by B. B. Hamel
I watch as she slowly comes under control of herself. It’s amazing. She goes from terrified and confused to totally in control in less than a few seconds. It’s totally unnerving, actually.
“What do you want?” she asks quietly.
“The place you work.”
She watches Noah for a second. She glances at me and then back to him. “You’re the one that’s been watching us.”
He looks surprised, but he quickly controls himself. “So you noticed me.”
“We notice everything,” she says.
“Then I guess we don’t have much time.”
“No. Probably not.”
“Who do you work for?”
She smiles. “Do you really want to know?”
“Speak.” Noah’s face is hard and controlled. I’m trying to stay as calm as him, but I doubt I’m doing a good job.
“There are people in this world, powerful people with lots of money. They can keep a place like mine in business for a very long time. Even with the sort of services we provide.”
“What kind of services?” I blurt out.
She looks at me and smiles. “Anything you can imagine, we cater to.”
“Who are they?” Noah asks, drawing her gaze back to him.
“Governors. Mayors. Senators. Bankers. Business men. Lawyers. People with means and some without.”
Noah’s expression grows darker. “I want names.”
“No,” she says. “I’ll die before I give you names.”
“Okay then.” He turns to me. “Amelia?”
“No,” I say softly. “It’s your turn.”
He smiles. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Truth is, I want to watch. I know I’ll kill again one day, but not tonight. He put so much work into this moment, and he deserves it more than anything. I can’t imagine taking the pleasure of the kill away from him.
He takes the knife and holds it against her chest.
“One less scumbag on the earth,” he whispers to her. “Good luck.”
“Wait—“ Her eyes go wide.
He plunges the knife into her chest.
I watch Noah’s face. It’s pure ecstasy, pure pleasure. He watches her face as it drains of life, the blood pooling all around her.
He exhales and slowly pulls the knife from her chest.
We sit there in silence together, looking at her body. She looks smaller in death, less menacing. Her eyes are open but Noah doesn’t close them.
“Okay,” he says. “One last thing.”
He reaches into his bag and pulls out a tooth. He puts it into the Madame’s pocket. He pulls out a shoelace and he wraps it around her wrist. Once he’s done, he stands.
“Let’s go.”
I stand up and stare at her body. Sheer’s tooth and his shoelaces were Noah’s whole plan. He believes that even if it seems totally improbable and unlikely, they’ll think that the Madame was Sheer’s killer all along, thereby clearing me. Or at least they won’t be looking for me so hard.
“Noah,” I say.
He pauses and looks at me. For a second, I can’t help but imagine what my life would have been like without him. I can see myself, poor and alone, struggling to get by. I can see myself with the darkness locked inside of me with no way out. I can see myself drinking more and more, doing drugs, doing anything to find some ounce of relief, but I never do. I can see myself dying young, pathetic, alone, afraid, in a gutter, with nothing.
But I don’t need to see any of that. I don’t need to see it, not anymore, not with Noah in my life. He’s here and I’m here and we’re doing this together. We’re leaving town, running away, starting over, making a new life together. We’re beating the system and leaving one last Fuck You for the bad people of this city.
I don’t know what it’ll be like somewhere else. All I know is that I want to find out. I want to be there with him, wherever it is. He can bring me to that next place, make it better, make it great.
I smile at him and nod my head once. “Okay. Let’s go.”
He takes my hand and we leave the Madame’s dead body behind us. We don’t look back.
28
Noah
Two Years Later
My workshop is nearly full as I lug another box through the front door. I drop it off into a corner and head back out into the sunshine and the warm afternoon.
Nobody is around, though they wouldn’t be right now anyway. The locals all take a nice long break in the afternoon, their little siesta hour, and I like to use that time to get some extra work done. They all think I’m weird for wanting to stay busy all day, but that never bothered me. Then again, I wouldn’t see anyone around here anyway, since we’re so damn secluded.
I carry the last box into my workshop and grab a knife. I cut it open slowly down the taped seam then pull it open. Inside are sheets of plastic, that thick, beautiful kind that I love.
“I’ve never met someone that looks so lovingly at plastic.”
I look up and smile. Amelia stands in the doorway, looking gorgeous, her belly swollen with pregnancy.
“I don’t love the plastic, it’s what the plastic represents.” I walk over to her and kiss her lightly on the lips.
“I miss it too, you know,” she says softly.
“I know you do. We’ll be ready to go again soon.” I put my hand on her bump and smile. “You’re almost ready to burst.”
She sighs. “The sooner the better.”
“Then, once you do, we can get back to work.”
“Looks like you have a lot of work planned the way you’re stockpiling that plastic.”
“You should see the underground part.” I grin at her, referring to the several basements under my workshop.
“Come on,” she says, shaking her head and smiling. “Come have some lunch.”
“Just let me get this stuff downstairs. I’ll be in soon.”
She waves and heads back toward the main house as I hit the false screwdriver hanging on the wall that activates the basement door.
