by Liz K. Lorde
I half went down, and half fell, to my knees atop his gravestone.
I put my hand to the cold cameo and ran my fingers along its smoothness.
God give me the power, I closed my eyes and pressed against the gravestone hard. To take breath from a breeze – a wind swept through my hair – and give life to this cold stone frame.
The air around me stilled, and I pressed my forehead against the cool slab. Knots strangled my guts, pressure choked at my breast, the eyes stung with sorrow and breathing was like being stabbed from all directions. I was glad that Tabby wasn’t around to see me cry, but at the same time, I wanted to feel her touch.
You’ll always be my dad, you know… Wish you’d gotten to be a granddad one day.
After I finished my respects, I found my way back to the car with Tabitha and Connifer patiently waiting for me. Nobody was happy about where we needed to go next, the least of which being me. But I knew it was a conversation that I needed to have now, rather than later.
Tabby smiled sadly at me, “Ready?”
“Yeah,” I said, drawing my lip into a short, tight curl.
***
It was time to clean up my act. Time to act more in line with how things should be, instead of how they were. Starting with setting Killaine straight. Descending the brown and rusted spiral staircase, my boots made a distinctly audible clank. The antechamber was dark and only lit up by a shade of blue that came from the posted guard’s laptop. It was Johnny Pimento on duty this evening. I waved to him as he lazily used his computer and ate a sandwich. In turn, he looked up to me from his laptop, took a bite, chewed for a moment, swallowed, nodded and then said, “Boss.”
Fishing through my pants, I pulled out my personal key to Pop’s old holding cells. I opened the door, shut it behind me, and stalked forward along the crumbling concrete pathway. On either sides of me were, currently, empty holding cells. Those were the temporary ones, they were where we would take hostages in times of war.
Then again, when wasn’t there war?
Regardless, these were temporary. But the one on the very end of the room, the one secluded by it’s own corroded steel door, that was where he was.
Where he was waiting.
Bringing my key up to the lock on Killaine’s personal door, I opened it up and it groaned along for every inch I had to move it. Yellow light spilled over the room, and a raggedy looking Killaine in white shirt and pants turned to face me. There was a table outside of his cell, with a host of electronic devices – namely his personal laptop. Killaine still had that look on his face. That unending contempt. His damaged hand was stuck in the pocket of his pants; he’d lost a great deal of motor function in it after that night, but from what the boys tell me – it’s that he’s ashamed of it.
He was always like that. Funny. Neurotic. Thinking of things that wouldn’t cross anyone else’s mind, because it was just too dark or grim of a thought.
I stepped right up to the front of Killaine’s iron bars and cleared my throat, then pushed out an annoyed breath. “Are you ready to talk?” I asked him. I then put my hands on the bars and leaned in closer to him, “or do we need to have that discussion again.”
Killaine swallowed. “No.”
“Then it’s time for you to finally get back to work. I talked to Ernest, and he told me that with the help of a few of his contacts, he can make it look like you contracted something while on a trip to Belize, that something set off a virus in you.”
“You really think that will do?” Killaine gave me a bitter laugh, “all the little fish in the pond might buy that, and even the mid-levels. But the movers and the shakers?” He laughed again, shorter this time, “the Big Six I’m sure are already aware of what’s happening. They won’t favor us anymore.” Just hearing him talk like he was part of the family business made my gut wrench with disgust.
I looked down to my shoes and gripped the bars of his cell tighter. Why did it feel like I was the prisoner instead of him? Part of me wanted to end him, to just have him dead and buried – to maybe make some kind of hurt peace fifty years from now. The torture that I inflicted on him, the sleepless nights for him and the cries of agony, it just wasn’t enough. My only chance at light, without him being in the ground, was giving myself up to making Tabitha as happy and fulfilled as possible in life.
She was my everything now, and through her, well, I had just that: A faint chance at peace.
