by Lake, Keri
Except, monsters did exist. They didn’t hide under the bed, though. They stormed through the fucking door and stole away everything we loved.
To defeat a monster, I had to become one.
I often wondered what kind of man I’d be, if they hadn’t robbed me of everything that night.
Snapping from my absent musing, I refocused on the scene beyond the window. Aside from a few residual pushes, both men had stopped fighting, the bigger of the two taking his package and pushing though the crowd, as if to get as far away from them as he could.
My gaze trailed back to the Cullings, and pain stabbed my skull, casting a flash of jagged light behind my lids as I clamped my eyes shut.
Clutching the side of my head did nothing to dull the needle-like spasms chipping away at the bone. When I lifted my lids, a yellow haze clouded my vision.
Not again.
Last time I’d seen a doc, about a year ago, he’d told me I could expect headaches— side effect of a fucking bullet to the brain, I supposed. Sometimes, I lost whole stretches of memory, too. Blackouts. A real pain in the ass on the occasions I’d snapped out of it and found myself standing in the middle of a goddamn crack house with no memory of how, or why, I was there.
“Beautiful, isn’t she?”
In spite of the throbbing at my skull, I twisted to find a figure, nothing more than a ghostly outline, cloaked in shadows. His voice was unmistakable, though.
Alec Vaughn.
Where my voice carried a deep, gruff quality, Alec’s was lighter, like a gentleman’s, betraying the fact that he happened to be a ruthless mastermind who’d made quite a name on the streets over the past few years.
I snarled at his question, grinding my teeth as I worked out a tingle in my jaw.
“Come now, hatred and vengeance aside, she’s a stunning creature. Surely you can appreciate that.” He stepped into view. Even smack in an abandoned shithole, Alec never failed to look meticulous with his three-piece suit and fedora.
Though our styles differed, Alec and I shared two similarities: we both knew a thing or two about computers and both of us carried an unquenchable thirst for revenge—only, I’d yet to discover the root cause of his. The only thing Alec had divulged about himself, aside from his name, was his talent for hacking and his penchant for hiding stolen money.
He’d come to me a while back with a proposition, one I couldn’t refuse—a well-constructed plan that was better than anything I had at the time. To exact revenge on the men who’d destroyed my life, and, ultimately, the smiling couple who mocked it every day.
I huffed at his intrusion, coaxing the lingering ache in my head with the heel of my hand. “How the hell do you always find me?”
“Public affair involving the Cullings. The only abandoned building with a sweet vantage point. It’s not rocket science, my friend.”
I smirked at that. “I look forward to the day I actually pull the trigger.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t done it yet.” A click preceded the warm scent of tobacco, and Alec moved beside me at the window, a thick Cuban cigar making my taste buds pucker. I’d never been one for smoking cigars, but damn, if every time the bastard lit up, I didn’t suddenly taste that smoky flavor. He flipped the cigar, and blew on the end of it, before tipping it back and putting it to his mouth.
“The bait worked,” I reluctantly confessed. “I’m sure you had no doubts.”
His eyebrow winged up. “You’ll do it, then?”
“Do I have a choice?”
A wicked smile danced across his face. “No.” He blew a plume of smoke into the air, parking the cigar between his teeth as he crossed his arms behind his back and paced. “I trust you’ve read the files.”
“Every word.”
A month earlier, Alec had handed off a chip, all smug and proud of himself. Police files. Criminal records for each of the men who broke into my home three years prior. Not just any men, though. Around Detroit, they were known as the Seven Mile Crew—the most ruthless band of contract killers the city had ever known. In a matter of just a few years, they’d snuffed the most dangerous gang members, quickly climbing ranks and banking cash. But they got greedy. Brandon Malone, their leader, and his brother, Julius, decided they didn’t want to be hitmen anymore. They wanted to be the bosses. So, they partnered with Culling in a quiet operation that would reduce the kingpins in the city, level some of the shit neighborhoods, and propel Brandon and his crew to an untouchable status.
