by Sam Mariano
“I do have one question,” I tell him. I hesitate though, glancing at Adrian and Alec. Ordinarily I wouldn’t think twice, but it occurs to me I don’t want to share Mia’s issues with them.
Adrian frowns, confused.
“You two give us a minute.”
Discomfort oozes from Adrian. “I was joking about comparing notes. Please, for the love of God, don’t do that.”
I roll my eyes. “Five minutes. Go.”
Sighing heavily, Adrian mutters under his breath as he follows my orders. Alec is not similarly hesitant; he couldn’t give fewer fucks, he just wants to get out of here.
Since I have to wait until they’re out of earshot, I walk up behind Leroy, raise my foot just behind his ass, and give him a good kick.
He cries out in alarm and pain as his body swings back and forth.
“I bet that’s uncomfortable, isn’t it?” I ask him, smiling. “It’s uncomfortable for any man, but a portly body like yours, that’s gotta hurt like hell.”
Leroy continues to sob.
“I wasn’t there when she lost her virginity so I can’t say for myself whether or not she was a virgin. Was she?”
“How am I supposed to know? I didn’t rape her,” he says, shaking his head. His chins jiggle. I cock my head, wordlessly questioning the reliability of this answer. “I didn’t! I swear to God, I didn’t.”
“If there is a God, I doubt he wants to hear from you.”
“I didn’t fucking rape her!”
“Good.” I nod once. I didn’t think he did, but there was no harm in checking. This next part is going to be a lot harder, but right now he’s terrified and he knows I’m disgusted by his predilections. I need to turn the tides a bit. “Can I tell you a secret, Leroy?”
His Adam’s apple bobs. His eyes seem to have permanently widened. He gives a shaky, spastic nod. He doesn’t know what to do here.
“I did.”
For a moment, he doesn’t understand. Then he does. Then he’s really fucking confused.
I spread my hands, bowing my head. “Didn’t want to say so in front of them, you understand. Of course, it’s a little different in my case. Mia’s not a child anymore. As I’m sure you can guess, she’s grown up quite nicely.”
Leroy gulps again.
I smile. “I don’t blame you for not agreeing. Anyway, I understand what you mean. Mia has a pull. She lures you in. It’s really not your fault you couldn’t resist her. I couldn’t either. It’s almost reassuring to hear someone else had the same problem.”
Obviously hesitant to trust me, but desperate enough that he has to, Leroy tentatively says, “Yeah. Normally I’d never do something like… I mean, I didn’t hurt her. We were just spending time together. Shelly worked two jobs; she was tired all the time.”
“Pregnant women tend to be tired,” I say, mildly.
His gaze flickers to mine, but he’s not surprised.
“Casey’s yours, right? Your name’s not on the birth certificate but the timeline checks out. I just assumed.”
“Shelly doesn’t let me see her. Never has.”
At least she’s done one thing right. “Anyway, I interrupted.” I nod for him to go on.
He eyes me warily, but he’s already starting to believe me. “Mia liked to stay up late and sleep in on the weekends, and so did I. So after Shelly would go to bed, we would hang out on the couch and watch movies or TV shows. She liked to watch the rated R ones and her mom didn’t let her, but I did.”
I smile. “I bet she did. Mia loves to dip her toes into the forbidden, doesn’t she?”
“Yes,” he says quickly, since that’s something he can pin on her. “Yeah, she does. And so we’d watch these movies and get comfortable on the couch. She’d always sit on the other side though. I thought…” He hesitates, watching me. “I wanted her to sit closer.”
I nod my understanding. “Naturally.”
“So she came over and sat by me. Real close. And then one night I put my arm around her—innocently, I wasn’t trying to… I wasn’t trying anything.”
“Right.”
“And she just… she just leaned right into me.”
I don’t like this at all. I needlessly smooth down the lapel of my suit jacket and regroup. Now I look up at him like my mind is open to his explanation. I even offer a faint smile. “Yeah, she’s a cuddler, that one. She’s so damn friendly, isn’t she? I think that’s what it is. She leads you on. Makes you think she’s interested in you.”