Better than nothing. “I don’t give a shit Killaine,” I brought my head back up, “you stick with the story on the laptop. Every dollar, every single fucking dollar that you earn – it’s going to fund research, it’s going to get kids in school – and every chance I get I’m going to come down here and remind you of all of this. How Dad’s name is going to be on every building, every grant, and every ill person’s tongue.”
I sniffed the air. “So yeah. Let the big fish off the hook, see if I care. We’re going to do things differently with me in charge, and you?” I couldn’t help but let out a cocky, darkly satisfied laugh. “You’re going to be my bitch. This is for our sister, for our Dad, and for my crew. I’m gonna make sure that you remember every night before you fall asleep, the sins that you carry.”
Killaine’s distant blue eyes blinked. He said nothing as I scooped up the laptop from the table and handed it to him, through the bars of his cell. He held onto it, and for a moment, we stared one another down.
He gave a scheming smile and pulled the laptop from my hand. Leisurely strolling over to his small white bed, he laid down and opened up the laptop, shifting his eyes to look at me. “Don’t worry, I’m going to be very busy.”
I growled habitually, not loud enough for him to hear. This was a risky deal, but it was the one I thought best to make.
Turning on my heel, I gave him one last look.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
NOW AND ALWAYS
TABITHA
12 Weeks Later
The needle hovered over my left shoulder. I’d already gotten some of the work done previously, so I knew what I was expecting pain wise, but I still didn’t want to have to go through it. I was a bookworm, not a badass.
Or at least, I was just a bookworm. Every day Leo made me feel a little more capable, a little stronger. I didn’t feel so embarrassed about taking my medication, I felt normal.
The bald, tatted up man I came to know as Brent Wormwood brought the needle to my skin. Pain soared from the spot that it touched and I voiced my discomfort, though, not nearly as much as the last visit.
“You’re doing good,” Brent said through a smile, “it’s going to look tight, trust.”
“It better,” I replied through grit teeth, “I don’t enjoy unnecessary suffering.” It was a tattoo that I thought would befit us. Me and Leo. There was actually one tattoo that he got a few weeks back that he had over me. He added my name to his inked list on his Adonis Belt. Where he kept the people that he cared about most in his life.
I wasn’t quite ready for a tattoo there, but the shoulder seemed a nice place to start. Since he had a King of Spades on his shoulder, I convinced him to modify it a bit just for me, of course, it’s not like bending him to my will was that hard.
That way I could get a matching Queen of Spades on the shoulder opposite, with text that mirror his, reading: ‘His Queen.’ Leo suggested the portrait of me inside of the card itself, but done in the fashion of a skull – so I told Brent to end up doing that, too.
Later, after having my arm cleaned up and stopping by the AP gas station for some wine coolers, and yeah, I bought a few scratch offs too so sue me. I drove my downtrodden Nissan Ultima to Fiona’s place, rang the now very fixed up door, hugged her neck, sat down and shared a few drinks with her between playing tennis on her VR console.
After having lost an embarrassing number of rounds to her, we concluded our gaming for the night and retired to the sofa; she found it in her best interests to put on the classical music channel, and the soothing, soft sounds of piano and str
ing carried themselves through the room. Sinking back and deep into the sofa, I let my tired body relax and just drift away, kicking my feet up onto the table.
Fiona prodded at my leg with the back of her hand, “Get them down,” she insisted. “Unless you plan on being my new maid that works from the kindness of her heart, instead of digging through my wallet.”
Groaning, I obliged. “Getting stabbed like a pincushion hasn’t changed you one bit.”
“Neither has you being Greeny’s latest fling.”
Through short laughter: “I’ll tell him how much you still admire his sense of fashion.”
Fee smirked at me and drank her cherry cooler, “You never did tell me how it went.”
“Hm? How what went?” I mentally ran down a list of possible things she could be referring to, and only when my brain caught up to what she was going on about, did she continue.
