by Hart, Callie
He stopped. He wanted to turn around, I could tell, but for some reason he didn’t. The tension in his shoulders grew.
“Why does that make you mad?” Exasperation colored my voice. “I thought you wanted me. I thought you wanted us.”
“God,” he whispered. “I’m not mad. I’m relieved, Sera. So fucking relieved. I feel like my chest is about to burst open. It’s not fair of me to want this, though. I’m not proud of how fucking selfish I’m being. Better men would pretend. They’d make sure you were safe, and they would leave you the fuck alone. I’m the very worst kind of creature, the fucking worst, because I can’t do that. I can’t fucking let you go. I’m in love with you, Angel. And it will be the death of us both.”
Oh.
Well.
Shit.
I swallowed. Hard.
If emotions could have been identified by color, I’d have been swimming in a rainbow of confusion right now. Shock. Surprise. Panic. Excitement. Elation. But mostly, I was angry. “Don’t you dare tell me you love me for the first time with your back turned to me, Felix Marcosa. Don’t you fucking dare do that to me.”
His head dropped. A pained, desolate sound came out of him as he slowly turned around. My breath caught in the back of my throat when I saw his expression. He was on fire. Made of it. Consumed by it. Devoured by it and yet constructed from it at the same time. His eyes bore down deep into me as he stepped forward.
“You want to see inside me when I tell you that?” he asked. His stance was menacing, his profile stiff and uncompromising, but I could see that he wasn’t doing it to frighten me. He was trying to hold himself together. His handsome face was bruised from brawling at The Barrows, and the stubble at his jaw was now the beginnings of a beard, not to mention that his dark, thick hair was wild and out of control, but somehow his unkempt, disheveled appearance made him even more attractive.
I stood up straighter. “Yes. I do.”
“Then come here.”
The four steps required to bring me in front of him were the hardest four steps I’d ever taken. I wanted to stay rooted to the spot, feet firmly planted on the ground, a safe distance from the man who had the ability to turn my world so radically upside down. He was throwing down the gauntlet, though, it was obvious. He wanted to know if I really did want this. He wanted to know if I could stare down the barrel of the gun, look hell right in the eye, face down the storm, climb the mountain, stand at the edge of the cliff face, and…
…leap.
I refused to look away as he fixed his blistering attention on me. The intensity of his gaze could have reduced another to cinders, but I wasn’t the weak, vulnerable, frightened girl I could have easily been. I’d forced myself to face my fears head-on at an early age, and I’d never stopped. I was used to accepting my fear. I knew how to shape it, learn from it, and, eventually, overcome it. I wasn’t going to back down, no matter how hard he tried to scare me with the truth.
“Say it again,” I whispered.
Fix placed his hands on my hips, his eyelids lowering as he glanced down at my mouth. When he looked up, I watched, awed, as everything came crashing down. I hadn’t realized how high and how thick Fix’s walls were, kept in place every waking second of every waking day, in order to keep the world out…and himself in.
Now, those walls were gone. It was all there, plain as day for me to see. His pain, his own fear, the anger and the undeniable violence that lived inside him. His extreme need for me that bordered on obsession. But then, the deep, penetrating love that promised heady oblivion. He wanted me more than anything else on earth. He would protect me. He would care for me until he drew his last breath. All of it warred openly on his face, each aspect of him battling for supremacy over the other.
Slowly, he lifted his hands from my hips and cupped my face with them instead. “I love you, Sera. I have for a while now. I’m sorry if that frightens you.” His words were a caress that ran along the length of my spine; I shivered, unable to stop myself.
“It doesn’t frighten me,” I whispered.
“It fucking should. This isn’t a let’s-date-and-see-where-life-takes-us deal, Sera. This is all or nothing. This is to the ends of the fucking earth and back. This is giving all, giving everything, total fucking surrender. Total victory, and total defeat. There is no going back from it. Not ever. So, I want you to really think this through. Really fucking understand. Don’t you dare tell me you love me unless—”
“I do.” The words were out before I could do anything, to barricade them behind my teeth. “I do love you.”
