by Tia Lewis
Tess nodded. “Yes, we can go to sleep.”
She finally climbed onto the bed next to me and laid her head on the pillow near my arm. I was floundering. I was no longer the man that I used to be, but I was unsure of the path that I was taking and where it would ultimately lead.
I had no idea what to do.
Usually, I was sure of my movements, how to use my body and confident that my calculated plans would yield the desired results. But now everything felt clumsy, and my future felt unstable. That made me feel weak and unsure. I couldn’t hug her; that showed too much vulnerability, and I couldn’t stomach that shit. It just wasn’t in my nature. So I just laid there, her head resting near my arm and waited for her to go to sleep.
Just then I thought about the key and the note that was sitting the pocket of my leather jacket. “If all else fails and the light turns to darkness.” I should have asked Miss Jones if she knew were Finchley Hampstead Road was located, but all I wanted to do was sleep. Today had been a long day, and I had to prepare myself to go to work tomorrow morning.
Chapter Twenty
“What do I say?” Miss Jones asked while sitting at the kitchen table and anxiously fiddling with her cell phone. “This isn’t my area of expertise, Liam.” This morning she wore a sea-blue dress which made her look like a beautiful mermaid. On her head, she wore a matching blue bandana, and her long hair was tied back into a bun beneath the fabric.
I leaned beside a picture of thirty-something Miss Jones at a well, one foot propped on the stone wall, elbow resting on her knees, grinning wide with her hair cascading around her shoulders. Children surrounded by huts and goats sat along the wall beneath her, smiling up at her in appreciation.
Tess sat beside Miss Jones, her hand resting on the two oversized duffle bags of supplies. Sunlight glowed through the curtains, coloring the room in delicate shades of yellow. Outside, birds chirped, laughing children rode their bikes up and down the street, church bells rang and cars honked at each other as they traveled down the road. In general, life went on without us. Everybody outside that window, some of them only a small distance away, had no clue about the danger that lay within their neighborhood. If I weren't so detached, I probably would’ve felt shame for being the cause of all this mayhem and violence. But I would not let any harm come to these innocents, especially not Tess or Miss Jones. This was my war.
“All you need to say is, ‘he’s back.’ That’s it,” I instructed, aware she was looking at me expectantly.
“What if they ask questions?”
“They won’t ask questions. They’ll simply load up their weapons, get in their car and drive here. Then they’ll come and try to kill me. But they won’t ask questions first. Trust me.”
Tess and Miss Jones looked at me as if to say, is that supposed to make us feel better?
Tess touched Miss Jones’s wrist.
“I know this whole thing is scary, Miss Jones.”
“Oh, I’m not scared,” Miss Jones said, failing to smile. “What makes you think I’m scared? I’m—worried. That’s not the same as being scared.”
I wanted to laugh, but Tess shot me a look, and I found myself actually paying attention to it. I’d woken up late last night—early morning, the night pitch dark and dead silent—with my arms wrapped around her, her face buried in my chest. She had been talking in her sleep, “save me, save me.” I thought she was awake at first, but when I looked down at her, her eyes were closed, and her lips were twisted into a tired smile. I just laid there, looking down at her, not sure what to do. But I couldn’t deny I felt closer to her than I had to any other woman.
“They took something of mine, Miss Jones.”
“Your money, right?”
“Yes,” I said, standing away from the wall. “But not just my money. All my fucking money…”
“Liam. Language.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Jones. All I’m saying is that money was my whole life savings. And I want it back… and I want out of South Boston, out of the country, out of this entire goddamned mess where everywhere I look there’s…”
I was about to say memories lying in the shadows, but I realized I was revealing too much and stopped short. Was Tess starting to soften me up? I couldn’t let that happen, not now. I was moments away from a bloodbath. I had to try hard to separate the man from the beast; I had to be The Animal to make it out of this alive. “That’s all I want,” I finished, my voice cold and unflinching.
Miss Jones nodded, and then nodded faster like she was psyching herself up.
“Okay, okay,” she said under her breath. “Okay, I’ll call them and just tell them you’re back?”
She picked up the cell phone with a trembling hand and pressed the screen a few times. She hesitated, but seemed to push past her fear, and finally pressed the big green call button it. She held the phone to her ear. Her face was sweating, and the screen became wet and sticky. I could see the top of the screen poking up past her bandana, reflective with sweat.
“Oh… Hello?” Miss Jones said, sounding like a woman on a business call.
Tess chewed on her thumb and squeezed Miss Jones’s hand. I paced up and down the room with my fists clenched. I touched the side of my leather jacket, making sure that my pistols were still there. The feel of my guns through the leather material was reassuring. No matter what happened, I still had my weapons. I adjusted my clothing—black T-shirt and jeans—preparing myself for just another day on the job.
“Yes, I was told to call this number if I saw… Mr. Hunter. Yes, yes, Liam. He’s… um…” She gulped, and rubbed the back of her neck. “He’s… he’s back,” she breathed. “He’s back. I just saw him...”
She held the phone away from her ear. “They hung up,” she said.
“That means it worked. They’re coming.”
“Now what? What do we do?”