“Your father,” she said softer than I expected, her eyes crinkling with curiosity. I had a feeling that was what she was going to ask about. Leonardo and I had talked about it for a couple of weeks, and decided that even though I couldn’t publicly be recognized as John Godric’s daughter, I could still see him privately. So he set up a meet, and we talked for about an hour.
“It was… satisfying. Weirdly enough.” I fought the urge to put my feet back up on the living room table. “Awkward at first, of course, but what isn’t these days?”
“Does he know that you and Greeny…”
“Yeah that was a big chunk of the awkwardness, dating a known mobster kind of not something even a normal father would approve of, let alone the ruling elite of this mad city.”
Fiona chuckled, and I continued, “He told me about how happy my mom was, when he met her, and how they had more than just one affair… little TMI, I know, but… hearing the way he talked about her? About how she used to bar tend and make him his rum and coke? It helped. It really did.” I tried to push away that stone in my throat, not looking at Fee directly now, “he was nice, and we’re going to have lunch out of town next month.”
“I’m happy for you,” Fiona brought a hand to my shoulder and squeezed. “Now if only I could find a man worth breaking and keeping around the house.”
I smiled at her and reminisced on my other Dad. The one that I thought for so long was my father.
Perhaps I’ll forgive myself of even that, some day. The nightmares were a thing of the past, and I found myself thinking about him less and less. Even more, I found myself stripping away all that nasty guilt and shame and ‘what if’-isms of the past.
Free, that was how I’d describe it. The feeling that these weeks had brought me.
An hour and sometime later, I’d sobered up enough to get back in my car, turn on the radio, and head home.
When I stuffed my apartment key into the brass lock, I checked my phone before opening the door, to see if Leonardo had text me. My heart dropped a little when I saw that he hadn’t. Not hearing from him made me sad, which honestly was new territory for me – being disappointed that someone hasn’t talked to you. Normally it pleased me to be left alone to my own devices, or to get lost in one of my books.
Opening the door, a jolt of surprise surged through me. What was this?! There were glass candles, dozens of them, lit in the darkness of my living room. For a second I didn’t even move, I just let my jaw hang there and wondered what rom-com I’d accidentally stepped into. The whole placed smelled of flowers and Leonardo and… Vanilla, I think. Was all of this… for me? Tingling happiness spread through me effortlessly at the realization. God.
This was for me. This wasn’t in some book, and it wasn’t in a movie – it was real and it moved me, it made me want to weep for once in my life, not from sorrow, but from joy.
Life was colorful to me again. Whole.
My smile came next, my big, dumb, stupid smile that I couldn’t contain any longer. The one that I tried not to let people see; now a days, I found myself giving it out freely in public. This was so over the top and radical. Red rose petals were strewn along the floor, and I followed them excitedly down into the hall that led to my bedroom. With every step that I took, I could feel my heart crashing against my chest – as though the songbirds themselves were singing, I couldn’t shake the joy from my bones even if I tried.
The thought of Leo swam through my mind as I nearly raced with joy to my bedroom door, which was slightly ajar. Pushing it open, I got chills when I saw Leonardo standing there. He looked proud, regal, and dare I say even a bit nervous. He was done up in a fancy and properly done tuxedo, with his hands held tightly behind his back. That smile I came to love spread on his face, and he laughed lightly for a moment.
It must have been infectious, because I laughed right with him. This was insane. “Leo,” I said with thick surprise and warmth, “what the hell is all of this?” I brought my hand out in a sweeping motion, to point out all of the candles and petals. “Are you—are you… Are… You?”
He grinned, bringing his hands to the front and revealing to me a small black felt box. “They all told me this was too cheesy,” he explained, stepping forward, the soft glow of orange light cascading around his glorious figure. “Well, I didn’t pour acid on them or anything,” he shrugged in a joking, sheepish manner.
