She shoved hard at his chest. “Get the fuck off!”
A terrifying grin, the feral snarl of a rabid dog, split his face, and he growled, “Make me. Fight back.”
“No! Tony, I don’t want this!” She squirmed harder, managing to unpin herself from the island, but he still had her, and he shoved her up against the wall instead. All her breath gusted out in a grunt.
“Yes you do. You like to fight, I know you do, so let me have it. Come on, baby. I need it. I need it so bad. Fight back.” Staring hard with wild, scalding eyes, he leaned in, pressed his body on hers. She could feel how hard he was.
And now she understood the smell. There was blood in his hair, at the roots, and in his eyebrows. Like he’d washed quickly at a sink rather than thoroughly in a shower. He’d gotten most of it, but he’d been bathed in blood today.
And then his hand curled around her throat. Billy’s heart froze solid. Tony was about to rape her. Maybe kill her. What an absolute fool she’d been.
“I don’t want to fight you. Please don’t hurt me.” Her words were meek and small, and she hated them for their weakness, but she had never been more afraid in her life.
He blinked. A frown pleated his forehead. Whatever madness had him in its teeth—or was she even now trying to make excuses for his badness?—its grip loosened, and Tony’s force eased.
“Fuck,” he muttered. “Billy ... fuck. I—”
Whatever he might have said, he didn’t get the chance. Cain grabbed him from behind and shoved him halfway across the room. He must have been in the club bathroom. He preferred it to the small staff toilet.
“GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM HER!” Billy’s father shouted and swung a fist.
Tony ducked, and Cain’s punch, aimed for his face, missed. Tony returned a hard jab to Cain’s ample belly, and Cain folded forward with an oof and flew back, landing on his ass, slamming into the island hard enough to make it rattle against its anchors in the floor.
Then Tony roared and dived to the floor, that madness again in full flower, but now directed to Billy’s father.
Cain was no match. Tony’s fists flew, and Cain’s body flopped and flailed. Blood began to spatter and spray.
Billy yelled incoherently and tried to get Tony off, but she couldn’t get purchase on him, and he was impervious to her attempts.
Finally, she grabbed a cast-iron skillet from Amir’s carefully arranged collection on the wall, and she hit Tony upside the head.
He fell over and went limp, not unconscious, but thoroughly stunned.
Billy helped her father up and, while he was too stunned himself to resist her, she shoved him to the staff table, as far back as she could get him, and sat him down. His nose bled freely, and his mouth and eye were already swelling. She grabbed a towel from a rod and shoved it at him.
Then she pulled a large carving knife off the metal strip and held it before her, ready to defend herself and her father.
Tony had pulled himself together enough to sit against the island. He held his head, cradling the place the skillet had struck.
Still brandishing the knife, Billy sidled closer, and Tony looked up. He focused on the knife with eyes that seemed, now, more lost than anything. She must have hit him harder than she’d thought.
As before, when she’d stabbed him with a Tiffany letter opener, the urge to ‘fill her divot’ struck her, and the idea that he needed ice rose up and almost took her over. Good god, this man made her ridiculous. Her father was the one who needed attention.
“You need to go, Tony. You need to get up and get out.”
“Billy, fuck, I don’t ... I wouldn’t ...” He stopped on a sigh and put his head in his hands. His knuckles were bleeding—or simply coated with Cain’s blood.
This was a side of Tony she’d never seen before—a lost little boy. The knife sagged in Billy’s grip, and she took a step closer before she remembered herself.
“I don’t know what I’m doing.” Tony’s lament was muffled against his palms.
“You were trying to rape me.”
His hands dropped. “NO! No, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t. I just ... I needed ...” He stared at the knife again. “Please put that down. I won’t hurt you.”
She let a bitter chuckle loose. “How many times have you threatened me, Tony? How many times have you put hands on me I didn’t want?”
“Have I ever hurt you?”
“You just did hurt me.”
