It was a quick job - both of them were pathetically weak, obviously hoping that flashing a knife at me would be enough to make me flee. My old instincts kicked in, and I allowed them to take over - my body moved almost independent of my mind as I took care of them. And even though I had only intended to injure them enough to scare them away, I found that by the time I came back to consciousness, both of them were lying on the ground, barely moving. Shit.
I made my way towards the woman, but she immediately drew back, panicked. I realized what I was dealing with here - of course, she was going to be shaky. I needed to treat her a little more delicately. I held my hands up and stood at a fair distance, but she still seemed determined to force her way through the wall and away from me.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I promised, and she seemed to relax a little, allowing me closer. I approached, and did the usual check over for physical damage - she seemed okay.
And then, out of nowhere, she pressed her lips against mine. This was the last thing I had expected or wanted for my trouble. I closed my eyes, and for a fraction of a second, I kissed her back. When was the last time someone had kissed me like this? Weeks, months, maybe. But then, I pulled back. She was probably handling a lot of emotion right now, and I didn’t want to take advantage of that. I also didn’t want to be caught with my metaphorical pants down when the cops showed up. Still, I couldn’t keep the smile off my face, and she gazed back at me with her mouth slightly open as if she’d even surprised herself with her boldness.
I gave her the usual rundown of safety stuff - where she would go after this, if she wanted me to take her there, and so on - but she was determined to take care of herself, and I respected that.
“Call the cops.” I bowed my head in her direction and then darted off somewhere that I could keep an eye on her. She pulled out her phone, staring down at the two people in front of her. Well, they were more like corpses now. I knew it was wrong, but I felt a small jolt of satisfaction when I realized what I’d done. I didn’t like killing. No one did. It was inherently against what we were as human beings, but knowing the terrible things they had intended to do and had probably already done to God knows how many other victims, I was glad that they would be off the streets.
And what was I? Was I turning into some kind of caped vigilante? I hurried forward when I spotted the knife lying on the ground between them, knowing it would have my fingerprints on it. I tucked it into my pocket before retreating to the shadows again. It was an ugly blade, the kind of thing you get as a starter pack when you go out prowling the streets like they obviously did. I would dispose of it as soon as I got home - I was pretty sure they hadn’t pulled it on the woman, so it wasn’t like she would send the cops out looking for it.
I watched from a distance until I saw the police arrive. They went to comfort her before they dealt with the two assholes on the ground. Knowing that she was safe, I made my way back into the night and wondered when I would be able to definitively say that a certain kill was my last.
Chapter Three
“They’re both dead,” I murmured, half to myself, and half to the cops sitting in front of me.
“Yes, we know that much, Sabrina,” the cop replied with a soothing tone, but she exchanged a look with the man sitting next to her that told me she was finding the whole thing highly disturbing. “But who killed them?”
“The man, the man with the mask on,” I mumbled. My brain was still trying to make sense of what had just happened, and I was coming up blank. Those men had me pressed up against the wall, and then, seconds later, they were sprawled out on the ground, seconds from death.
“Do you recall anything about him?” She pressed, and my mind darted back over our encounter. I remember that he had a hot mouth, and his aftershave was sweet and seemed to curl around us as we kissed.
“Nothing.” I shook my head. “It was dark, he had a mask covering most of his face. I couldn’t really make him out.”
They stared down at me for a second, and then the woman stood up.
“Well, thank you for your cooperation,” she nodded at me. “And for your statement. We’ll be in touch again if we need to follow up on the case.”
“Of course,” I clasped my hands in front of me. To be honest, the thought of walking out of this police station and back onto the dark streets outside gave me a shiver of fear, but I pushed it out of my head. I was a grown woman, and what had just happened didn’t have a habit of happening often.
“Do you have someone you can go to?” The male officer asked me gently, and I stared back at him for a moment before responding.
“Yes. My friend, Lily, she’s got a place not far from here.”
“I can drive you down if you’d feel safer that way?”
I tweaked a smile. “I’ll get a taxi, but thanks.”
He stared me down for a moment and then shook his head. “I’ve got to say, you’re incredibly calm.”
I could have sworn I saw a hint of suspicion in his eyes. I would have rolled mine back at him if that wouldn’t have made me look even more guilty. But then, he only had to take a look at me to know that I was hardly the type to go taking out rapists vigilante-style on dark streets in the middle of the night. I sipped on the coffee they had given me - they had assumed I’d need it to stay awake - but I was still so buzzed from the adrenalin that I couldn’t imagine ever falling asleep again.
“I work at a restaurant, I have to be in control of my stress levels at all times,” I shot back, trying to defend myself without coming across like that’s what I was doing.
“Fair enough.” He held his hands up. “Don’t worry, we’re not accusing you of anything.”
“Good.” I nodded, pulling my jacket around my shoulders and placing my cell on the table. “Do you mind if I make a call?”
