My Thug Bride

by Katherine Summers

  I had pulled her fingers in between mine to kiss the back of her hand when I saw that she was bleeding. The bandage on her palm was soaked in blood, her wound from the other night had reopened. I swallowed, my heart twisted. I was torn between my urge to embrace her – and freak out. The best I could do was freeze up in reaction.

  She is a carefree soul lying beside me, panting and covered in sweat. But I couldn’t hold in my reaction. I knew if I said anything I might end up ruining this moment of ours. But I couldn’t move. My eyes fixed on her bleeding palm and I couldn’t remove my hand from her own. Anna noticed.

  She raised her head to give me a light kiss on my lips. I responded automatically.

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  “Your hand. It’s bleeding.”

  “Oh… that. I didn’t notice.”

  It’s a conflict when you know it in your bones that you’re falling too hard for someone, and yet you don’t belong with them. That was what I felt for the next half hour. My heart beat for her, the intimacy of the moment we had just spent made me want to hold onto her forever. But when she launched herself up from the bed, dressed and redid her bandage, I knew I did not belong. She didn’t say a word to me. She smiled, looked at me from her chair with stars in her eyes – I could see it. But she didn’t talk about the wound, she bandaged it as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do.

  Was what we did just now special only to me?

  I shrugged. I held in the plethora of questions that flooded my mind. I adjusted my jeans and went to her.

  “You know,” I mumbled to myself, “I meant what I said.”

  She knew what I was talking about. Swallowing, she whispered back, “It’s… It’s barely been a week, Henry. If you’re curious about what I do, just say it.”

  She was deliberately getting on my nerves. I had told her I loved her. She actually thought I was merely messing around.

  “You think I said it out of heat?” I tried to keep my voice from rising.

  “Out of habit maybe. People say things they don’t mean during sex, Henry.” She wasn’t looking into my eyes. I can’t believe we’re going to have another argument.

  “I don’t know how it works for you, but I don’t say things I don’t mean Anna. Your past, what you do was the last thing on my mind when I said I’m in love with you.”

  I noticed her visibly struggle for her next words. I could see she was trying hard to cover up her emotions when only minutes before she was lying in my arms and screaming. She gulped, “What’s the point of this conversation, Henry?”

  My anger flared, “The point is, I love you. I’m with you. We’re dating, I think this is going somewhere. But I can’t sleep at night if I don’t know why you’re in dark alleys behaving like a thug, Anna. I care about you. More than what you do, it bothers me that you might return home hurt.”

  “I…”

  Her words lost in her mouth. She got up and fell into my arms perfectly.

  “Anna –“ I hesitated.

  “Give me some time, Henry,” she whispered into my chest, “It’s nothing big, but give me time to come clean.”

  If it’s nothing big, then tell me sweetheart. I swallowed my words. Instead, I drew my hand through the softness of her hair, saying, “Alright, sweetheart. As long as you keep safe.”

  I could only resist so much. After that evening, I barely held in my instinct to deploy my father’s services and find out what Anna was truly involved in. But I had promised her I’d wait. And I had very gallantly also mentioned that I always kept my promises. I’m telling you, movies and telly screw us ordinary people up. Why else would any normal human being have a generic response to words like, “You didn’t mean it.”? Who would say, yes I didn’t. I think we’re conditioned to say, “No, I mean it. I always mean what I say.”

  I mean what I say. I’m just saying.

  I might be going crazy here.

  In my haze to figure out what Cain Matthew’s case was about, and to understand Anna, I am not ashamed to admit that I totally forgot about my old man. I remembered he existed in the equation between me and Anna, when he visited my office along with his better half and nemesis, Markian Reeves.

  I’m kidding.

  A week after our little love fiasco, Mark and Earnest came to me together. Which was a sore reminder of the fact that to Mark, Anna and I were engaged. He apparently came to check up my office space. He couldn’t hand over his daughter to just anyone, as he put it. I practically rolled my eyes.

  Had the two old men made up?

  “Not really,” dad told me after pulling me to the side, while Mark was going through my bookshelf. I am so glad that Peter had an early morning meeting with Matthews. Had he been here, we would have turned the officeroom into a mini soccer playfield by now. I want Mark to approve of me. Then at least one thing between me and Anna would not be tense.

  “He’s coming around,” dad said, “we spend a lot of time together. The past two weeks have been amazing. I don’t know why we ever stopped talking, truly.”