Tony flinched. “I—”
“Billy, you need to call the cops.”
Now Cain was getting back in the mix. Tony turned a murderous look in his direction.
“Shut up, Cain!” Billy snarled over her shoulder. “Cops would do nothing. This is Quiet Cove. Nick Pagano owns the cops.”
Tony returned his attention to her. “You don’t need help. You’re safe. And he is, too.”
“I don’t understand you. I don’t know what’s up with you. But I know you need to go.”
He shook his head. “Don’t make me.”
Make me, he snarled in her memory. Fight back. Billy shuddered.
She did like to fight. When she was angry, she shouted and slammed doors. Occasionally, she cleared a table. Every now and then, she broke something. An explosion burned off the anger more quickly. Seething was bad for the soul. A good outburst cleaned out the gunk. Carly had taught her that. But what Tony had done, had meant to do—that was not a good kind of fighting. Turning violence into sex, or vice versa, was dangerous and destructive.
Violence and love had no healthy fit together. A man with a back like his should know that.
Or a man with a back like his had never had the chance to learn it.
“Please, Billy. I need ...”
I need it, her memory echoed. I need it so bad.
Pieces of new memories, images of the past few days, settled into place and began to make an understanding.
She set the knife on the island and crouched before Tony. His eyes met hers again, and they were more lost than ever. Not unfocused, it wasn’t the blow she’d dealt him that had him rattled. Whatever was going on in his head, whatever he’d done earlier this day, that was what had him unmoored.
“What do you need?”
“I don’t know. But don’t make me go.”
~ 15 ~
What the fuck happened?
Tony sat on Billy’s kitchen floor, his head throbbing and his chest pounding, and tried to force his brain to work in a straight line and his heart to calm the fuck down. Intellect and impulse had been sparring since Hell’s Kitchen, and now they were in full-blown war.
You were trying to rape me.
No! That wasn’t what he was trying to do. He got forceful, sure, but that was part of the dance. The fireworks he wanted. He liked working for it—but with a woman who wanted him. Billy wanted him. He knew it. She’d told him so. They’d fucked brilliantly already, and she’d wanted to see him again. Here he was. How could she think he’d tried to rape her?
Please don’t hurt me.
She’d been scared. Not angry, not challenging, not giving as good as she got. Simply afraid. Of him.
But he’d just wanted a fuck like they’d had a few nights ago. He needed it—something good to clear out his chaotic head. A rough, sweaty grapple with a woman he liked. Turn all the dark energy blasting through his synapses into something full of light.
Please don’t make me go.
Those were the last words anyone had spoken. His—and he’d been begging. Christ.
Billy stared at him, her eyes like blue ice. Then she sighed out a loud gust of frustration. “I have to help Cain. Stay where you are. I don’t want you moving around behind my back right now.”
Tony nodded.
She got up and tended to her father. Tony barely remembered what Cain was doing here, or why he needed seeing to, but his hands held the fiery ache of violence, and that kept a frayed edge of understanding hooked to his consciousness. He tried to muster his mental forces and underst
and how he’d wound up here, in this fucking mess.
He’d done his job in Hell’s Kitchen. Killed six Ukies, protected Donnie and Angie, and the others. All but Keith. But it hadn’t been his job to protect Keith. Keith had been on a different front of the same mission—protect Donnie and Angie, bring Bondaruk back alive. They’d all done their job. Keith had given his life to it.
And Tony had impressed his don. He’d landed on Nick’s radar and done what had been asked of him. More than that, according to Angie, he’d excelled. Nick had bestowed on him the honor of killing and dismembering Yuri Bondaruk’s eldest son. He’d announced to everyone there—Donnie, Angie, the other top enforcers—that Tony had his favor.