“Go ahead,” the woman replied, giving her partner a hard look as they left the room. I let out a long sigh of relief as soon as they were gone and placed my head in my hands. There was a real reason why I wasn’t freaking out at that moment in time, but I didn’t want to have to tell them. Not on top of everything else.
It was Lia. Sometimes, when I lay awake at night and thought about her, I wondered if Lia was my sister soulmate, my other half. I knew a lot of sisters who were close, but we were like one being most of the time, bouncing off each other, teasing and laughing and having an amazing time. I felt invigorated every time I saw her. She was the one who gave me the confidence to do what I wanted. Hell, she was the one who encouraged me to get set up with the restaurant. She came out every night and ordered dinner right at the start when no one was coming around, just to give me someone to cook for. That was the kind of person she was.
So when it happened, all I wanted to do was be there for her. To help pull her out the other side of the nightmare she had been dumped into.
Because that’s what rape was. Through Lia, I learned that the horror of it all wasn’t just tied up in the terrible act itself, but in the way it impacted the survivor’s life for days, months, years afterward. The man was her ex-boyfriend at the time, still believing he was entitled to her body and she had done her best to fight him off, but he was twice the size of her, and determined to have his way. We never knew him well - she always kept us distanced from him as if she knew he would do something unforgivable at some point. I looked up his name after the attack happened, but it didn’t turn up any results that were relevant to Lia’s case. All I knew was that he had a tattoo of a snake over his knuckles- a pretentiousness that struck me as both cheesy and threatening at the same time - and that he worked in business that probably wasn’t entirely legal. We did our best to keep an eye on her, but she was set on saving him. She was always set on saving the people around her, which made it so much more painful when we couldn’t do the same for her.
She never went into a great amount of detail, which I was grateful for as I knew I couldn’t handle it. Just knowing that someone had hurt her in that unthinkable way made me shake with a
nger and upset.
I knew, though, that my anger wasn’t going to fix anything, so I did my best to throw myself into lifting her up out of the depression that followed. I went around to her place every night after work, and we would hang out and watch the silly shows we watched growing up as kids. She would lay with her head on my shoulder, and I would look down at her and ache at how small and hurt she seemed. Where once Lia had been this powerful force of nature, her power seemed directed in at hating herself. It wasn’t gone; it was just subverted in a way I didn’t know how to fix.
And soon enough, things started getting worse. She dropped out of the therapy I had helped her pay for, and she stopped leaving the house. Then, she began ignoring my calls. Then Mom and Dad’s. Eventually, it got so bad, and we were so worried, that I let myself into her apartment, and found her curled up on the couch. It looked as though she hadn’t moved for weeks - she was scrawny to the point of emaciation, her bones protruding from her body at painful angles, and she hadn’t made it to the shower in a while. We did our best to get her back on her feet, but every time we tried, she would just slip back into her previous state. It was a painful decision, but we eventually decided to check her into a mental health facility.
We had done a bunch of research before we sent her out, and we picked the best one in the state. It was expensive, but none of us gave a damn about pooling our resources. She just needed to get better. And, for a while, it looked as if she did - she seemed to be perking up, relaxing a little, and putting on some of the weight she’d lost. She smiled more when we came by to visit, and we smiled back, unable to imagine what was coming next.
When I got the news that she’d killed herself, I was at work, and my knees buckling under me. My brain glossed over everything that came next - too painful, too impossible, too recent. Even though it was over five years ago, but yes, that was why I wasn’t too cut up at the thought of a pair of would-be rapists being dead. That was why I was so calm in the face of everything that had happened. Because, if I could, I would find a way to kill every rapist in the world with my own bare hands.
And I think that was made the situation so much worse. Because how I’d felt when those men had approached me, when they’d backed me into that corner… all I could think about was how Lia must have felt when her boundaries were pushed like this, and when her consent was ignored. How fear would have frozen up her body, how her mind would have danced with ways she could, and should have got out of this, how she might have blamed herself, as I did, for doing something wrong. For not protecting herself the way we’re always told that we should protect ourselves.
On top of that, I had gotten out of my assault unscathed. Because it had happened in the middle of the street, in New York City, someone had seen it and stopped it. Yes, I was lucky - not everyone ended up like me, even when their attack happened in public. But both the men who came after me were dead. And the man who raped Lia, who ruined her life and the lives of everyone around her, he walked free. He walked free because he’d done it behind closed doors. Because he had connections and no one would dare go after him. Because Lia would never give up his name, no matter how hard we tried to get it out of her. It was as if his name was a curse and letting it pass her lips would drag us into her nightmare too - and, of course, she wanted to protect us. Until the end, that was all she wanted.
I massaged my temples, picked up my cell, and called Lily. She would still be up at this time - like me, she was a night owl. She hadn’t left the restaurant that long before I did, so I knew she’d still be up, drinking a glass of wine and unwinding in front of some reality TV show we would gossip about the next day. She was used to getting calls from me in the middle of the night, as I had some amazing new idea for a dish that she would gently shoot down by reminding me that we couldn’t get year-round supplies of fresh oysters at a price point reasonable enough to sell at the restaurant. It was why I needed her around. Well, that, and we’d known each other since college, and she was the closest thing I’d had to a sister after Lia passed.