The gangs and Culling’s closest confidantes knew it as The Culling, and it happened once a year, on the city’s most feared night of crime.
Detroit had always been notorious for shit going down on Devil’s Night. Arson, vandalism, murders. It waxed and waned with the enforcement method of each mayor, and had been at an all time high just before Culling took office. Under the guise of making legitimate arrests, Culling assembled a task force of Angels, to combat the crime on the surface, while underhandedly paying off the gangs to kill other gangs. Level a neighborhood and eliminate the smaller fish, all in one sweep.
To the rest of the public, it was a mysterious method that’d somehow begun to transform the shittiest neighborhoods in the city into something its people only saw in the surrounding suburbs. From trash to class, including fancy apartment complexes far too expensive for most of the existing Detroit natives.
For that very reason, I couldn’t just let the city’s justice system deal with the bastards. No way could I sit idly by after what they’d done, what they’d stolen from me.
For a price, a man could find any information he wanted in the underbelly of the internet, known as the deep net. ‘Place was an online convention of the world’s scum. Pedophiles, contract killers, serial killers—name it and it’d be there, in all its depravity. It was in that carnival of crooks that I found out it was Culling who’d paid the Seven Mile Crew to scour my old neighborhood, and the Chief of Police who supplied the names of drug dealers living nearby. Alec was able to cut a deal for access to the files—ones he was all too happy to deliver, damn near gift-wrapped, to me.
“And?” Alex prompted.
I knew what he referred to. His offer came with one stipulation that didn’t exactly blow my fucking skirt up, though. A task that’d been added to a perfectly good plan a couple months back. “I’m to kidnap Aubree Culling,” I said. “For what?”
He nudged his head toward the window. “Look at the way he looks at her.”
Below, Culling stood beside his wife , and even at that height, it wasn’t difficult to catch the adoration in his eyes. The way he gripped the back of her neck as the two stood off from the crowd talking to the news anchorwoman. The endless glances and smiles he gave every time Aubree spoke.
He leaned in and kissed her, the gesture curling my lip in repulsion. They’d been dubbed political sweethearts by the press—how fucking perfect—an image I’d have liked to blow away with a hollow point bullet.
“Don’t you remember that feeling?” Alec’s voice cut through my thoughts. “A man who’d kill for the woman he is clearly obsessed with. That’s the real pain.” His whisper drifted through my head, fogging all the images of the two of them lying in blood-soaked clothes. “Perhaps you might agree, death would’ve been easier. Living … now, that’s where the bullet hides its poison.”
The air turned thick, suffocating. My throat tightened, begging for a shot of whiskey, but I swallowed past the dryness. “Why not kill both of them? End it. Walk away with a smile, right here, right now.”
Alec’s chuckle bounced off the wall. “You know I can’t do that, Nick. I’ve too much at stake, for one sloppy kill.” As something of a masked marauder, Alec had developed a bit of celebrity status. A genius when it came to computers, with knowledge of even the most secure computer systems , he was known amongst hackers as the infamous Achilleus X, a trouble-making hacktivist with a talent for evading the authorities. “Besides, there’s the matter of a promise you made. Or have you forgotten?”
Motherfucker. Like knives twisting in my gut, his words cut deep. I’d vowed my own death to keep the promise I’d made to my dying wife. My teeth clenched together, trapping the anger parked on the tip of my tongue.
“We’re not enemies, Nick. This isn’t me threatening you. You can easily just give me the files, and we’ll part ways.”
I couldn’t, though. He knew I couldn’t. If I walked right then, I’d be dead by morning. A man without purpose was a danger to himself, and the only thing that’d kept me alive so long was one painful hard-on for revenge.
“I’ll do it. What’s the plan?”
