of them. The moral dilemma of taking a human life falls by the wayside when you are at war. It’s a matter of action and reaction.
I will never be free until they are gone.
This is my battle. And mine alone.
I will be the one to live with the consequences.
A key rattles in the front door, and I grow still.
Someone stumbles into the darkness and bumps the side table in the entryway, muttering a curse. Keys fall into the key bowl, and the footsteps move to the kitchen.
A refrigerator door opens. And then he returns.
Trip doesn’t bother with the lights. He collapses onto the sofa across from me and drinks straight from the bottle of vodka. Liquor soaked sweat suffocates the space around him, and this is what he has become.
It takes him a few minutes to settle in, and he i
s not at all aware of his surroundings. That comfortable sense of security and peace is only afforded to someone who believes their victim is dead.
His head falls back onto the sofa, and he scrubs a hand over his face. It remains there for a few short moments, quiet, almost meditative. Then he leans forward, elbows on his knees as he tinkers with his little black case on the coffee table.
This is the moment he realizes he is not alone. Even the most drug-addled brains are capable of sixth senses. Or perhaps it is the drugs that makes him see monsters lurking around every corner. Today, though, he sees a ghost.
And that ghost is me.
I’d give anything to know what he’s thinking right now, mouth slack and face pale.
He doesn’t speak. His hands are still half frozen with the task of preparing his next fix.
Only, it isn’t coke in that case. It’s heroin. Even in the dim light, it is easy to see he is a long-time user.
His face is gaunt and sunken in, lips tinged with blue. There is no vitality left in his body. He can barely lift his arm. Everything about him is slow. His thoughts, his reactions, his words.
This place has changed him too.
“I knew you would come,” he says finally.
“How?” I ask.
I am dead to him. Was dead to him. There is no way he could know that unless Alexander already told him.
Trip shakes his head. “Alexander told us he came back up here and moved your body,” Trip explains. “But that was a lie. Because I came back up here first.”
“Why?” I ask, and it doesn’t matter. His remorse won’t save him, but I am curious.
He’s quiet, tapping the needle against his fingers while his foot keeps the same rhythm on the floor.
“I really liked you, Ten. But I wasn’t the one your mother picked. She would never pick me over Alex.”
He isn’t telling me anything I don’t know. His crush was obvious, but just like him, I had no say in the matter.
“So, you just took what you wanted, anyway.”
Trip’s quiet again.
“Yeah,” he says. “I did. I took it. And I wanted to murder every one of those motherfuckers for touching you too.”