by Kady Hunt
I’m left all alone with my emptiness.
23
.
HOLDEN
One moment I was at the hospital, and Jamie was saying goodbye.
The next, I was coming awake in the back of a car.
My hands are tied in front of me and there’s a tall, muscled man sitting right next to me. “What’s happening?” I feel dizzy. I look at the cable-ties on my wrist but my vision is blurry, I’m seeing six of everything. “Where are you taking me?”
This is how I feel when the people at the hospital load me with the drugs to kill the pain. Someone has clearly used it to their advantage.
“Am I dreaming?”
The guy sitting in front riding shotgun turns to me.
His face looks familiar but I can’t seem to place it. “You’re not dreaming, kid.”
“You—” I remember the face at last.
“Harlow Morrison. We’ve met before, don’t you remember?”
“Did you…did you drug me again?” Every word is drawn out, strained and painfully slow. “Where’re you taking me?”
I try to keep my head upright but it falls back on the back of the seat. My eyes are starting to close and trying to keep myself awake feels like a losing battle.
“If you stay put and do as you’re told,” Harlow says. “I can promise your safety.”
“Did…you…drug me again?”
“I never drugged you the first time,” he says. “And they gave you morphine at the hospital. That’s got nothing to do with me. I just happen to be taking advantage of it.”
Yeah, I think. You also just happen to be carrying me in the back of some car to some unknown location and making it sound like that’s normal.
My eyes wander to the door lock and I’m instantly rebuked. “Don’t even think about it,” Harlow says. “Central locking and also,” he pauses and takes out a gun and wields it in my face. “I have this.” Now I’m staring at the gun. “Like I said, kid. Do as you’re told and keep your mouth shut. You’ll be safe.”
Safe, being a relative word of course, considering where I am. But I guess I can’t complain. They haven’t tried to hurt me, and I feel no pain thanks to the morphine. If they did hit me I don’t think I’d feel that either, so I suppose there’s some solace in that. Also, my brain is slow and I’m having a hard time getting worked up over this, which is strange but I should just be happy I didn’t have to go through this without medication.
“Are you going to kill me?” I don’t know why I even bother to ask. They lifted me out of the hospital, it’s not like they’re going to be shy of lying to get things done their way. Still, couldn’t hurt to get an answer.
“Not if you don’t provoke me,” Harlow says.
“Define provoke.”
Fuck me. I can’t fucking stop rambling.
“Well,” Harlow says. “Provoke is anything that would anger me. It could be that you try to get away or get out of your restraints. It could be you trying to pull something that I specifically told you not to. It could even be something as simple as asking too many damn questions. Is that a good enough definition for you? Or would you like me to give you a demonstration?”
“I’m good.”
“I thought you might be,” Harlow says and turns his back to me.
I try to look out the windows but I have no idea where I am. Everything looks completely new. Is it a good thing that they haven’t put a sack over my head or bad? I wish I could ask Harlow but I’m fairly certain I don’t want an emergency vasectomy or a Columbian necktie for that matter. And that motivation is enough for my brain to shut up apparently. I find myself dozing off again and again, I’m forcing myself to be awake because if something is going to happen to me, I’d like to be aware of it.
I don’t want to just go to sleep and wake up in some strange place with a gun in my face.
24.
HOLDEN
I wake up in some strange place with a gun in my face.
“Will you keep your mouth shut, or do I have to stuff your mouth with something?” The man who had been sitting next to me in the car asks. He’s holding me up with a hold on my shirt because my legs won’t allow me to stand.
“No,” I say.
“No?”
“I mean…I won’t say a word.”
“Good choice,” he says. “Cause the rag I was supposed to stuff in your mouth has been places.”
The gun is still in my face.
I look around and see an empty parking lot.
“Where are we?” I ask.
“In an empty parking lot,” the man says, and drags me towards a minivan.
“That’s really informative, thanks!”
The gun is back in my face and so is the huge guy. “We just talked about it; you’re not supposed to talk!”
“Sorry,” I say.
“Still talking!”
This time I say nothing; which is difficult to do because the man takes me behind a wall, where there’s a security office with a passed out guard. Well, I’m going to assume that he’s passed out. Harlow’s there, sitting on the guard’s chair and the huge guy forces me into a chair right next to Harlow and stands behind me. The gun is now pointing into my back. Annoyingly, I might add.
“You see these screens in front of you?” Harlow says. I’m tempted to reply but I don’t. “These are live streaming right now. See that guy over there in the big black leather jacket and the helmet? He’s wearing it so no one will recognize his face.” He pauses and looks at me. “It’s okay, you can talk now.”
“Thanks,” I say. “But why am I looking at him?”
“What was the description your friend gave for the guy who shot you?”
And a light bulb goes off in my slow-as-hell brain. “He’s the man who shot me?”
“Yes.”
“Why aren’t we doing anything about it?”
“Because,” he says. “That’s not how things work in my business.”
“What is…your business?”