Tony had been an enforcer for a long time. He’d killed men, hurt them, cut them up, while they lived or after they were dead. Torture and pain were in his job description. But something had broken in him in Hell’s Kitchen, a loose bolt in his conscience that made some kind of gear wobble. With Don Pagano looking on, he’d done what was asked—cut off Bondaruk’s pieces while he was kept conscious and in agony, and then he’d opened his chest and taken his beating heart. He’d done his job. Accepted the honor. Shown the don his respect and devotion.
But his hands had been shaking, and he was sure Nick had seen that.
Tony’s hands hadn’t shaken at wetwork since his second time out.
Afterward, Nick had merely nodded grimly and then ordered Angie to pack up Bondaruk’s stray parts for shipment, and the others to clean up and take the body to the sea.
Tony had been excused. Given the next day off. But Angie had clapped him firmly on the back and told him to wash before he went out into the normal world.
One glance at his face in the bathroom mirror had been enough. He was streaked with blood. A death mask. He’d closed his eyes and washed, then changed into the jeans and t-shirt he’d packed. And then, his work completed, he’d headed home.
Except he’d ended up here.
And honestly, he wasn’t sure how that had happened. All he remembered was the staticky roar of turmoil and need.
Billy came back and crouched before him. She had a towel in her hand, knotted around an awkward ball of something. When she offered it, he took it, and only then understood the obvious: it was ice. For his head. She was filling her divot again.
Thinking of that night not long ago, when she’d stabbed him with a letter opener and then tended the wound, he almost smiled, but his face wouldn’t move. He tried to say Filling your divot again? but the words wouldn’t come. All he could do was look at her, and put the ice to the sore place at the side of his head.
They stared at each other. Billy’s teeth gnawed the side of her bottom lip.
“I don’t understand any of this.”
“Don’t make me go.” It was all he could think right now. He didn’t understand what was going on in his goddamn head, and he didn’t want to be alone.
“You need a shower. There’s blood in your hair. There’s blood in your fucking ears.”
“Billy ...” her father muttered from across the room, his tone broken but full of warning.
She threw a quick glance that way, then came back to Tony. “Can you stand?”
“Yeah.”
She stood and picked up that fucking carving knife again. “Then get up. You can shower upstairs. I can’t talk to you while you’re covered in somebody else’s blood.”
Tony stood.
“BILLY!” her father roared. Swelling and blood thickened his voice, but he managed to get some volume nevertheless.
“Dad, just let me handle this, please!”
Cain’s one unhurt eye went round, but he shut up. He held an ice bag to his face, and blood dripped off his chin, down his chest. Damage Tony could barely remember doing.
Billy’s father turned that sole working eye on Tony. “If you hurt her, I will find a way to end your guinea ass.”
Tony’s head was too loud for the slur to earn much attention. Besides, he respected the sentiment. So he gave Billy’s loser father a conciliatory nod. Not an apology—there wasn’t enough respect for that, and Tony kept his apologies dear—but an acknowledgement.
“I’ll be back down in a couple minutes, Cain. Stay put.” She grabbed Tony’s arm. “You, come with me.”
In her other hand, she still held the knife.
~oOo~
Tony stood under the hot spray, his head tipped down, and watched red water swirl down the drain. That third guy, the one who’d seen him coming—he’d fought hard, and forced Tony to kill him while they were grappling face to face. He knew it was mostly his blood he couldn’t seem to get rid of, but it wasn’t that Ukie bastard who had hold of his thoughts.
It was Keith, and his little boy. And Artem Honcharenko, another little boy.
Artem had been an accident. He hadn’t seen him. A little boy shouldn’t have been there, so late at night, surrounded by bad men doing bad deeds. He’d fired at a bad guy and hit a little boy, too. And that boy had been so fucking scared. Lying there dying, in agony and terror.
Tony knew what it was to be a scared little boy. He remembered how fear filled up his head, too big to comprehend, too intense to be survived. Pain was the same way. When you were that young, you couldn’t imagine pain and fear ever ending. While you were in its clutches, it overwrote everything inside you, took everything good and simply erased it.
Artem Honcharenko had died in that terror. His very last thought.