“I’m not going to lie to you.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a coin the size of a gold dollar, flipping it into the air. “They’ve branched off. Expanded operations from the small crew of hitmen that invaded your home three years ago.” Every one of the crew had gone on to bigger and better things. And why not? They were financed by the mayor and protected by the police. They owned the fucking city. Entrepreneurs in crime. “It’ll be you against the most ruthless collection of underbelly scum there ever was. Drug dealers. Sex traffickers. Arms dealers. And they’ve got connections. The odds of you surviving this …” He opened his palm to a completely blank side of the coin—an anomaly. “Uncertain.”
“What’s it matter in the end, anyway?”
Alec’s jaw ticced. “You of all people should know the difference between a mercy and a vengeance kill. Perhaps I should leave you to face the latter on your own.”
It all came down to one night. One night I would make that corrupt motherfucker Culling remember the family he’d slain, the lives he’d destroyed. I’d take whatever pathetic, tiny heart may be beating inside his chest, tear it out, and watch his world fade all around him, while he took his final breath.
“I said I’ll do it.” I’d do it by stealing away the very woman that gave him breath to begin with. “Now tell me the goddamn plan to kidnap her.”
“Personally, I think you’re crazy for doing this alone.” His eye squinted as his cheeks caved with a puff of his cigar.
“Certifiable, Brother. Now what the fuck’s the plan?”
Blowing the smoke in one lazy exhale, he tipped his head back. “A celebration at the new hospital, the opening of the cancer center, Friday night. She’s to accompany him. He’s dedicated the Healing Arts Center in her name. Masquerade Ball … how perfect.” He sniffed, scratching his cheek with the thumb of his cigar-toting hand. “It’s a closed, black tie affair. Only one bodyguard. Hospital security, but they won’t be anticipating trouble. You’ll slip out through the underground passageway that connects the hospital to the old dorm rooms.”
The hospital had been closed down and abandoned for years, before Michael Culling provided the much needed funding to reopen its doors. One of the largest trauma centers in the city. How sweet. If only the city knew the majority of Michael’s business dealings were signed in blood. “And the cameras? Crowd?”
“Idiots practically use the default settings. I’ve hacked through a hole in their security system. You won’t have a problem. As for the crowd …” He puffed on his cigar. “I’ve arranged a distraction.”
“What kind of distraction?”
His lips stretched into a smile. “A party crasher.”
“I don’t like the sound of this.”
“A little trust, if you will.” In truth, Alec’s brilliance would guarantee success of the kidnapping. No doubt, he’d already thought of every angle, every loophole. Every possible scenario had probably been teased out with immediate resolution. I trusted Alec because of that. “Culling’s preoccupation with his missing wife will render him careless. Keep him from focusing on the big picture.”
“And then what?”
“You’re to hold her while negotiations take place.”
My stomach knotted at that—a detail we hadn’t discussed when he first proposed the ridiculous idea. “Babysit the bitch? ‘The hell did I ever do to you?”
“Fret not, my friend. If Culling refuses, and he will surely refuse, you’ll have the pleasure of killing both of them.” He blew another plume. “Jack off to that thought for a while.”
“Good. I’m looking forward to giving the two of them the same slow and painful death that I’ve suffered every night for three fucking years.”
Alec’s gray eyes bore into mine, and goddamn if I didn’t get a sense he was about to say something punch-worthy. “There is an alternative.”
“No.” I shook my head at the sinister lift of his brow. “I know what you’re going to say. No.”
“It’s not weak to move on, Nick. You could start over.”
Lurching forward brought me at arm’s length from him, just enough room to knock out that perfect row of teeth he sported. “I’ve done the legit life once. And what about you, Alec? Why don’t you just move on? Pretend shit never happened.”
“What makes you think I haven’t?”
Impossible. A bluff, no doubt. Alec’s thirst for bloodshed rivaled my own. No woman could possibly get in the way of that.
“One of these days, the light is going to flip on, and you’ll realize the hits you’ve suffered in darkness were your very own shadow. Honor your family with vengeance, but don’t make yourself one of your own victims.”
Alec had a problem with the final act, the part of the plan where he put a bullet straight between my eyes and let me fall with the rest of them. A mercy kill. It was the only way I’d agreed to carry out such an insane act of revenge.