  “Because you slept with his girlfriend,” I said dryly.

  Dad was not pleased, “Quiet Henry,” he scolded, “Yesterday, we went fishing and he got really curious about you. So I invited him to your office and told him all about how competent you are. How are things between you and Anna? Do you guys want to marry yet?”

  “It’s been two weeks.”

  What is this man even thinking?

  I shrugged and walked to Mark, “Anything you’re interested in?” The books were all law related and bare Acts. Mark glared at me in the way a dutiful father glares at his daughter’s prom night date. I held back a chuckle.

  “I run a clothing company. None of this is interesting,” he shot back.

  I nodded, “I keep telling Anna she has fantastic taste in clothes. She must’ve learnt it from you.”

  Mark positively frowned at my words, “She has horrible taste. I, on the other hand, keep up

  with the trend. We’re nothing alike as far as clothes are concerned.”

  As a semi-horrible dresser myself, I don’t know what he’s talking about. Unless it involves donning a suit to a business meeting, I can pretty much live out my life in pyjamas or jeans. The men’s skinny jeans in the market these days? It’s utter bullshit. No man or woman should wear that shit in my humble opinion. I’m not a fan of the skinny ripped jeans Anna loves to wear either, but I don’t think she cares for an opinion on this matter.

  “I think Anna’s beautiful anywhichway,” I said in lousy remark, and Mark glared daggers into my skin.

  “Of course. She’s my daughter.” He said it rather haughtily, “I hope you’re not getting on her nerves, Hathaway.”

  I smiled, “Not yet.”

  “I’m still warning you. She’s a tough one.”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way, sir.”

  Mark’s eyes grew softer with my responses. He agreed to have coffee and the conversation turned from mildly unpleasant to enjoyable. He spent four hours with me, talking about Anna, asking about me and smiling in general.

  Like I said, we’re all conditioned to hearing and saying cool replies. He felt Anna would be safe with me. Because from what I could gather from his talk about her, was that he didn’t really have confidence in her when it came to men. I think at one point, he was actually thankful that I was in love with Reeves.

  “I’ve rarely seen her make a good choice in men,” he had said without restraint, “It’s not my business, but she worries me son. You’re the only decent one that has shown up till date. I don’t really believe you proposed to her, but I’d be lucky as hell if you do.”

  His words worried me. What did he mean Anna didn’t have a good choice in men? Was I not her type? She had said she never dated before, so…

  Chapter 17

  Anna

  I can’t figure out a way to tell Henry. What way can there be to slighten the effect of the words, “I act like a thug because…�
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  I wrote up and threw a few hundred pages trying to figure out a decent way to tell him. But the fact is, there is no decent way. Remember I said I was bullied when I was nine years old? It began back then. It was mere chance that while I was punched in the ribs by two older kids for something I had said – or done, I don’t remember now – I was saved by a man who owned a dojo. His name is Toni Kruger. He taught me mixed martial arts for the next five years. I was moved around two different families during those years, until Mark and Rhea found me and kept me. They formally adopted me, even though the child psychologist shoved my history and violent tendencies in their faces as a deterrent. I told you. I think Mark kept me as part of his share of corporate social responsibility.

  Anyway, those five years are what ended up changing my life. I learnt to control my anger through MMA, I also kicked a lot of sorry asses. Truth be told, I sometimes used to fancy being adopted by Toni during those days. He cared for me a lot. I didn’t understand why he didn’t make a move until he left five years later. I had been with Mark and Rhea for about a year then. Rhea had passed away, and Toni left without a word or even a goodbye. It was a difficult time, because Mark suddenly became a depressed, gloomy man whom I didn’t know, understand or trust. Toni left, I had no friends and home was a disaster.

  I was a fourteen year old kid. Coping was something I was forced to do even though I didn’t know what it was.

  That one year was a very quiet one for me. I turned to books – which was a lucky choice – else I would have turned to drugs. I certainly was capable of it. Books taught me a lot of things, inspiring, magical, romantic and adventurous. When I turned fifteen and Mark sent me to the most prestigious high school in the city, I ran.

  I didn’t leave him, of course not. Despite his gloom, he was a good man. I had learnt that muchabout him. I began to bunk school because almost everyone around me came from rich ass families. I didn’t get them, so I stayed alone. Two months into high school and some dude bullied me again. I restrained my urge to beat the shit out of him but I did hit him back. Mark was called by the principal, the boy turned out to be the son of someone Mark knew professionally. We were both let off easy, we both were forced to apologize. Mark and the boy’s father apologized to each other as well. It was done so the structure established within their businesses and that shitbag school stayed in place.