His hands dropped to his sides, his eyes widening. He looked astonished. “Sera…”
“You’re not the only one who doesn’t do half measures, Fix,” I said. “You don’t have to be the only one who feels too much all the time. I had to feel so little for so long that I swore to myself I would never allow that to happen again. So, I’ll love you as fiercely as the sun fucking burns, and you’ll have to fucking like it, because you did this, Felix. You made me love you just as much as you love me, and it’s never going to go away now. I’m never going to go away. This is it.”
When his mouth met mine, his kiss branded me, down into my soul. It marked the end of anything that had come before. My shitty childhood. The fear that I’d conquered, but that had left a dirty smear on my soul. The days and nights I’d spent alone, wondering if life was ever going to catch up with me, or if death was going to find me first. All of it was brushed away with the touch of his lips and his arms crushing me to him. I’d done it. For better or for worse, we were more than just Fix and Sera, now. We were far more than that, unbreakable and indestructible, and heaven help anyone who tried to fuck with us.
Fix’s chest was rock solid as he held me against him; he was the embodiment of strength and safety. He was a fortress made out of bone and muscle, and against all the odds I’d found myself a home within that fortress. He made a rumbling, vibrating sound deep in his chest as he pulled back to take me in, his quicksilver eyes evaluating and assessing.
“There’s something I have to do,” he said. “Something you’re not going to like. I want you to come with me, though. I don’t want to let you out of my sight. It’s not going to be easy. Think you can handle it?”
I stole myself, taking a deep breath. If Fix said something wasn’t going to be easy, then it was going to be insanely difficult, but I nodded anyway. “If you think I can, then I don’t see why not.”
His pulse hammered under his skin against my fingertips as he sighed, the muscles jumping in his clenched jaw. “I would have said no a couple of weeks ago, but you continue to surprise me, Angel. I don’t think there’s a thing you couldn’t handle if you set your stubborn mind to it.”
NINE
FIX
Committing a crime was much easier when you were accompanied by a woman. People didn’t look at you with suspicion clouding their eyes. They saw what they wanted to see: a young couple in love, holding hands, walking down rain-soaked streets, whispering in each other’s ears as they made their way home from a bar or a romantic dinner.
That wasn’t actually too far from the truth. Sera and I had grabbed a bite to eat at the penthouse and I’d poured us a shot of tequila each—hopefully the liquor was going to calm Sera’s jangling nerves—and now we were a love-struck couple, leaning into each other and whispering conspiratorially as we hurried our way through the streets of Brooklyn. We weren’t heading home though, back to our beds, where we’d lazily make love and fall asleep in each other’s arms.
We were looking for a car to boost.
I found the perfect vehicle five blocks from the Gas and Electrical Works—an average looking sedan with a scuffed bumper and tags that were in date. The Ford was at least eight years old, too, and didn’t have the keyless entry most new cars were fitted out with. I popped the lock within seconds, pocketing the short length of wire and the rounded metal hook I’d brought along specifically for this purpose, and Sera hummed.
> “Is it wrong that I find that incredibly hot?” she asked.
I tried not to smirk like an asshole, but it was tough. Mostly because I was an asshole. “Which part?”
She shrugged. “Most guys don’t even know how to change a lightbulb these days. You made that look far too easy. Not that I’m condoning grand theft auto, but it’s pretty damn sexy watching you work, Mr. Marcosa.”
My smug attitude curdled a little when I realized what she would be watching me do very soon. She probably wasn’t going to admire how easy I made that look. I opened the driver’s door for her and gestured her inside. Her perfectly arched eyebrow rose upward toward her hairline.
“You want me to drive?”
“The cops aren’t likely to pull over a couple in a shitty four-door. They’re even less likely to pull over a couple in a shitty four-door if a woman’s driving. Statistically, anyway. This time of night, they’re gonna assume I’ve had too many beers and my girlfriend’s pulling designated driver duty…”
“Pretty sexist if you ask me. I could be a getaway driver.”