Everything Tony had done today was part of what had happened that night. The shadow of that boy’s death spread to the present and into the future.
And it filled in every crevice of his mind. He didn’t know how to stop it, how to make it recede into the past. He was sorry. He hadn’t meant to do it. He was a shark, but he didn’t eat little boys.
He squeezed his eyes shut, turned the tap all the way to cold, and let the shock of freezing water drown his mind.
~oOo~
When he came out of the bathroom, he had only a towel around his waist. He’d stripped standing beside the tub, but Billy must have taken his clothes away.
She was in her little sitting area, perched on an old velvet armchair. Wearing only knit shorts and a faded Smith College t-shirt, her feet bare, still she managed to look poised and in charge. Regal.
“Where are my clothes?”
“I put them in the wash. They smelled like murder.”
They’d been clean when he’d put them on in the warehouse, after his work of the night. The death stink had stayed with him, apparently. Now, the scents of her soap and shampoo wafted around him. He hoped he’d washed the blood and death away.
She nodded to her made bed. On her white comforter was a little stack of dark clothes—a t-shirt and sweats, from a glance. “I think those might fit you.”
Since he was considerably bigger than she was, they couldn’t be her clothes. “Whose are they?” He did not want to be wearing anything of her father’s.
She didn’t answer.
Upon reflection, Tony decided standing in only a towel while Billy delivered whatever blow she had loaded was worse than the possibility of wearing Cain’s clothes. He dropped the towel and tried the dark-blue t-shirt. It was too small, uncomfortably so, and he tossed it aside. The grey sweatpants, however, fit well enough. A little short.
When he accomplished some manner of dress, she pointed at the other armchair, one mated to hers and facing it. Dark green velvet wingchairs with tall backs. They looked out of place in her sketchy loft, deserving a backdrop of a stately fireplace and a roaring fire.
Comprehending his entire lack of power in this moment but too tired and lost to care, Tony did Billy’s bidding. He crossed the room and sat.
Billy had a gun on her lap—a little .25. One hand rested over it. She’d had her nails done since he’d last seen her; toes and fingers were tipped in a glossy, smoky blue.
When she saw him see the gun, she said, “Just in case.”
He lifted hi
s eyes to hers. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”
“I have absolutely no reason to believe that.”
“Then why am I here?”
“I absolutely do not know. Cain thinks I’ve lost my mind. I think I’ve lost my mind.”
“Then you’re in good company. Maybe I lost mine, too.”
She studied him, her eyes moving back and forth, over his face, down his bare chest, his arms. “I think that’s why you’re here.”
“What do you mean?”
“You seem ... lost. I feel lost. You came to me, and here we are. So.” She cleared her throat. “Tell me what you did tonight. The thing you did that made you wear somebody else’s blood.”
Tony shook his head. “I can’t tell you that, and you know I can’t.”
“I don’t know that. I don’t know the mobster rules. But I do know that I won’t live in darkness and fear. What happened downstairs—either that was you showing me who you really are, or that was you going crazy about something else, and me getting caught in your wake. I’m not good with either possibility, but one, maybe we can work through and find a better place to be. If a rapist isn’t who you really are.”
“It’s not. I wasn’t trying to—”
“Force yourself on me? Yes, you were.”
“NO! I was coming on to you. I wanted to fuck. With you. I wanted to be with you. I just got—I don’t know. My signals crossed, or something.”
A light, barely audible scoff was her only answer.
They sat again in quiet, and Tony began to think about leaving. He should want to go; she was making him feel like chum. She had his clothes in the wash, but if it got bad enough in here, he’d leave dressed as he was. Pick up his shoes and the shit from his pockets and get gone.
He didn’t want to go. He wanted Billy to want him to stay. To forgive him. So he said the words he didn’t think he’d yet said, the ones he held dear. “I’m sorry.”
Her shoulders eased at once, as if she’d been waiting for precisely those words.
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