  I would’ve been in deep shit had I not been Mark’s daughter. I wasn’t when I was five, which was how I came to understand instantly that it is a horrible, disgusting structure that I didn’t want to be part of. I am a rebel, but I’m not an advocate of social change in any way. I can barely keep a hold on my own life. You could say I’m selfish. I was the daughter of a powerful man, I could try and change something. I didn’t. I’m human. What I did was protect myself in the only way I could think of.

  Because that moment made me think, what if Mark decides to abandon me? Rhea was no more, we weren’t blood related. He could. He had every reason to. I was a troublemaker. He knew my history.

  Everyone said I was the heir of RDesigns. I wasn’t even sure I was family to him.

  So I began to bunk school. One way was to study hard and become competent enough to inherit RDesigns. But that is not who I am. I wanted something of my own. I didn’t want to be dependent upon the adults around me anymore. Maybe the only exception at that time around would have been Toni. I trusted him. But he had left. I remember missing him so, so much.

  The first day I bunked school I went back to Greene Mary Orphanage. I don’t know why. I began to walk to it every day. I met Kate Connor once by chance. Which is how I got in touch with the kids from the orphanage who had been with me when I was there. Greene Mary only keeps children up to the age of sixteen. After that, they’re let go. So all of them had left the place – some had been adopted, others were making their way through life one way or another.

  I met a lot of them voluntarily. I learnt a lot about the world from their experiences, add to it my own. A lot of them told me they were bullied as well. Which is when I offered to help them out with self defense, basic techniques if not full blown MMA moves. That is how it started. It began with one friend for an hour in the morning and afternoon, when he had a break from his part time job. And it consumed my entire day soon. I knew about the warehouse from Toni, so we practiced there. One friend turned to ten, and ten to a hundred. Within three months, I was packed with youngsters. So I developed my own system to filter the real victims from the fake ones. You see, I’d only ever train the bullied. Never the bullies.

  I attended school once in a while, enough so Mark wouldn’t find out that I was bunking class. But I was in love with my own version of a self-defense class. I wasn’t authorized to teach MMA, I was still a minor, so all of this was in the grey areas of law. And then, three years later, when I turned eighteen and thought that I could finally do something about my little hobby – Toni came back.

  I had also made a hobby out of visiting Toni’s dojo once a week for those three years, in hopes that he’d be back one day.

  His reappearance changed my life once again.

  I still vividly recall the day when I had seen the lights of his dojo turned on. I had rushed to it like a mad girl and banged at the door while pressing at the doorbell. He had opened two minutes later, dazzling as ever.

  I might be exaggerating now that I think about it, but one look at him had made me cry like a baby. I launched myself at him, told him how much I missed him, told him I hated him and how glad I was to see him back – all at the same time, through a bundle of tears. It’s an embarrassing memory. He had just stood there, his hand patting my back and his face lit up with a gentle smile.

  I think Toni Kruger might have been my first love. He was a forty year old black man who had trained me for years, and yet I knew nothing about him. Which is why when I told him about my plethora of students, how cool and thrilling it was to live this double life, he told me that he was with the CIA.

  He was an international spy.

  I know. It’s almost like I was in a movie. But because Toni had never voluntarily given up information about himself before, I believed him in a heartbeat. He told me he had missed me too, and had checked up on me more than once. He had been to Venezuela for a task these past three years, but even from there, he said he already knew about my little double life.

  That blew me away.

  He knew I was using the warehouse, he also knew I had a system to only allow the bullied to learn from me. He was proud and impressed.

  “I never thought I would be picking up such a talent when I saved your ass all those years ago,” he said, laughing. And I remember sitting there stunned.

  Over the course of the next few weeks, Toni made me an offer. He wanted me to join him on a potentially harmless spying expedition to Vietnam. I remembered being shocked into silence.

  “I use my own people on missions. I trust you, and I definitely think you’d make a kickass agent Anna, if you study a little harder this year. Till then, I want you to have a taste of what it’s like.” He said the words as if they meant nothing. But to an eighteen year old, they were as close as I could get to a lifeline.

  I told Mark I was going to be on a trip with friends. Mark and I had gotten civil by then, but I can’t say I meant a lot to him. