Partners

by D B Steward

  “Don’t say that, Kelly. We had some good times once.” Lori’s eyes were pleading with her own. “We can have that again, just give us a chance.”

  “Good times? Are you fucking kidding me?” Kelly wanted to scream. The entire situation felt surreal to her, like she was living some type of fever dream. “When did we have these good times exactly? When you were high off your ass? When I was a drunken mess and losing my ass betting? Are those the good times you were talking about, Lori? Because I have to tell you, they weren’t that good! Or maybe it was when you were fucking that guy behind my back! Is that the good time you’re talking about?”

  Lori’s face turned dark in an instant. “I knew you were going to bring that up! You just love throwing that in my face! It was a one time thing! I said I was sorry!”

  “Sorry? Oh, you’re sorry? I guess that makes everything okay then, Lori. You know, you are unbelievable!”

  “Look, it won’t ever happen again. I promise, Kelly, I won’t cheat on you again. Just take me back.” The look on her face was telling Kelly that she really believed that. Lori really thought that she could be faithful and everything would be alright and then they could be together again.

  “It wasn’t just that, Lori. Have you heard a single word I said?” Kelly tried hard to see some type of comprehension in Lori’s eyes, something that said she was actually hearing her. “We can’t be together. It doesn’t work, it never has. You cheating was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. We are no good for each other and if we stay together, we are just going to kill each other.”

  “Oh, you’re a relationship expert all of a sudden? Where did you learn that? In your fucking Gamblers Anonymous meetings? A bunch of fucking losers sitting around and whining about how they wrecked their lives? Is that where this is coming from?”

  It was like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water on her and Kelly had been shocked awake. She could now see everything with crystal clarity, how insane it was for her to believe that Lori could ever change. “I’m leaving.” Kelly calmly turned away and headed toward the door.

  Lori was gobsmacked. She stood there stunned for a moment, then she flew into a rage and chased after her, grabbing Kelly by the arm. “You can’t just leave!”

  Kelly spoke with an even tone as she pulled her arm free. “Goodbye, Lori.” Lori heard the finality in the words and she dropped her hand to her side. Kelly gave her a final glance, finally seeing her, and then she opened the door and stepped out into the hall. She closed the door behind her and got halfway down the hall before she heard the apartment door swing open again.

  “You’ll be back, you bitch! You’ll be back!” Lori’s screams echoed down the hallway walls and Kelly would have laughed if it all was not so damned sad. She never turned back, continuing down the hall toward the stairway. “I’m sorry, Kelly! I can change! Come back!” It was like she was reading the lines from a script. Kelly knew everything that Lori was going to say before she said it. She just kept walking, not allowing herself to be sucked into Lori’s chaos anymore. “I love you! I need you! Kelly!” The farther down the stairs she stepped, the softer the screams became and by the time she had walked outside, Kelly could not hear them anymore.

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  “Buffalo gal, won’t you come out tonight, come out tonight, come out tonight.” Donna Reed and Jimmy Stewart’s voices resounded softly in the living room of the small townhouse. “Buffalo gal, won’t you come out tonight, and dance by the light of the moon.”

  Sonny had the movie on in the background and the film was providing some white noise to fill the silence of the bedroom of the safehouse. She had purchased a Blu-ray player and a handful of movies on her way back last night using a prepaid card from her ‘go bag’ at an electronics store.

  Her life was a solitary existence because it was the only way to survive in her line of work. However, in exchange for the security, she paid for that safety by being alone, isolating herself from the rest of the world. No family and no friends. It would be unbearable if it were not for the movies.

  As a child of a mafia hitman, she grew up removed from the normal life that people enjoyed every day. Anthony Moretti was not a stupid man; he knew that any enemies he might make as a result of his chosen profession would use his daughter as a way to get to him. So to protect her, Anthony had kept her close to him when they were alone and limited her time with him out in public. One of the few places they got to be seen together in public as father and daughter was at the movies. There, in darkened theaters, they were able to sit together and enjoy themselves by escaping into the different worlds they observed on the silver screen. Her father loved movies so Sonny grew to love them too. She treasured their weekly visits to the cinema where they would sit together and he would buy her all the popcorn and candy she wanted. They saw everything and anything that was showing at the movie theater. The two of them would show up right when the theaters opened and stay until the place closed, spending all day watching movies and then talking about them during the breaks in between showings. Dramas, comedies, action movies, they saw them all.

  Those memories were among the fondest she had of her father. After he was gone, she continued her love of movies, partly to feel close to him. Sonny did not watch television, she had no real music preference, and the only books she read had to do with her job. Movies were her only vice. She would go to the movies alone and she would buy movies by the handful and binge on them when she needed to relax.

  She made sure that her hobby was secure just like everything else in her life. She knew about Netflix, cable, and streaming movies online, but those things left electronic trails that could be traced back to her, requiring credit cards and setting up accounts. It was much cleaner to use cash and buy movies, televisions, and players to watch them. Movies were her connection to the outside world, the only things that made her feel like she was a member of society.