With voice sotto, I felt a hand clench at my chest: “Leo…”
“But I did tell them, that my girl. My girl likes her cheese, and she likes being cuddled at all times. I told Connifer and Myra and all the rest…” his green eyes pleaded with me, and my eyes moved to the faded scar notched above his brow. “I told them, that you’re my girl – now and always,” Leonardo knelt on the one knee and stared up at me, his eyes brimming full of love and life. He swallowed and pushed out a breath, and then opened the lovely black box, revealing a pristine, gorgeous emerald engagement ring. “You are mine, now and always, right?” The tears already started finding their way into the back of my eyes, threatening to spill down my face.
I brought myself down to his level and put my hands on cheeks of his face, “Yours,” I told him. “Now and always.”
He smiled brighter than I’d ever seen him – and I knew that we’d remember and cherish this moment the rest of our lives.
There wasn’t a cure for a lifelong suffering, but there was a lifelong joy in being loved. Our lips crashed together, and with hearts eternal, our passion became one.
Now and always.
THE END
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Author’s Note:
Wow, thanks SO much for taking the time to read my 5th novel. It really means a lot to me that you did, because I never thought I’d come this far. I have the best mothaf*ckin fans in the world, romance readers are WARRIORS. I’ve been so blessed to have donations and emails and kind words, so a big thanks to my mailing list, god you guys are so important to me!
Writing this book was a huuuuge effort for me. Out of all the books that I’ve written, Revved Up Hearts gave me the most trouble. This was a close, CLOSE second. Seriously. Obviously I hope that doesn’t show too much in my writing or plot or characterization, but I always enjoy trying to keep it real with my audience.
Some days I didn’t write at all.
Even just today as I write this, as I put in the finishing touches – the only thing that manages to go through my mind, is that I should quit. That I should just stop. Like no matter what I put down, or what I change, that it just won’t be good enough.
Some days I would write two hundred words after hours and hours of pushing myself to do so.
I’m not trying to whine for the sake of attention, if I wanted to do that I’d just cry on Facebook. But yeah, I live for those frankly amazing moments where everything starts to make sense and click; those times when I know just what I want to say, and how best to say it.
Tabitha Godric comes from a real, real place in my heart. I�
�ve struggled with depression and low self esteem and anxiety and just, just so many bad demons in my heart and poison in my head.
Leonardo Ligotti? Well I got a huge inspiration from Leto’s portrayal of The Joker. Seriously. I thought that if there was more time to write, and less executive meddling, he could have done a fantastic portrayal of everyone’s favorite clown prince. I have a lot of problems with that movie, but I know there was a great deal of stress and a time crunch on the movie’s writing.
It took me 4 months to write this book. Even that doesn’t make the book magic, that’s just how it goes when you write something. You can always do something better, or something more. So am I totally pleased with how things came out? No, no not really. I’ve had some very valid criticisms in the past and I’ve trieddd to address them, but it’s just hard to do so.
Wow! It’s hard to write good, who would have thought?
Right now I’m just trying to write good enough. I’m trying to write good enough to make y’all happy, to make myself happy. I had a lot of fun writing about Leonardo and Tabitha’s past, and I’m going to explore them both more in the form of short stories, I hope.
To make some of my characters miserable… If I can make you laugh with my writing, and not at it, well then I’ll pay myself on the back for that.
I’ll definitely be writing a stand-alone sequel to OCLTCL. Probably about Connifer.
I would like to write one more Revved Up book, in the Steel Knights series.
The future is not certain for Hell Reapers, even though that was one of my, in my opinion, strongest releases.
For the future of this particular series: Chaos, Nevada. Which is pretty plainly based around the idea of Las Vegas but turned up to 11… I’d like to include more shadowy business figures like Killaine. More heists and all around madness. A title I’m considering for the sequel is actually Mad City, Madder Love.
If my writing seems whack, out of place, or chaotic. That’s just how my head works, babe. It’s a hell of a place, up here.
Here I am putting the final touches up on the book and I’m terrified out of my mind that it’s all going to go down as a waste of time and energy… It’s terrible!