It slides open, pushing a fake hay bale aside. I grab a box and head down the stairs. The lights come on automatically as I step down onto the concrete floor.
I smile to myself. It’s been a couple months since I’ve had a reason to come down here. I put the box in a corner before walking into the center of the room which has a drain in the floor and a stainless steel surgical table overtop it.
This is my second home, my sanctuary, my church. It’s where I worship at the altar of death. Ever since Amelia got pregnant, we’ve had to slow down our killing considerably, but I can’t wait until we can start again.
She’s remarkable, Amelia. She learned so much faster than I thought she would. Once we left the city two years ago, we moved across the country, not staying anywhere too long before finally crossing into Mexico. From there, we got a flight to Spain where we’ve been living ever since.
Spain is a beautiful country. We didn’t think we’d stay, but we love the people, the wine, the food, everything. A year ago, I bought some land outside of a large city and began to build my property again. It was completed six months ago, which means it only got some two months of solid use before Amelia was just too pregnant to continue.
I didn’t think it was fair to keep killing without her, and so I’ve abstained as well. I know that as soon as our child is born, everything will change, and I’m not sure that I mind it so much. We’ll be able to continue our work, keep hunting down horrible people and ending them, but we’ll be slowed down.
It’ll be worth it. All of this is worth it.
Because I’m with Amelia.
Ever since we left the city, my screaming need has been more of a whisper. I’m not as deeply addicted to the death as I once was, which both terrifies me and excites me. I can feel it slowly ebbing away, getting softer, quieter. Amelia takes that edge away.
I want a family. I want a life. I know that one day, we’ll have to stop killing completely. I
still have plenty of money, but who knows how long it’ll last. Spain is a strange place and we’re still getting used to it.
I finish bringing down the boxes. Once they’re all stacked in a corner, I take one last look at the beautiful knives all hanging in their places before heading back upstairs. I shut the trap door then walk back into the main house.
Amelia is in the kitchen, making lunch. It’s a tapas-style lunch, all different small meal platters, cheeses, a little wine, and some other gorgeous dishes. Ever since we moved to Spain, she’s really flourished, learning the language even faster than I did and taking up local cooking.
I come up behind her and kiss her neck. She smiles and tilts her head back, kissing my lips.
“Hungry?” she asks.
“Of course. Smells amazing.”
“Go ahead and take what you want.”
I slap her ass and she giggles before walking over and grabbing a plate. I take a few things and eat as I sit at the island, watching her.
Nothing could have prepared me for what was going to happen with her. At first, I thought it was just pure lust between us. I thought I just wanted to break her, make her into my sex slave, something dark and dirty. But instead, she showed me something else, a light I never knew about. She showed me that this was possible.
She showed me that another level to life was possible.
After a few minutes, she joins me at the table. She’s nine months pregnant and she’s due practically any minute.
But there’s one more thing. One last thing we need to do.
I want a family. I want a life with her. I want it all and need it all more than I could have imagined. We still fuck like the first day we met, and that spark never, ever went away. I know it’ll never fade so long as we keeping feeding it.
And we will. But there’s one more thing.
“Amelia,” I say. She looks up at me, smiling. “I spoke with Senor Hernandez.”
She cocks her head. “The priest?”
I nod and reach into my pocket. I pull out a small box and place it on the table in front of her. She looks at it quizzically.
“He said he’s willing to marry us.”
It takes her a second to understand, but when she does, her eyes go wide. “Are you serious?”
“Very serious.” I nudge the box toward her. “Open it.”
She reaches forward and takes it. Inside is a diamond ring that I had custom made in town for her. She stares at it for a second and then looks at me, tears in her eyes.
“Noah,” she says.
“What do you think?”
“Of course. Yes, I’ll marry you.” She laughs. “After this baby is out, though.”
“Good.” I pull her toward me and kiss her. “We’ll have the baby and then we’ll be married.”
“I love you so much, Noah.”
“I love you too.” I kiss her softly. “And when you’re ready, we’ll hunt again.
“Good.” She laughs. “God, I never pictured any of this. Did you?”
“Not once. Not a single time.”
“But it’s heaven, isn’t it?”
I laugh and smile. “It’s heaven.”
We laugh together and I pull her against me, my pregnant soon-to-be wife, my beautiful partner.
We’ll kill together, raise a family together, make love together. I never could have guessed that this is how things would have turned out, but it’s perfect. We’ll rid our town of the worst of the worst, the sickest bastards we can find. We’ll make the world better together.
And we’ll love each other. There isn’t a better life imaginable. We’ll love each other forever.
Prologue: Emma
They say killers can’t love.
They say killers don’t feel a thing as they move through a room like an angel of death, their guns blazing, bodies dropping all around them. The hit men that work for the Russians and for the Italians don’t care about life or death, only cold hard cash.
He was one of those angels. Instead of wings, he had thick, roped muscles and black tattoos all along his perfect skin. His cocky smile said I owed him my life, and maybe a little bit more.