Eyes rolling back with relief, he says, “Yes. Like I said, she flirts with you.”
I give him a nod. “I know. Adrian doesn’t understand. Adrian isn’t like us.”
Now he’s finally starting to calm down. Now he’s really starting to trust me. “She fucks with your mind. Shelly even saw it.”
“The friendliness,” I say, blandly.
A flicker of a frown crosses his brow. “The flirting. Yeah.”
“Right.”
“One night… one night Shelly almost caught us. We were on the couch like always and by that point I got her comfortable with me.” He pauses, realizing that sounded predatory, and darts a glance my way.
I smile darkly. “Yes, I know how that goes. She’s so easy once you get her comfortable with you.”
I don’t like the look that crosses his face, not one bit, but he nods. “Yeah, she was very trusting. Even when she didn’t seem comfortable, she still wouldn’t get up and leave. Too afraid to hurt my feelings.”
I crack my neck, feeling my poker face start to slip. I reach down deep and keep it solid. “Anyway, Shelly almost caught you,” I offer, so he continues his story.
“Yeah, so we were watching a movie. It took a few tries. She kept getting up and saying she had to go to the bathroom so she could sit back down on the other end of the couch. She was just shy about it, you know.”
“Of course.”
“But she always came back over if I bugged her enough—if she didn’t want to, she wouldn’t have done that,” he adds, defensively.
“Oh, absolutely. She wanted it; she just didn’t want to admit it. Didn’t want the responsibility of doing something wrong. It was the same with me,” I assure him with a nod.
“Exactly. Exactly. But yeah, so the movie was heating up anyway, we were getting hot and bothered.”
Jesus fucking Christ.
He’s caught up in his memory, so he’s barely paying attention to me now. That’s good, because as he goes on to explain how he worked his way up her leg, how his disgusting hand settled between her thighs, how he touched her on her couch, in her living room, where she should have been safest, my poker face dissipates in a puff of fucking smoke, revealing a peek at the murderous rage brewing beneath the surface. He’s gazing off at the wall with a faint smile as he recalls how Shelly came in the living room but he slickly recovered, how Mia sat there woodenly and didn’t say a word, even when her mom asked what was going on.
I guess I’ve adequately sold my own depravity at this point, because he goes on to admit that Shelly jumped all over his ass when he went to bed that night and he told her about Mia’s flirting. Told me how Shelly assured him she would have a chat with her “fucking daughter” and how the next day she jumped all over Mia for trying to seduce her boyfriend.
Her 12-year-old fucking daughter.
Something gnaws away at my insides. I realize I haven’t asked the question I intended to ask, but I can’t now. I can’t find the will to speak at all.
Adrian comes into view, peeking his head inside to see if I’m done. I nod wordlessly and he calls for Alec over his shoulder.
A horrible silence overtakes the room once they’re back inside. They know me so they’re picking up my vibes, the violence I’m restraining. There’s also not much that makes me speechless. There’s not a lot that makes me feel sick to my stomach like I do now.
I need some air.
I leave Alec and Adrian in here without a word and head outside. The rain has stopp
ed. It’s still dark. I suck a few deep breaths into my lungs, then I head to the car and grab the baseball bat under the seat.
When I rejoin the men, before Adrian has a chance to ask if everything is okay, I approach good ol’ Leroy from behind, plant my feet on the cement floor, and swing with enough force that he cries out and swings like a human piñata.
I keep at it like I really have a taste for some fucking candy.
When he starts to get too quiet, I toss the bat. Pull out my gun. Put a hand on his hip to steady his swinging body. He’s still alive, but that he’s gotten so quiet despite my continued assault makes me think maybe he won’t be for much longer.
There’s still one thing I really wanna do.
“You ever hear of kneecapping, Leroy?”
He doesn’t even groan.
“I’ll be honest, I’m not a big fan. When I do something, I like to do it right. Kneecapping is actually pretty hard to get right.” I trail my gun up his leg, pressing it into a depression at the back of his knee. “See, you have to be precise to fracture the kneecap. Not like you can’t do damage regardless, but if I say I’m gonna kneecap someone, I wanna fucking kneecap someone.”