  Presently, she sat on her bed with one of her all-time favorites, It’s a Wonderful Life, playing. Sonny had watched it hundreds of times and took comfort in listening to the actors even if she was not watching them on the screen. At the moment, her eyes were on her notes in front of her and not on George Bailey realizing that his brother Harry was sticking him with the Bailey Building and Loan.

  Ivan Popov was her primary focus. He needed to die and she was going to be the one to kill him. That was guaranteed, she was absolutely confident of that. There were two complications that she had yet to work out, however. One, how to kill him and escape unharmed, because although she wanted him dead, she was not suicidal. Ivan never went anywhere without bodyguards, lots of them. He did not employ simple thugs armed with guns that they only ever used up close either; no, most of Ivan’s men were former Spetsnaz, trained Russian killers that were some of the most deadly fighters in the world. Sonny was sure she could handle one, maybe even two on the best day of her life. Any more than that and she was a dead woman. Sonny had to terminate Ivan and then get the hell away as fast as humanly possible.

  The second complication was an operational mistake on her part and she was well aware of the error she was planning on making. The smart and safe way to take care of Ivan was to do it at a distance. As a world-class sniper, she had the ability to kill him and no one would ever know who had pulled the trigger. But Ivan had made her angry. The things he was doing to those women, those girls, disgusted her. To her, Ivan was not a human being: he was a monster, a mad dog that needed to be put down. She would not deliver justice upon him because she was not able to give his victims justice; she did not even believe that it was possible for them to get justice for the crimes he had committed against them. Justice was not what she could give them, but vengeance, that was something she could give his victims. Getting that required Ivan to know why he was going to die. That meant that Sonny would have to tell him that before he died. She would have to see his eyes as t
he life left his body, to see him while the reason for his death finally registered in his mind. He needed to witness her fury and she needed to see the fear in his eyes. Sonny needed for him to be as afraid as the women whose lives he had ruined.

  It was a mistake. She had made the job personal, a cardinal sin that her father had warned her against committing on numerous occasions during his instruction. Sonny did not care about that though. This needed to be personal. For the victims, it had been personal, so that made it personal to her.

  As she finished going over her notes, a plan began to form in her mind. While she crafted her strategy, Mr. Potter was telling George Bailey that he was worth more dead than alive.

  Chapter Five

  By the time Kelly arrived back at her place in Wicker Park and closed her apartment door behind her, she felt like she had just been beaten with a sack of oranges. Her mind was exhausted from her breakup with Lori and she was now completely physically and emotionally drained. She just wanted to curl up in bed and sleep it off but it was barely nine in the morning.

  “Fuck,” she whined out loud as she dragged her feet, that seemed to have somehow transformed into cinder blocks, to her bathroom and turned on the shower. The steaming hot water was supposed to shock her brain back into some kind of coherence but instead, as she stood under the spray, her thoughts continued to loop in a cycle of jumbled images and feelings. Being in bed with Lori. Fighting with Lori. Kissing Lori. Screams of anger. Screams of ecstasy. It was like being caught in a vortex of passion and chaos.

  Before she knew it, her hips were bucking as she crested to her peak. Without knowing it, she had been touching herself, one hand was massaging her clit as the fingers of her other hand pulled at one of her nipples. She gasped while the hot water rolled down her cheeks and into her open mouth. In an instant, she moaned as a different kind of moisture poured from between her legs. Her legs shook and she placed both of her palms on the wall in front of her, letting the water roll down the back of her neck and over her back. Her eyes were closed shut as she hung her head low.

  The release made her feel dirty even as she stood in the shower. Guilt was beginning to grow inside and cause nausea to radiate from her stomach. What was wrong with her? She slammed her palms against the wall and shut the water off. Stepping out of the shower, she yanked her dry towel from the hook on the wall, drying herself as she simultaneously mentally punished herself.

  This was why she kept going back to Lori. This was why she was trapped in their poisonous relationship. Kelly could not control herself, and she had not been able to for what felt like forever, always letting her base impulses dictate her actions and engage in self-destructive behavior, never mindful of what she was doing or being able to focus on anything but her urges. Why did she keep doing this to herself? It was destroying her and she felt powerless to stop herself.

  Kelly knew that she did not love Lori. She might not even like Lori. But she had let the woman get inside of her mind and attach herself like a parasite. Deep down, Kelly knew why she had invited Lori into her life. She felt that this was all she deserved, this disfunction and chaos. She was punishing herself. Punishing herself because she was a failure. A failed FBI agent. A failure as a daughter. A failure at life.

  As she was berating herself for her past choices, she had not paid attention to her actions again and presently found herself sitting on the bed with wet hair and dressed in a towel with her laptop open to an online poker website. Unconsciously, she had logged into her account and had been gambling.

  How had she done this? While she was beating herself up, she had moved like a zombie and went straight to her automatic fallback when she felt this low. Gambling, her drug of choice. She had been doing so good, had kept up her sobriety for how long? She could not recall and suddenly it did not matter to her anymore; all that mattered was her hand and the flop card coming up.