“Sorry, Angel. I don’t create the stereotypes. I just use them to my advantage.”
“Hmm.” She didn’t look impressed, but she got into the car. I got in on the passenger’s side and bit my tongue while Sera fidgeted with the mirrors and adjusted the seat.
“You can drive, right?”
She stopped what she was doing. “After all the shit that’s happened recently, you really want to die because I killed you for being a jerk?”
I held my hands up in mock surrender. “Pretend I didn’t say anything.”
“That might be for the best.”
New Yorkers were used to driving in the rain. Traffic didn’t normally ease up just because the heavens opened, but tonight it seemed as if people were keeping off the streets. Definitely worked in our favor. I directed Sera which lane to take, which left or right, and at some point she figured out where we were going.
“Won’t he be expecting you?” she asked under her breath, as she swung the car through a right-hand turn.
I grunted, thumbing the small plastic object in my pocket. “Probably. But I can’t stay away. There has to be a price, Sera.”
She didn’t say anything, but a vein pulsed in her temple. If it were up to her, we wouldn’t be doing this. We’d be headed somewhere quiet and out of the way, and we’d stay there for the rest of our lives. She wasn’t a part of this world, though. She didn’t know how it worked.
People assumed the criminal underworld was an anarchic, lawless place, and maybe it looked that way from the outside. Truth was, the circles I moved in, the same circles Rabbit moved in, were bound by very strict laws, and they were policed far more stringently than the rules and regulations of regular society.
If you broke your word, you were blackballed. If you cheated, backstabbed, or stole, you were gonna end up in the hospital. No way of avoiding it. And, in my world, if you betrayed someone and tried to get them killed, you’d better hope you were successful, otherwise you were gonna end up in the fucking ground yourself. There was an honor amongst the thieves, gangsters and assassins of New York City, and Rabbit had sacrificed his honor.
About a mile out from Rabbit’s place, I asked Sera to pull into a parking lot and I got out of the car, dodging the persistent rain as I ran into Starbucks. Only took me a couple of minutes to pick up a couple of regular black coffees. I got back in the car, and Sera gave me a look out of the corner of her eye; she knew the second coffee I’d bought wasn’t for her.
Unlike the night of Rabbit’s party, there were no body guards standing sentry outside the church when we arrived. The pillar candles that had all been lit, perched on the broken headstones in the graveyard, were now all guttered out, their waxy hollows overflowing with rain water. No lights shone from within the building itself.
Sera followed close behind me, quiet and watchful as I strode up the broken flagstones toward the entryway. She looked relieved when I tried the handle and it was locked. She’d obviously forgotten how quickly I could pick a lock. The door was open in no time. She still carried the coffees I’d asked her to hold. The wet soles of our shoes squeaked against the stone floor; the only other sound that broke the deathly silence inside the church was the electric buzz and whir of a security camera, following us as we made our way down the aisle, and past the pews.
“How are we going to get past the security door,” Sera hissed. “There was a keypad, remember.”
Oh, I remembered all right. I might not have been able to hack a computer, but I was fucking smart. Smarter than Rabbit, any day of the week. I was the kind of guy who paid very close attention to the smallest of details. Often, those ended up being the most important details. The last time we’d come here, Rabbit had walked ahead of us and he’d plugged the code into the keypad, opening up the security door. And I’d been standing right behind the fucker.
Opening up the door to the rectory, I stabbed a series of numbers into the keypad, fighting the urge to roll my eyes.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Sera groaned. “Sixty-nine, sixty-nine?”
