by Rose Harper
“Try going without me, kitty. I dare you,” he taunts.
I knew there was a reason I liked him more than the others.
9
MATEO
My eyes land on the rusty table deteriorating in the corner. For what seems like the millionth time, my gaze treks over the contours of the instruments gracing its dingy surface. Dark, demented thoughts ram against the barrier at the back of my mind. They are pleading, begging me to give into their sweet, succulent allure.
I’m tempted. So fucking tempted to say forget it all, allowing them full reign over me and my actions. Only, something keeps holding me back. To say I’m confused is an understatement. I should be frothing at the mouth, ready to sink my teeth into her jugular and watch her blood fish down the front of her body. Hear her sweet cries of pain as she knocks on hell’s doors.
It would be so easy to give in. To allow the release I’m craving with every fiber of my being to blaze its way to the forefront. I’m already on a slippery slope, feeling the impending cataclysmic explosion resting just beneath the surface. All it will take is that one instance—that one moment—and I won’t be able to prevent the fallout that will occur.
So, I’m left here waiting, wondering when the other shoe is going to drop. I know it’s coming, that much is certain. But what I don’t know is when.
Wood dust falls on my head as Camille makes another pass over the floor above me. She’s been pacing a lot today, and sometimes, I can hear her heated words through the door that leads down here. Whoever she’s speaking to, she’s none too happy with what they’re saying on the other line.
“You don’t understand! He’s never going to go for that! The moment I do, he’ll kill me and chop me up into tiny pieces,” she fumes, her words causing a slight tug of my dry, cracked lips.
She does have one thing right—I do plan to kill her in the vilest of ways. Her only option to get out of this unscathed is to allow me to die without her precious “stipulation” as a reward. I’d rather cut my tongue out and feed it to the pigs than beg for anything.
Begging is beneath me. It gets me absolutely nowhere. The last person I begged ended up killing the only person I truly loved and who truly loved me in return. I never saw his face, the top of the table being in the way of my vision, but that didn’t stop me from pleading with them to spare my mother’s life.
Back then, I was a pathetic piece of shit. A laughing stock of the entire underworld. It’s a wonder my father ever made me the leader of the familia, being that I was such a disappointment to him. But being that our familia has already prided ourselves on tradition, there was simply no other way. I took the position, falling into it with such ease and grace it even terrified my father. Because we all knew what drove me to that particular place within our familia.
The need to avenge my mother’s death. The drive to carve my mother’s name into her killer’s flesh and feast on the remnants left over. Something tells me little miss priss upstairs can give me exactly what I want, but it will come with a price. I don’t like to owe anyone anything, so I refuse to change my point of view in our standoff. I will get the information I’m seeking, and when I get out of these binds, the first person I’m going to torture for answers is that little bitch pacing the floors.
My sore, sleep deprived eyes wander over to the instruments. Thoughts begin swirling through my mind as my gaze sweeps over every piece, noting their grimy coloring. The saw—oh, how delicious it will be to rake that across her joints, hearing her screams of pain as I rip her apart piece by motherfucking piece.
The ice pick—how enthralling it will be to press that into her skin, forcing it past muscle and bones, repeatedly, watching as she can do nothing but relent to my will.
The scalpel—mmm, God, it makes me so hard thinking about the clean, deep-seated lines I can crisscross over her porcelain flesh.
The longer I allow my gaze to wander, the more I lust for her blood to drench my hands.
But, I need to plan this carefully or else she’ll know something is up. If she’s anything like Carina, she’s able to hear a hummingbird flutter its wings from a mile away when she puts her mind to it. The only way this will work is if I catch her while distracted.
And then, I will become the tormentor instead of the tortured. I will be the king back in his rightful place.
Craning my neck, I vaguely hear Camille’s voice float down the stairs to reach my ears. Hesitantly, I rip my gaze from the tools of torture and stare up at the floor resting just over my head. Her words come out as a yell, easily reaching my ears. Only, this time, instead of hearing one voice—I hear two.
A voice that, to my utter astonishment, I recognize. They must have slipped in while I was perusing the tools to aid in my escape.
A motherfucking voice that belongs to someone I thought a friend—a confidant.
Now, it’s the voice of a traitor.
10
CARINA
“Where. The fuck. Is he?!” I yell, over Domino’s shoulder. His hands tighten around the man’s shirt, forcing him harder into the brick wall.
We’ve been at this for days, limiting the time we have left to find Mateo. If he’s even still alive. I’m fed up with it. All the lies—the evasion. People not giving me the information I want to know.
Dom and I are currently in what the Calvetti’s call “the circle.” We’re terrorizing everyone who could possibly know where Mateo is being held. All we have to go on is the fact that Camille may be the person who’s holding him, and that’s good enough for me. But we’ve yet to come to a definite answer if it actually is her who’s holding him captive.
No one is talking. They refuse to speak to a person like me, and they scatter when they see Dom. I’m at the end of my rope with these people. And if they don’t want to start dying, they will speak up about what they know. I couldn’t give two fucks whose turf I’m on.
I will get what I came for, and that’s Mateo.