“Now you two go to Main Street, to the Weathered Spoon Café, and wait for me. It shouldn’t take long.”
“What? We can’t just leave you!” Tess shrieked.
I laughed. “Listen. You might have this touchy-feely, let’s talk about our emotions shit on speed dial, but this is my area of expertise. This is what I do best.”
“Oh, Liam!” Miss Jones cried. “I’m so worried!”
“I know what you’re thinking, Miss Jones,” I said, turning to her. “Where did the sweet boy go, right?”
“Oh, I know where he went. Your horrible father took him away!”
My chest thrummed painfully at her words. I couldn’t have her talking like that, not in front of Tess, not when she didn’t know the truth about what happened. I couldn’t say why I gave a shit if Tess knew, but I did. Maybe it was because she would get even more touchy-feely if she knew. Or maybe it was because I didn’t want her to look at me differently or see me as the scared little kid that I was back then instead of the cold-hearted hitman that I am now.
Brother, are you sure that you’re a cold-hearted hitman? Of course, you’re a killer. Nobody can ever take that away from you. But cold-hearted? Even now? I ignored Kevin’s voice in my head and focused on the task at hand.
“Miss Jones,” I moved close and looked down at her. “You have to promise me that you will never bring that up again.”
She sighed, casting a glance at Tess. “I promise. I’m sorry, dear,” she responded apologetically. She took her hand from Tess. “When Liam wants to tell you about all of that, I’m sure that he will.”
Tess wrinkled her forehead and gave me a concerned look.
“Alright, you two need to go to the café. Now.”
Tess pulled up her jeans, showing a thin line of skin at the bottom of her, and my cock jumped in at my pants. Her jeans were tight-fitting, and when she turned to the door, I was treated to the sight of her perfect, peach-shaped ass. My cock became even harder. She turned her head, looked down at my bulge, and blushed.
“We need to leave now, Miss Jones,” Tess said as she reached for Miss Jones’s hand.
She playfully narrowed her eyes at me. Now is not the time, her face said. Now is definitely not the time!
The door slammed behind them.
She was right, I reflected.
Now was time for killing.
Chapter Twenty-One
I walked out of Miss Jones’ house carrying the two large duffle bags and headed into her garden. On the back porch, there was a table under a veranda. On top of it, there was a carved sculpture of an African village that was made from stone and intricately painted. I gazed at the masterpiece. Talent like that always astonished me. I had a talent for taking things away—lives, mainly—but not for creating things. Creating things required a toolkit that I had never had access to. But it impressed me, nevertheless.
Didn’t Tess say she wants to create things, brother? Didn’t she say she wanted to be a writer? Maybe one day, you can help her. Not now, Kevin, I thought.
I left the carved sculpture and walked into the sunlight, which warmed my legs in my jeans. The fence that bordered the garden was about a meter and half of fresh-painted wood. I threw the black duffle bags over the fence and then jogged up to it, jumped, and leaped over, landing in a crouch. Just like that, I was out of Miss Jones’s garden and into the garden in my old backyard. It was as if I was crossing from Heaven into Hell.
I made my way through the untamed jungle—weeds poked up through the cobblestoned porch. The flowers were in bloom, but they didn’t look like the tended flowers of the neighbors’ gardens. These were wild flowers that had sprung up through neglect, thorny and tough. Their thorns were knife-sharp, and their stems were bamboo-solid. The grass was tall enough to reach my shins, and as I walked through it toward the porch, I thought that I felt a slither across my feet.
Finally, I made it to the back door.
Peering through the smeared glass of the back door, I saw the dust-coated dungeon within. The back door opened onto a sitting area, which in a different home would have been filled with inviting furniture and paintings. However, this particular gathering area was home to two wooden chairs and a plastic garden table which that was ridden with ash marks from my father’s cigarettes. I was surprised that the table was still standing. Once, when my father was in a drunken rage he threw me onto that table so hard my eight-year-old bones nearly shattered.
Just past the table and chairs stood countless empty whiskey bottles and the leaning towers of envelopes. Later in life, I found out that each envelope used to contain cash that my father received after each hit that he completed. He would spend the cash on whiskey and cigarettes and save the envelopes as souvenirs. It became an obsession for him. They were stashed all around the house, towers upon towers of empty, pointless souvenirs, useless shit that my father had cared about more than his own family.
I reached into my pocket and took out the back door key. I had to force the lock because it hadn’t been used for so long, but with each forceful click the door finally opened. I had to give it a little push with my right shoulder and the door swung inward, smashing into a tower of cardboard boxes. The boxes fell to the ground and ruptured, and envelopes toppled onto the dirty floor.
I gasped, and a shrill fear took hold of me… the kind of fear that only haunting childhood memories could provoke. For a second I regressed into an apologetic child; I toward the envelopes with the intent of putting them back into the boxes and ready to apologize to my father.
“Jesus,” I muttered when I had almost reached down to them. I took a step back.
For a second, it was if my father was alive again and I was eight-years-old and had knocked over one of those absurd boxes. I’d known if I didn’t fix it then and there that I would be beaten bloody.