“I can guarantee that piece of shit’s never had a girl sit on his face his entire life,” I added, as I hit the pound key and, soundlessly, the security door swung back. “Probably never fucking occurred to him to pleasure a woman while she had his cock in her mouth.” Rabbit was a good enough looking dude, but he thought paying for sex was some kind of badge of honor, preferred to pay for it over getting laid the good old-fashioned way. And because it was a business transaction, he boasted constantly about the lack of effort he put in between the sheets. The women were there to make him feel good, so why the hell should he go to any great lengths to make it a pleasant experience for them? I’d never understand his warped, fucked up logic. Not that I particularly wanted to. I’d never fucking paid for sex. And the most erotic part of fucking a woman, as far as I was concerned, was watching her fall apart as she came.
Down we went into hell. The lights might not have been on upstairs in the main body of the church, but they were certainly lit up down here. The same obnoxious sign glared bright red in the narrow stairway as we descended into the church crypts. Music, much quieter than it had been at the party but still thumping and driving, bounced around the low-ceilinged space. A group of guys dressed in black suits stopped talking when they saw Sera and I appear at the foot of the stairs.
A guy with a shitty man-bun squared his shoulders. “Who the fuck are you?”
“The guy you shouldn’t have.” I walked past him, making sure to keep Sera on the other side of my body. The guy grimaced, his face contorting in anger. He reached out and grabbed the top of my arm.
“The guy I shouldn’t have what?” he snapped.
“The guy you shouldn’t have laid your fucking hands on.” A second later, my left fist was buzzing with pain and the asshole was on the floor, lying on his back, nursing his broken nose with both hands.
Sera cleared her throat disapprovingly.
“Motherfucker! You broke my damn nose!” the guy roared.
“I did warn you.” None of the guy’s friends intervened as I stepped over the asshole, holding out my hand to Sera, firing a lethal warning gaze around the group just in case they got any ideas about touching her. None of them were that fucking stupid apparently.
“We paid for this entire space tonight, man,” one of them spat. “This is a private party.”
“Five guys standing around a bottle of Cuervo with your dicks in your hands? Not much of a party if you ask me.” I didn’t stop to argue with them further. I knew where Rabbit was, and by the whirring of that security camera up on ground level, he knew where we were, too. Right now, he was either armoring up or he was trying to flee the fucking building, and neither of those were good options. I didn’t bring Sera here for her to get blasted in the stomach by a shot gun, and I wasn’t wearing the right kind of footwear to go chasing after someone through a network of winding
catacombs, either.
We left the black suits behind, and I lead the way to Rabbit’s private booth, keeping an ear out for anything that sounded like a weapon being primed. My ears pricked just before we reached the velvet rope that had cordoned off Rabbit’s booth. The sound that snagged so aggressively at my attention wasn’t that of a gun being cocked. It was a voice. A voice I knew really fucking well.
“Seriously. Just let me do the talking. He won’t get mad at me.”
I stopped a couple of footsteps away from the arched entrance to the booth. “What…the…fuck?”
Sera paused right behind me; obviously she’d heard the same voice. “Why would she be here?” she asked.
I had no idea. I literally had no fucking idea, but it complicated matters. I ground my teeth together, stepping into the room, already horrified and prepared for what I knew I would find. Rabbit sat at the same booth he’d occupied when he asked me to go to The Barrows, and next to him sat a woman wearing a pair of blue nurse’s scrubs. Last time I’d seen her, she’d been wearing a nun’s habit, eating a slice of pizza.
She looked at me, defiance shining in her eyes, her blonde hair wound up in a messy knot on the crown of her head. “Monica,” I said tightly, flaring my nostrils. “Guess I should have expected something like this. You two seem to have grown close of late.” I’d overlooked it until now—she’d had my invite to Rabbit’s party in her possession the other day. She’d known he was angry with me back in her apartment. And Rabbit had let slip that she’d told him of the predicament Sera and I faced, too. These separate pieces of information had been clues, clear indicators that Monica had been spending an unusual amount of time with Rabbit, and I was only putting those pieces together now. How fucking stupid of me.
I hadn’t been paying attention to her. I’d dropped the ball as far as she was concerned. I’d taken my eye off her, and this is where she’d ended up.