Flicking my butterfly knife open, I crack my neck to the side and close in on the man. The scent of urine stings my nostrils, causing my lips to pull back into a sinister smirk. It’s not the first time I’ve made one of these pussies piss themselves, and it won’t be the last. But I will start leaving bodies in my wake if people don’t stop being so tight-lipped. I’m through being nice to these people. Through playing it safe.
My husband is out there somewhere, and the asshole who thought it was a good idea to steal from me is about to get a rude awakening.
As a Reap, we have a code we abide by. It’s the only part of my training I don’t rebuke because even though my father was fucked ten ways from Sunday, it’s logical.
Don’t mess with someone else’s property and don’t kill innocents.
Well, I’m about to break that code today.
Right now.
This goddamn second.
I’ve been pretty silent for the last few months while I’ve been in Mateo’s home, but no more. They want the devil? Well, they better be ready for the burn.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Reap.” The man squirms, eyes as wide as saucers.
“So, you don’t know Mateo Calvetti?” I tsk, shaking my head back and forth.
Blinking rapidly, he replies, “No.” Fucking lie.
A growl rumbles in my chest. Stepping up to him, I rest my arm on Dom’s shoulders. Craning my head to the side, I regard Dom until he turns his eyes toward me, his stoic mask firmly in place. He’s the epitome of pure badass right now, and I can’t help the fact his menacing nature is so delicious it makes me wet.
“Did you hear that?”
His lips finally tilt up. “Sure did, kitty.”
Tilting my head back toward the man dangling in Dom’s grip, I don’t even second-guess my actions as I rear my hand back and swipe the blade across his neck. It takes mere seconds for his mind to register what’s just happened. But once it does, his body begins thrashing in Dom’s grip. Instead of his hands clawing at his arms, t
hey’re now scratching at the gash slashed across the front of his throat. His hands are instantly drenched in blood as his mouth opens and closes like a fish. The only thing I can do is stand back, watching it all play out in front of me.
I told them I’d make them pay. It doesn’t care who they are, where they are, or what they’re doing—if I even have a hint they know something and aren’t telling me—I will end them.
Dom bellows in disapproval, uncinching his hands from my victim’s shirt. The body hits the ground with a harsh thud, and I idly watch as he tops over, his face smashing into the pavement.
“Goddammit, Carina,” Dom seethes, wiping his face off with his shirt. “You can’t just kill people out in the open like this. Fuck. At least warn me so we can plan.”
It’s not like anyone is going to miss this pathetic waste of space anyway. He was at the bottom of the barrel when it came to miscreants running amok through the city. The police never spare a second glance at someone being murdered here, simply because there’re too many to worry about. Instead, they make it look like they care by holding press conferences and media interviews. When in reality, the only thing they’re worried about is if they’re going to be home in time for dinner.
The man behind the badge only cares about one thing—himself. So, if they can push something off on a “drug deal gone bad,” they will. It saves them time and effort, and they can be home before the streetlights turn on in their suburbia neighborhood.
Since this little flake has been living off the streets—evidenced by his grimy, tattered clothing and gaunt features—for what seems like some time now, no one is going to second-guess him being on the end of a drug dealer’s knife. In fact, I would even go so far as to say the law enforcement in this city would hide the body themselves to keep from filling out a mountain of paperwork.
“Ahh, but then you would have tried to stop me,” I say, cleaning my blade off on the back of his shirt.
He stops abruptly, as if I’ve wronged him in some way, and turns to face me. His expression is nothing short of gobsmacked as he glances from my eyes to the blade I’m twirling in my hand. The now clean blade.
“Did you really just wipe your knife off on my shirt?”
“You were already bloody,” I retort, shrugging. “What’s a little more?”
“One of these days, I’m going to kick your ass.”
Scoffing, I roll my eyes as we make our way out of the alley. “I’d like to see you try.”
Noise, lights, and a plethora of distractions overwhelm me as we step onto the sidewalk. Cars whiz by, drivers yell at other drivers, and pedestrians walk across the frantic street like they have the hand of God resting on their shoulder.
At first, when I left Mateo’s house, everything overwhelmed me to the point I was paranoid as fuck. My anxiety was through the roof, and every little thing seemed like a threat. It took this long, and many soft-spoken words from Dom, to calm me down enough to appear as if I belong in the nightlife.
Being that I never left the basement except in the back of a van, I didn’t get to see any of this when I was growing up. Daniel kept me his dirty little secret. I had to teach myself how to read and write, all the while I was being trained to become someone’s executioner. To say my life was one big clusterfuck is a huge exaggeration. I’m the epitome of socially inept.
Yet, I thought it was all normal. I believed that being restricted to the confines of my childhood home was completely ordinary. It didn’t occur to me that the entire time, I was being duped. That I was supposed to be part of the crowd, instead of the castaway my father made me into. It messed me up, more so than I care to admit.
Pushing thoughts of my childhood away, I mask my features once more. “Who’s next on our list?”
“You’re lucky my shirt is black, woman,” Dom fumes, tugging on the offending object now cementing itself to his frame. “Otherwise, we’d be picked up.”