I never wanted to be owned, not by anyone, not for any reason. My father thought he owned me, and all I got from that was a roof over my head and a black eye every other week.
My father was a stupid man. He was a member of the mob, but not an important one. The only thing he loved more than drinking was gambling, and he owed thousands of dollars that he couldn’t pay to bookies all over Chicago.
It didn’t surprise me when the angels of death came for him with lead and steel. They killed my father and were going to kill me until he changed his mind.
“Look what we have here,” he said to me later, after he’d dragged me from my home and locked me in a closet. Fear and something else lanced through my chest. “You’ve got lips that make my fucking dick hard.”
He was crude and so cocky. He was good with his hands and with a gun, and he thought that made him unstoppable.
But I could see through him.
“I’m taking you with me,” he’d said earlier, his voice deep and soft in my ear. “Unless you want to die here.”
I hadn’t had a choice, of course. I either let him take me or his partner put a bullet in my head.
I knew what he wanted from me. He wasn’t pretending it was anything but my body.
“I’m going to make you glad I took you,” he whispered to me days later, after so much had happened, his hands moving down my skin. “You’ll be begging me to sink my thick cock between your legs before this is done with.”
I couldn’t argue with him. I could barely speak, my body rolling with desire and anger.
I wasn’t going to be owned by anyone, not ever again. I didn’t care if people wanted the both of us dead.
I didn’t care that he was the only one who wanted to see me alive.
My angel of death. He sent chills down my spine. “I’m going to taste you,” he said. “I’m going to slide my tongue along that clit until you can’t breathe.”
I wanted to feel him, his muscles, his dangerous smile. I wanted everything he promised.
But I wasn’t his. I wasn’t giving in, no matter how much I wanted to.
I was going to escape from my angel of death if it was the last thing I did.
1
Brooks
It was supposed to be an easy fucking job. We go in, kill the old, drunk, Russian asshole, and then we get the fuck out of there.
Nothing I hadn’t done a hundred times before, maybe a thousand.
I parked the car at the end of the block. It was a quiet neighborhood, especially at three in the morning. Nobody was moving around and the houses were all dark.
“Nice spot,” Abram commented.
“Not bad,” I grunted. “Which house does the old man live in?”
Abram nodded toward the end of the block. “Last on the left.”
I killed the engine. “We got a plan?”
He shrugged. “We’ll break in the back, kill the guy, and then get back home.”
“Works for me.”
I pushed open the car door and then checked the gun tucked into my jeans. I cocked back the slide and chambered a round and made sure the silencer was on tight. Abram was behind me, checking his own weapon.
He nodded at me and then headed down the block. I followed behind him, keeping my head on a swivel.
I’d done this hundreds of times before. We were hit men for the Italian mob, angels of death working for the Barone family. I had more blood on my hands than I could ever hope to wash off, and mercy wasn’t something I had ever thought about before.
I was young when I joined the Barone family. When I was five, my father ran off with some cheap stripper he’d met downtown, and that only pushed my mother deeper into the bottom of a bottle.
Mom died by the time I was thirteen, drank herself to death in less than ten years, though she’d been warming up for that dri
nking marathon for years before that. After Dad left, Mom lost her will to live completely, and she did nothing but drink and drink vast amounts of cheap fucking liquor.
One day I came home and found her tipped over in the bathroom, vomit leaking from her mouth. I’d never forget that image, not for as long as I lived. It didn’t matter how much death and violence I saw; I’d never outrun the image of my mother dead in the bathroom.
The state took me in after that. I entered the foster system, but that shit didn’t sit right with me. I was in and out of care homes, the good people at the adoption services trying hard to find me a permanent place to live, but I was a troubled kid. I got into fights, I stole shit, I pushed back against my guardians. I did everything in my power to raise fucking hell, because I didn’t know any better.
Until one day, I met Gian. He was just a young, mid-level asshole in the mafia back then, but he gave me my first job. I was working in the back of a deli, slicing meats, cleaning up, and after hours I would serve drinks to the wise guys and empty their ashtrays.
Slowly they took me in. The mafia taught me everything I knew about being a man and then some. Gian rose up through the ranks and brought me with him, eventually promoting me to full-time hit man. I didn’t see much of Gian anymore, since he was one of the big bosses, but I owed him and the mafia everything.
They saved my life. I was on a dark path, one strike away from going into the juvenile detention system. From there, I could just imagine what my life would have been like: petty crime, drugs, senseless violence, and ceaseless poverty.
But the mafia gave me purpose. And money, lots of fucking money, so long as I was good at my job and followed orders.
I did what I was told, and I was rewarded for it. I killed who they needed killed and I never asked questions. I trusted them, trusted my superiors, and it never occurred to me that they might not know what they were talking about.
We stopped outside the rundown row home and Abram gestured for me to go around back. I nodded and slipped past the building, silent as a shadow, keeping low and close to the building. I jumped the back fence and landed on my feet, light and easy.