  Time accelerated around her and before she knew it, hours had passed. Now she stared at the screen with her mouth agape—she had nothing. She had gambled away everything. All her money was gone, she was broke. She slammed the laptop closed and fell back on her pillow with tears in her eyes. Almost two grand in her bank account and now it was all gone. She had done it again. Lost it all.

  Her body began to shake as sobs of shame and despair came rolling out of her mouth. Rent. Food. Gas. Gone. She lost. She lost everything. Again. All the money she had left in the world was the forty bucks in her pants pocket that lay on her floor.

  She was such a loser. Her eyes burned and her cheeks were soaked with tears. She had to find Sonny Moretti and she had to do it tonight. Getting that money for the bounty was all that mattered and this time she could not afford to fail.

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  Ivan prayed that this would not take too long, but he knew that his father was pissed so he was resigned to the fact that he was going to be busy for a while. He sat in his father’s office in the garage where they chopped their stolen cars on the city’s southside. He relaxed with his feet up on the desk across from his father’s seat to show the others in the garage that he was not afraid of his father’s wrath, even though inwardly he was anxious about being called on the carpet by the old man. As he scrolled through his Instagram feed, he attempted to figure out which woman he was going to take out tonight, knowing he would need some kind of sexual release tonight after this meeting. There were so many, he thought with a smile. He could not decide which one of these women would be screaming his name tonight. But why stop at just one, Ivan? He chuckled to himself at the thought. He was handsome but he knew he was not exactly ‘male model’ material. He was over six feet and had a nice build because he worked out regularly so that he could look good in his tailored suits. But he was under no illusions that women wanted him for his personality or his looks for that matter. They wanted him for his money, and he was fine with that. After all, he only wanted them for one thing—what they kept between their legs.

  He saw his father’s Lincoln pull up and the workers in the garage scrambled to make way for the boss. Ivan sighed, put his phone away, and rolled his eyes. He stood and walked out of the office and stood in the doorway, smoothing down his long, black hair and putting his hands in his black tracksuit pockets to appear indifferent, preparing himself for the dressing down that he knew was coming.

  Petrov exited his car with a scowl on his face, not even waiting for his driver to come around and open his door for him. He marched purposefully toward his son, staring him down in the process. Ivan tried to match his father’s glare but Petrov’s force of will made him look away first. Petrov stopped in front of his son and smirked. Although Ivan was nearly a full foot taller than the older Popov, he felt like a small child again as his father seethed before him. The garage was eerily silent as every worker now watched the two men. Petrov moved a step closer to his son until his nose nearly touched the younger man’s chest. Ivan relented after a moment and stepped aside to allow his father to enter the office. Ivan looked over at the men who were still staring and shot them all an angry glare that brought the garage workers back to life and resume their work of stripping the stolen cars.

  “Get in here!” Ivan heard his father yell in Russian over his shoulder, and he turned and started toward the chair he had been sitting in before. “Shut the fucking door!” his father shouted, the command causing Ivan to jump slightly. Cursing himself for looking weak, he spun and shut the door behind him, the noise from the garage faded away.

  “Sit down, you idiot.” His father’s voice was full of contempt. “It’s bad enough I have to look at you, I’m not going to strain my neck by staring up at you.” Ivan reddened and sat down across from his father. Petrov sat forward in his chair, placed his elbows on the table, and tented his fingers. His hard, cold eyes bored into Ivan and the younger man felt the back of his neck get warmer from the scrutiny. “Do you know where I just came from?” Pet
rov asked him slowly.

  Ivan was unsure if his father wanted him to talk or not so he just shook his head. Petrov mocked him by mirroring his son’s head shake. “You don’t speak now? You just rattle that little brain inside your cement head? Answer me!”

  “No, Father, I don’t know where you just came from,” Ivan said, frustrated from being made a fool of constantly by his father.

  Petrov sneered at his son. “I just came from a meeting with that grease ball Italian, trying to fix your colossal fuck up! I had to sit there in his little shop smelling his olive oils and his sausages! It makes my skin crawl.”

  Ivan kept silent, well aware of his father’s prejudice against anyone who was not Russian and his contempt for Salvador in particular. He was not about to say anything in response for fear of raising the old man’s ire further. His father sat back in his chair and shook his head in disgust as he continued to stare at his son. “I had to ask him about the woman who killed my men. Me! Petrov Popov! Crawling to some two-bit thug to talk about some bitch who killed my men! All because of my idiot son.”

  “Father, I—”

  The older Popov slammed his hand down hard on the desk, effectively cutting his son off. “Shut up! I will tell you when to open your poxed cunt of a mouth!” Ivan gulped and looked away. “Look at me, you fool.” Ivan slowly brought his eyes back level with his father’s. “My men. Dead. Killed by a bitch. Do you know how weak that makes me look?” Petrov shook his head in disbelief. “But you don’t care about the family name, do you? All you care about is your parties. Your whores. Getting your little cock sucked by those black bitches or those dirty Mexican tramps you buy every night.” Petrov chuckled humorlessly, causing his son to redden even more. “Now, I have to deal with your shit,” Petrov muttered. “Because you wanted to go and be a pimp. Like some nigger.”