I took another step away from the boxes and moved to the front door, past the kitchen where my mother had once baked me a birthday cake and where Kevin had once ruined a batch of cookie dough. On the counters of the kitchen lay more empty whiskey bottles and cardboard boxes. I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t moved these before. Maybe even now there was some of that old fear of my father’s belt, his fist, the nearest shoe or any other weapon that he saw fit to use against me. I dropped the two black duffle bags by the front door with a thud and adjusted my leather jacket. I took a deep breath and shook off the memories of my childhood.
A few minutes later, I found myself slowly walking back to the kitchen until I was in middle of the room. I didn’t move, and I couldn’t speak. Flashbacks of blood splattered all over the fridge and on the kitchen floor ran rampant through my mind.
What I could feel was an intense amount of pain all over my body as I stared at the refrigerator with wide eyes. My body began to go numb, and I started to get dizzy. It felt like ice was running through my veins and as much I wanted to run away, I couldn’t.
Shallow breathing. Heart racing. I felt like I was on the verge of a total panic attack.
“Brother? I didn’t mean to touch the envelopes,” I heard Kevin’s cries in my head.
I started to hyperventilate and before I knew it…
I snapped.
My hands curled into fists, and I roared with rage as I punched the fridge over and over again.
“Kevin!” I cried into the air. I headed to the wall next to the fridge and took out all of the pain, anger, and guilt that had been locked away in my black heart on the wall, punching it over and over again until my knuckles bled. I took a step back and vacantly stared at the massive holes in the wall, whimpering and wheezing, unable to catch my breath. My explosive wrath continued, and I darted to the empty whiskey bottles and cardboard boxes and threw them on the ground. I bent down and ripped the pointless envelopes into pieces and picked up the glass bottles one by one and threw them against the wall.
I eventually collapsed into a heap, completely out of breath with my knuckles dripping with blood from the torn flesh. I sat in the middle of the kitchen on top of piles of blood-speckled envelopes and shattered glass and whimpered uncontrollably.
“I’m so sorry, brother,” I sobbed.
Ten minutes later, I slowly got control of my erratic breathing and pulled myself to my feet. I was still and weak, but I had a job to do. I wiped the tears away from my face with the palm of my bloody hand and walked towards the front door of the house next to the two black duffle bags. I stood beside the door so that when it opened, I would be hidden in the shadow. I reached into the back pocket of my jeans and took out my pistols, held them by my sides and waited.
As I continued to wait, I couldn’t help but think about Tess. It was as if she was crawling underneath my skin, searching out areas that no woman had ever discovered. Women were women, no more, no less, but Tess was different. I’d taken her as mine for a reason. At the time, I had told myself it was because she was fiery and goddamned beautiful. But what if it was more than that? What if I was starting to feel something more for her?
I was glad when I heard the car engine outside the door; it allowed me to push those thoughts away. I would much rather deal with gun-wielding Russians than my own fucked up and complexed emotions. Gun-wielding Russians were simple. I was starting to discover that feelings were anything but.
I heard the laughter of Russian voices just outside the door, loud and unprofessional. Corrupt killers always laughed and joked before a job. They thought they had to act tough in front of their friends.
The door rumbled as they banged on it.
“Postman,” a strong Russian accent said, to a background of snickers. “Open up, please. We have mail for you.”
I rested my head against the wall and listened. There were three men out there as far as I could tell from the movement outside. I continued to listen and wait. I knew what would happen next.
After a moment, the door crashed open like hurricane force winds had blown it open, swinging backward and nearly forcing me into the wall. I held out my fist and let the door hit it. I grimaced as the cuts from earlier wer
e opened.
The first Russian who walked in wore a shirt with the sleeves rolled up, showing off Russian prison tattoos. Once you saw enough of those tattoos, they all started to look alike. His hair was short and bleached blond.
The second man that walked in was taller than the first, but only by a couple of inches. He wore a red T-shirt and cargo shorts; his legs and arms were covered in the same tattoos. However, I saw the word Death carved into the back of the man’s neck.
The third man was short and severely overweight. He wore a white tank top, proudly displaying his plump arms and his drooping belly. He had Russian tattoos too, but half of them were hidden beneath abundant folds of flesh.
Despite the differences in their appearance, there was one similarity: all of them held guns, even if the plump Russian’s gun looked tiny and toy-like in his hand.
I waited until the men walked further into the hallway and then I took a step forward. I aimed one of my pistols at the back of the blonde Russian’s head and the other pistol at the Russian with the Death tattoo. I pulled both triggers, firing twice simultaneously. Blood splattered on the walls, and the men dropped to their knees, falling down onto the floor like flies.
Before I could turn around, the third man drove the butt of his shotgun against the side of my head. I dropped to the floor next to the two Russians that I had just killed.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Liam bloody Hunter,” the plump Russian wearing the white tank top chuckled with a shake of his head.
I stirred, coming back into consciousness with a groan and slowly opened my eyes.
“The man, the legend, The Animal, yes? A man who has earned three hundred confirmed kills working for the Bianchi family. Very impressive.”
“Tess,” I grunted, blinking rapidly to rid my blurry vision. The room spun around me, and it felt like hammers were banging against the back of my head.