“You’ll have the answers to all your questions, I promise. You just have to be patient. Now, I want you to watch this feed closely. Because in about a minute, you’re going to see something that will make you want to speak…loudly perhaps. But you can’t do that. No matter what you see, you will keep quiet and stay put. Or Ronnie here will blow your brains out because he will have no choice. Capiche?”
“Yes,” I say with some dread. Actually a lot of dread because I’m pretty certain I’m about to witness something that’s going to scar me for life. But so long as it’s not happening to me, I suppose I should be counting my blessings.
The guy on the screen takes out his phone, and dials a number but it looks like no one is picking up so he stands there, sort of pacing about. We hear a car pull up, but it’s out of range of the camera’s view. Then, we hear the sound of heels, click click click…
They’ve wired that portion of the lot to have sound so we can hear everything. The woman who arrived is wearing a long red coat, and has her back to the camera.
“We can’t see her face, Ronnie!” Harlow says in a low voice.
Ronnie takes out his phone and dials a number.
On screen, I hear the sound of the woman’s phone ringing, and she turns away from the helmet-wearing male to talk I suppose, and that makes her face visible to us.
“Recognize her face?” Harlow says. “I know these cameras could get better but you’d recognize your own mother anywhere, wouldn’t you?”
It’s true.
I would.
And I do.
“What…what’s she doing here?”
“Well,” Harlow says. “Wait and you’ll find out.”
Ronnie’s phone call made her turn the other way but now she’s back talking to the helmet-wearing face. “You fucked up,” I hear my mother’s voice, clear as day. Those are words I’ve heard her say a million times before, to servants and maids and pretty much everyone else at some point.
“
It was dark,” the helmet-man says. “And it was raining! I couldn’t see shit!”
“You shot my son you idiot!”
I feel like throwing up. “You said your son was at the party!” the man argues. “How the fuck was I supposed to know he’d be with the girl.”
“You were supposed to go upstairs, Sean. You were supposed to find her and kill her in a way that was subtle. What you did, was make a scene in the middle of the road!”
“I saw the opportunity so I grabbed it! Besides, you were the one who called me at such short notice! I didn’t have time to plan.”
“She’s still alive and perfectly fine!”
“I know, and we can remedy that, Mrs. Danvers.”
“You know why I wanted that whore killed?” Mom says. “Because she’s pregnant with Holden’s baby. You know how complicated everything will be if for some stupid reason that idiot girl allows the baby to come into this world? It would mean chaos! And I hate chaos!”
“Look, give me until tonight. I will get this done.”
“Yeah,” my mother says. “Here’s the thing, Sean. You’re no longer working for us.”
“What?” Sean says. “You can’t fire me! How many hit-men are you going to find in New York willing to do your bidding?”
Before the guy even knows what’s happening, my mother pulls out a gun and shoots. The bullet goes right through his helmet and almost turns it to pulp. His face gets pulverized right along with it. I would look away but I’m completely stunned and unable to move. When she’s done, and Sean is on the ground, two men wearing black suits come in view and I know one of them: It’s Max. I’ve seen the other one around as well but I can’t recall his name at the moment. Both of these men are my mother’s trusted men but it’s the first time I realize why my mother needs so many trusted men at her side twenty-four-seven. I want to believe that she’s some kind of secret agent and that Jamie is actually a cyborg designed by some foreign country to destroy mankind. It’s the only explanation that would make sense if I intend on keeping up my denial.
The only other explanation, which is more plausible, I might add, is that my mother put a hit out on Jamie because she’s a sucky mom-in-law with ties to a mob or something.
When they leave the screen, Harlow turns to me. “How you holdin’ up?”
“Why did you bring me here?”
“Because it was about time you learned the truth about your mother.”
“So you bring me out here, and make me watch her murder someone?”
“Would you have just taken my word if I’d told you?”
“No.”
“Look kid,” Harlow says and he sounds like the same gentle guy who I met at the bar, and not the thug I know him to be now. “You should take some time to process this information. I’ll drop you back at the hospital. You don’t look so good.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Seeing your mother shoot someone in the face will do that to you.”
“Like I said,” Harlow says. “I was out of options.”
“I doubt that.”
“Well, you can blame me for what you just saw. Or, you can do something to save your girlfriend. That is, if you give a shit about her.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Didn’t you just hear what she said?” Harlow says. “She’s pissed Jamie’s alive. She will do anything to remedy that. And despite what that guy was saying just now, there are many people in New York willing to kill for money.”
“You really think my mother is capable of that?” More of that denial.
“She just shot a guy right in front of you!” Harlow says. “You need more proof?”
I start shaking my head. “This can’t be right,” I say, getting up from the chair and walking over to the surveillance sets. “This can’t be right! You rigged this somehow!” I use my tied hands to grab at the screens but I don’t know what the hell I’m doing except damaging the screens. “This can’t be right!”
Harlow grabs me and keeps me from causing more damage. “Hey,” he says. “This was live feed. You heard the van pulling up. You want to stay in denial, that’s fine with me. But I felt it was my duty to warn you. What you do with the information provided to you, is your problem. You can ignore it, or you can be proactive.”