His head hangs. His eyes are closed. Poor guy needs a little something to get his heart pumping.
So I squeeze the trigger.
A shrill scream escapes him, followed by another burst of moaning screams as the pain rips through him.
“Ah, there you are. I was beginning to think we were boring you. Anyway, that might have fractured bone, but maybe not. It’s hard to say. There are arteries and veins and nerves—it’s an imperfect science, and not something you get to practice every day, right? Especially me. I’ll confess, Leroy, I don’t ordinarily do this sort of thing myself. I made an exception for you. Do you feel special? You should.”
“So fucking special,” Adrian agrees, looking up at his bloody, sweaty, tear-stained face.
“I hadn’t firmly decided how I would kill you. I wanted to see what you had to say for yourself first. I should tell you, now that we know each other so intimately, I’m a shameless liar. Nothing you could have said to me would’ve convinced me to spare you. You and I are not alike. You see, one of the other things I hate is a weak man who can’t take responsibility for his own actions.”
I walk around so I can look up at him. “I did rape Mia. Everyone in this room knows that. You know what else we all know? That it wasn’t her fault. That I’m not some helpless asshole, lured in by her budding sexuality. You, you’re the kind of dickless fuck who blames a little girl for his predilections. I really don’t like that. Oh, wait. You’re not dickless, are you?”
Leroy is sobbing again. He understands where this is going.
I aim my gun between his legs and pull the trigger again.
Leroy howls in pain and I take several steps back as he screams bloody murder and bleeds all over the fucking place.
“Should I take him down?” Adrian asks.
“Yeah. Take him down. We need to kill him before he dies.”
Adrian snorts his amusement. “Yeah, wouldn’t want him to die before we kill him.”
“It would be a real shame.”
Alec comes over to help Adrian, but he is not happy. “You’re both fucking crazy. Are we cleaning this up?”
“Nah,” I say, watching. “Once you get this asshole down, call Xander and have him bring a crew. He’ll have to scrub the place down.”
There’s little life and no fight left in Leroy’s body now. A lot of times this close to the end they’ll get another burst, one last desperate grope at life.
Not Leroy.
Leroy is the worst. He’s even bad at dying.
Adrian grabs two thick plastic bags. He secures the first one over Leroy’s head, but because there are always tiny breathable holes in plastic, after he secures that one with duct tape, he wraps another bag over his head and does it again.
Alec is gone, probably cursing his relation to me as he calls in a clean-up crew.
Adrian sighs as he comes over to stand beside me. We both look at Leroy. He’s not even fighting yet. He might get his burst in a few seconds when the stifling heat inside the bag makes him claustrophobic. Panic will overtake him. He can’t even claw at the tape or try to rip the bag because his arms are still tied behind his back. He’ll struggle to breathe. His vision will waver. He’ll get dizzy, and though he will understand what’s happening, there will be nothing he can do to stop his own demise.
Aside from all the pain, it will be a terrifying way to die.
“This was a good idea,” I decide.
Adrian nods his agreement. “A good bonding experience.”
“Probably better than running a train on Mia.”
He snorts, glancing over at me. “Yeah, she has enough assholes vying for her companionship; I’m not throwing my hat in that ring.”
“It’s good you have Elise,” I state.
His amusement fades. “Not yet.”
“You will,” I say, easily.
Nodding without much confidence, he looks back at Leroy. He’s still not struggling. Maybe he’s already dead. As unexciting in death as he was in life.
“We should get breakfast,” I tell Adrian.
He turns his head to look at me. “Breakfast?”
“Why not? Denny’s is always open, right? Their food is shit, but you used to like to hit them up after a job. You still do that?”
“Not really. No one to go with. We could probably do that.” He misses a beat, then asks, “What did you ask him when you made us leave?”
“Just wanted to get some details.”
“That’s gross.”
I roll my eyes. “Not those kinds of details.”