“Hey, Sabrina,” her voice lazily drifted down the line, warm and comforting, like slipping into a hot bath. “Everything okay?”
“Um, not really,” I admitted. “Could you come down to my place? I’ll cover the taxi.”
“Sure thing,” she replied, and all the laid-back attitude was wiped from her voice in a second. “You okay?”
“I think so.” I nodded and furrowed my brow. I felt as though I should be more shaken up, but I just didn’t feel it. I mean, when I thought about how it related to Lia… yeah, I was furious, and so filled with grief it choked me a little. But that happened whenever I thought about Lia - it was nothing to do with what had happened earlier in the evening.
“I’ll see you there in ten minutes,” she replied firmly and hung up. Glancing at my watch, I rolled my eyes when I saw what time it was. Almost four. I yawned, stretched and wondered idly if I should call in sick tomorrow. I knew I would feel terrible if I did, but I simply did not function on any amount of sleep less than ten hours. I was on my feet all day, my brain exhausting itself by running circles around the cooking, cleaning, and the admin that still needed to be done by the time I left work. We were turning a decent profit, but I couldn’t afford to hire new staff to cover shit that Lily and I could do ourselves. We’d known what we were getting into when we’d opened the restaurant. Even though everyone had tried to dissuade us, we’d plowed on, convinced that we knew better than anyone else. And yeah, maybe we should have spent a little more time listening to the people who warned us that it would take over our lives, but I wouldn’t go back and change it for the world. Not after everything. Not even after what had happened tonight.
I got to my feet and headed out of the station, flagging down a taxi outside. As I slipped into the back seat, I stared up at the black night sky. I felt numb, removed, even. That was probably a good thing for now, as it would let me get a good night’s sleep. I could deal with all the emotions that came with this shit later.
I arrived back at my apartment, and when I let myself in, I found Lily already waiting for me. I sometimes forgot she had a key - it made sense since she was my best friend and my assistant manager - but at that moment, all I wanted to do was give her a giant hug and thank her for being there for me when something like this had gone down.
“Are you alright?” She was pacing around my studio apartment, up and down the edge of the bed when I walked in and hurried over to me as soon as I got through the door. “What happened?”
I filled her in quickly on the details: the men, the masked stranger, and the police. The words came tumbling out of me as if they had been aching to escape since I called her. I took deep, shaky breaths like I was a kid recounting some twisted version of his first day of school, too excited to slow down and speak properly. It felt as though if I could get the words out quickly enough, I wouldn’t have to sit here with the burden of it any longer.
She sat quietly as I spoke, but I could tell she was fuming internally - she wasn’t very good at keeping her emotions hidden, one of the things that made her a formidable manager to have on my side. When I was done, she reached into her bag, wandered through to the kitchen, and poured us both a glass of wine from the bottle she’d bought with her. She came back through, sat down at my feet, and handed me a glass.
“Are you okay?” she murmured, placing a hand on my knee.
“I think I am,” I admitted. “Honestly, after what happened with… Lia, part of me was glad to see them…”
“I know, I know,” she squeezed my leg comfortingly. That was one of the good things about having her as a best friend; she knew exactly what I was going through at that moment because she knew enough about my past and my history with this sort of thing to get me through it. She and I had drifted apart a bit during the stuff that was going down with Lia because all my time and energy was focused on putting my sister back together in any way I could. But she was the first person I called when I found out the wo
rst had happened, and she was there for me. She still didn’t know even half of the full story. For some reason, even though we told each other everything, the thought of spilling those beans to her was just too much. She knew about the rape, the treatment, and the suicide, but everything else was too raw and personally painful to hand over to someone else. The thought of the person I loved most in the world- Lily - looking at me with sympathy and sadness scared me shitless. I didn’t want to be a tragedy to her.
I let out a sigh and took a long sip from the glass of wine. It was a decent Sancerre, courtesy of Lily’s past as a sommelier. Lily was happy to sit in silence; I knew she understood what I was going through. She too had her problems with men in the past - an abusive high school boyfriend- so she was just as hardened as I was when it came to stuff like this. She didn’t want to sit here and cry with me, to make me feel emotions that I would never feel. We’d shared so much that we knew what the other needed at any given point in time, a bonus when it was busy at the restaurant and we couldn’t communicate with each other using words.
I was surprised at how little emotion I felt towards the evening. I could still bring to mind how I felt when it was all happening - the fear, the panic, and how frozen with terror I was. But at that moment, I didn’t feel much of anything at all. Maybe there was something wrong with me or maybe I was just dealing with it in my own specific way. Whatever it was, I was glad to have Lily there. Glad to have her dealing with it so calmly, not pushing for a reaction or some explosion of emotion from me.
Hitman's Lust: a Dark Mafia Romance Page 2