It’s hard to keep from rolling my eyes at him. “You’re still going on about that shirt? Jesus Christ, Dom, stop being a woman.”
“When you start being one will be the day I stop. Someone has to care about our appearance.”
“Dom. Name,” I grind out.
Sighing, he digs the list we compiled the night we left Mateo’s out of his pocket. Taking his bloody finger, he marks out our latest victim with his own blood.
“Ho-lee-shit, kitty. You’re gonna like this next one.”
Stopping at the intersection, I glance to my left to see his face nearly splitting from the smile resting on his gorgeous face. “Who is it?”
“John Stewart,” he cackles, his eyes darkening under the streetlight.
A sinister smile finally breaks out across my face. My body grows all tingly and warms from the inside out. Excitement buzzes in my veins. Blood roars in my ears with each pump of my heart.
I know that name. I’ve seen it before on some of my father’s important paperwork. The things he left in his office he didn’t know I knew about as if taunting me to take a peek. Which is exactly what I did every chance I got. I’ve never been the type of person to have something dangled right in front of me like a slab of meat and not take the bait.
And John Stewart … he’s big game. Especially with the shit I read on those transcripts he sent my father.
If he’s the same man I’m thinking of, things just got even more twisted. Lies just seem to fall from that man’s lips—or should I say fingers, because I’ve never heard his voice. Nor have I ever seen his face. He has even more secrets than I do—more blood on his hands than my entire family combined.
Mateo may think he rules New York, but John Stewart? He’s the figment of everyone’s nightmare. A true terror with one thing on his mind: to do as he is ordered to do. There’s nothing that happens in this city without him knowing about it. If I didn’t know what I did, I’d say he was a mole sent in by the FBI or something. But, since I do—thanks to those transcripts from my father—it seems another door in my own personal hell just opened …
And I’d be a fool not to walk through it.
“Don’t underestimate him, Dom. I have a feeling there are things about him even you don’t know,” I release.
11
CARINA
Dom doesn’t know the things I do. He doesn’t know there’s a danger lying right under his nose. If he did, I have no doubt that he would try to snuff him out. That’s the way all men are in this circle, regardless of if their last names are the same. Their job is to protect the ones they love. But what they don’t know is that there are a lot of threats out there that hit a little too close to home—this being one of them.
Looking both ways before we cross the street, I have an innate feeling that I’m being watched. It’s like a slither of unease tingling up my spine, roaring at me to pay attention. My eyes cast down each side of the crowded street, but I can’t see anything out of the ordinary. Yet that doesn’t mean there isn’t a threat close by. My hackles wouldn’t be rising otherwise.
As we come to a stop in front of Stewart and Stewart law firm, it feels like tiny bugs are crawling all over my skin. “Dom, someone is watching us. I don’t know who, but I can feel it.”
He’s instantly on alert. His eyes case the street from above my head, but I can tell he doesn’t see anything, simply for the lack of alertness in his movements. Just like I didn’t. But that doesn’t mean someone isn’t here, toying with me.
“No one is standing out, kitty. Just calm down.” Easy for him to say; it doesn’t feel like he has eyes burning into the back of his head.
Pulling the door open, I push it to the back of my mind as we make our way inside. The moment my eyes spot the secretary, hers narrow on mine. She’s probably trying to figure out who I am and if I have a reason to be there. Unfortunately, nothing she’ll be able to come up with will reveal my true identity. Aside from Mateo’s family and mine, no one even knows I exist.
Without stopping, I make my way down the dimly-lit hallway, cringing a
t the disgusting décor that greets my vision. Whoever this John person is needs to seriously update his law firm. It feels like it’s stuck in the nineties.
Coming to a stop at the last door on the left, the words, emblazoned on a gold placard, meet me. You can tell by the minimalistic scratches that this John person doesn’t take care of his personal belongings, his law firm included. Rolling my eyes, I push the door open, the scent of orange blossom welcoming me.
So, this is John Stewart. The man who was disloyal to Mateo and his family. The man who has so many shrouded secrets, he’s practically filled to the brim, threatening to spill over. I wonder how he can manage his life—especially when he lives nothing but a lie.
“John,” I say in greeting, which garners his attention from the paperwork lining his desk. His eyes meet mine, holding a sliver of sinister quality before softening right before my eyes.
To any bystander, they wouldn’t see the menace lying right below the surface. The only thing they would see is a lawyer with his head stuck in his work, trying to clear things off his desk before a nice long weekend of relaxation. But since I’m not a regular civilian, I know the danger he exudes.
The seamless disguise. The perfect life so he can fly under the radar. It brings new meaning to devil in disguise, and John Stewart does it flawlessly.
“What can I help you with today?” he asks, clasping his hands together on top of his desk like he doesn’t know the exact reason we’re here right now.
I stay silent a moment, raking my eyes over his rather plain appearance. On the surface, he reminds you of a regular middle-aged man who does wonders for society. The kind of man who absolutely gives his all for his clients; a pushover with a robust middle and hair graying at the temples. But that description of him couldn’t be further from the truth. If he were innocent in all this, he wouldn’t have contacted my father all those years ago.