“It can’t be true,” I keep saying. “I know you’re lying to me.”
“You don’t have much time,” Harlow says. “The clock is ticking, kid.”
“Why?” I say. “Why would she want Jamie dead?”
“Jamie’s pregnant,” Harlow says. “And that’s a threat to your mother.”
“How is that a threat?”
“Your step father was a leader.”
“To what? The wheelchair club?” I say. “The man was an invalid for ten years before he died. He couldn’t even pee on his own!”
“That’s funny,” Harlow says and grins. “But what your mom failed to mention, was that the Danvers family is a well-known and respected mafia family. They have been for generations. But your step-father could never have a child of his own, and he has no other living family who could claim the throne, so to speak. So he had an official will, in which he nominated you as his heir. He loved you.”
“You sound like you knew him.”
“I did,” Harlow says. “We all knew him. He was a great man. But you were too young when he passed away and the power fell to your mother. Your mother, as you know, doesn’t make a lot of friends. She kept making enemies, until everyone deserted her, well, everyone important anyway, but that didn’t stop her. She forged ties with some dangerous people, drug cartels and such, in order to keep her sinking ship afloat. She’s up to her head in trouble but she won’t admit it. She thinks if she keeps going the way she’s going; taking out people at the drop of a hat, people will think she’s powerful. Well, it’s worked until now, but it won’t any longer because you see there are people who are sick of her viciousness.”
“And that includes you?”
“Yes,” Harlow says. “Me and my boss.”
“What did she do to piss you guys off?”
“That’s a story for another time,” Harlow says. “I just want to say, that whatever life you were living until this moment, has ended kid. Sooner you get used to it, the better.”
“Why’re you so interested in helping me?”
“I’m not,” Harlow says. “I don’t give a shit about you.”
“Who does?”
“My boss. You see, there are two kinds of people right now. Ones that want you dead, because they don’t want an heir, and ones that want to make deals with you, so when you do accept the throne, you can create alliances.”
“Which one are you?”
“The second one,” Harlow says. “Or I would have just upped the dosage in your morphine drip at the hospital.”
“Why did you drug me and Jamie in Vegas?”
“I told you already that wasn’t me!”
“Are you sure?”
“Why would I lie?”
“I don’t know.”
“Look kid, what I do I’m going to take full responsibility for it,” Harlow says. “And I don’t drug kids so they can fuck themselves up. That’s really not my style.”
“Yeah,” I say. “You’re more of a blow someone’s brains out kind of person, right?”
“Exactly!”
I feel sick.
“I’m going to leave you back at the hospital before people start asking questions,” Harlow says. “I did bribe one of the nurses but still, let’s not make things difficult for her without reason.”
Ronnie grabs my arm and forces me out of the tiny room and back to the car. On my way, I see the exact place where I saw my mother shoot that guy. His blood is still marking that spot. “His blood is still there,” Ronnie says. “Means they’re going to be back, boss.”
“Yeah,” Harlow says. “Let’s get out of here before we run into one of them.”
“You got it, boss.”
25.
HOLDEN
Standing next to the mirror, Jamie looks even more beautiful. She pushes her long hair behind her ear and I touch her all the way down her shoulder and right over her arm, bring my hand back up and whisper into her ear. “I feel like I’ve been waiting centuries for you.”
“Holden.”
I barely touch the skin on her face, bite her ear and then move down her neck. She leans into me and closes her eyes. Her breath is a silent whisper, as I turn her toward me and lift her up, place her gently on the bed and start kissing her. The way we’re kissing, it’s like our starved bodies finally have what they have been craving for decades and that’s exactly what I feel like inside, as though I’ve been starving right along with her—but now that we’re together it’s like fire meets fire and I’m afraid we’re going to create an explosion so fearsome it’s going to blow us away into tiny shards.
Our bodies melt into each other, crash and bang and rapture and ecstasy as we go from one step to the next and take off our shirts. We start making out again and for a long time my lips just want to have a taste of hers but then it starts to want more. So I undo the clasp of her bra and my hands caress her body, until she’s moaning into my mouth and until I’m so full of pleasure that I can’t linger anymore.
I want to taste every part of her, play with her soft flesh and trace my tongue on every nerve ending, so she can feel pleasure like it’s a part of her existence. I want to hear her rasping breath on my ears, titillating, consumed with lust and love and adoration. I want to go beyond where she has gone with anyone else, and I want to mark my territory like it’s meant only for me, as though we’re going to last forever, without letting things like fear and panic get in the way. I told myself before coming here that I wouldn’t do this, that I would just sit in her apartment and talk, that it wouldn’t lead to this but here I am.
I’m weak.
At least when it comes to her.
And I’m selfish…
I should stop.
But when my tongue starts to get a taste of her and the sweet smell of her fills up my senses, when her body overwhelms me, so does the desire to take it, and then that’s all I can think about—her, me. Us. Together. Our bodies are one. Not separate but ONE. I have never felt this happy, or this content. Not with anyone. She touches me, without touching and she reaches right inside my heart without my having to open it—