“That’s the deal.” I sniffed. “No renegotiating. You know it’s this, or Lithium, for me—either way, I’m casket-bound.” I rubbed my hand down my face in frustration, the same argument rearing its ugly head the closer we approached D-day. “You got my back, or not?”
“I always have your back, Nick. Are you ready for this shit?”
I took one more look out the window and strapped the gun across my chest, knocking Alec in the shoulder as I passed him on my way out. “I’m ready.”
2
Aubree
My father once told me, of all the delusions in the world, that hope was the most dangerous follower of insanity.
I’d have liked to believe that, as a widower, he saw something in me that refused to be torn down by the death and suffering that surrounded me as a kid. Or that, as a father, he prided himself on the tenacity he’d instilled in me.
After all hope, once ignited, was impossible to extinguish. I knew that firsthand. Because hope was all I’d clung to, for the last five years I’d been married to the bastard Michael Culling.
Looking back on his words, I think my father feared early on that I would always have too soft a heart, too strong a mind, and that my desire to seek out the good in others would ultimately destroy me in the end.
How right he was.
Hope allowed the serpent to breach the wall my father had spent decades constructing for our safety, and hope turned that slick devil into my husband.
Too-white teeth stole my attention, as I entered Michael’s home office with the trepidation of a mouse that’d unwittingly landed in a snake’s pit. His eyes were always warm, inviting, in spite of the blackness deep within their depths. Even then, as quickly as I’d seen them turn cold, it made sense how they might lure someone with a first meeting. The smile happened to be his best feature and his greatest disguise, while his eyes very effectively concealed the slippery killer buried behind them.
To the public, Michael was calm, logical, soft-spoken, as a psychopath should be. That same impassive, fluent speech, devoid of emotion outside of the pedantic points of inflection, was precisely what made Michael dangerous.
I took a seat across from him, my throat suddenly in need of cool water. In silence, we stared at one another, but the subtle tracking of his eyes told me he was analyzing my face, like a robot that could pick up on the slightest disruptions in the universe.
Those dark brown, almost black eyes trailed down to my arms and
the corner of his lip kicked up into a half-smile. “You’re nervous, darling. After five years, I still make you nervous?”
A bright flash of his perfect smile drew my focus away from those evil eyes, while his fatherly tone had me stifling the urge to curl my lip. I imagined smashing my knuckles into those teeth, reveling in the crack of veneer as his perfect mask crumbled to the floor. After all, it was that flawless face, with his smooth, shaved skin, and those warm inviting eyes, that allowed him to survive. Without it, he’d have starved. A psychopath’s diet consisted of domination, power, and control. The only way Michael could achieve such a thing was with charisma—something he only understood on a superficial level.
“I’m cold,” I replied, because why give him the satisfaction, even after all those years, of thinking he did anything more than make me feel dead?
I hated those kinds of interactions with him—his attempt to assert himself, to remind me that he still had the power to make me feel as meek as the girl he’d met years ago. As much as he’d laid me out like a specimen beneath his microscope, though, I’d also watched him in return. Studied his behaviors to the extent that I could, in most cases, predict them.
Charming and calm happened to be two red flags.
“Perhaps I might offer something warm.” He rose from his chair, undoing his belt as he rounded his desk, and leaned against the front of it. With his palms planted on either side of him, he tipped his head, a movement I only happened to catch out of my periphery.
An upward glance showed him staring down at me, anticipation dilating his pupils like a cat high on catnip. He loved to think that I craved him as much, that I couldn’t control myself at the yanking of his dick from his pants. Right. The mere thought of his cum in my mouth made me want to wretch.
A dryness hit the back of my throat and I desperately needed to swallow, but he’d mistake that for my mouth watering. Maybe it was. Maybe I’d become like Pavlov’s dogs, or a lab rat, knowing that if I performed well, if I got him off, I’d be one step closer to the illusion of freedom.