“Hey, you can’t blame me for wondering. I don’t know what you’re capable of anymore.”
Another few seconds pass and Leroy isn’t moving. He’s probably dead. We’ll still give it a few minutes to make sure. “Mia doesn’t remember it,” I say, suddenly. I feel his gaze jerk back to me, but I keep watching Leroy. “I asked her point blank if she’d been abused and she said no.”
Adrian sighs. Out of my peripherals, I see him rake a hand through his shaggy hair. “Happens sometimes. Some people experience a serious trauma like that, they can’t deal with it. Their brain protects them, blocks the memory.”
“Do you think she’ll forget what I did?”
“She doesn’t forget,” he snaps. It surprises me, so I glance his way. Now anger burns in his gaze. I said something wrong, but I don’t know what. “It’s not forgetting. The memory is buried, not erased. Whatever she did that prompted you to look into it in the first place, whatever made you think she might have been abused? That proves it’s still there. You probably fucking triggered it with your bullshit. Someone experiences a trauma like that and buries it, things can happen later in life that knock the memory loose. She could still remember what this shitbag did to her, and if she does, it’s undoubtedly your fault.”
“I’m sure she would have already,” I say, shaking my head. “It happened days ago. She softened to me after that. She still felt the—” I stop short of saying shame. That’s private and no one else’s business but Mia’s. “I think I knocked loose the accompanying behavior, the feeling, maybe—but not the memory. She would’ve told me. She was trying to bond with me, to dig into my scars. She wouldn’t have kept hers from me.”
He regards me for a moment. “Let’s call this whole thing off.”
My gaze snaps to his. “What?”
“Conroy, Hernandez—we don’t need to send the cops to talk to her yet. You obviously like her. Let’s see what happens before you fuck it up more than you already have.”
“No. I need this to be done. I can’t…” I shake my head, unsure how to explain it, unwilling to, even if I could figure out how to put it into words. “I need to see what she does so I can get her out of my house. I need this chapter closed.”
If she wanted to stay with me, she wo
uld have.
She went back to Vince.
“It’s done,” I tell him, even though he hasn’t argued. “It’s over. I played my part, now it’s her turn to play hers.”
“This isn’t fair,” Adrian states.
“I don’t play fair,” I point out.
This seems to aggravate him. “How can you care this much about some asshole she can’t even remember hurting her, then turn around and set a trap for her hours later? What is wrong with you?”
“I’m sure a lot of things,” I say, smiling faintly.
“You wanted to call them off yesterday, before your asshole brother got in your head.”
“Things change.”
“You’re punishing her for going back to Vince.”
That draws a frown out of me. I check Leroy. He should be dead, but I don’t feel like going over there and checking. He’s lying unconscious in a pool of blood; I’m pretty much done with him. I’m not as satisfied as I hoped I’d be, though. I glance at my knuckles, red from the couple times I hit him, but it wasn’t enough. I thought he’d put up more of a physical fight than he did. I need to hit someone else.
I need to hit Vince.
Drawing my phone out of my pocket, I tap out a quick text to let him know I expect to see him at the gym this morning. I’m gonna make him spar with me so I can punch him in the fucking face and let him know I’m watching, and if he doesn’t leave Mia alone and let her heal for a few days, I’m going to hang him up on a meat hook.
It’s not what I would do, but he’s not me. He can’t do what I can do for Mia. He’s not powerful enough to command her demons.
Fucking Vince.
Adrian shoves me. I scowl at him, unsure why.
“Don’t fucking ignore me.”
I wasn’t ignoring him, I just got distracted. Ordinarily he understands that, but now he’s being a pain in the ass. I shove him right back. “I wasn’t ignoring you.”
“Her loyalty wasn’t yours. She wasn’t yours. Don’t punish her. She hasn’t betrayed you.”
“She probably will.”
“She doesn’t owe you anything,” he states. “Is it really a betrayal?”
“You know how it works, Adrian.” I double check that my message sent. It hasn’t been read yet since he’s still asleep. Mia is probably curled up in his arms the way she was curled up in mine two nights ago.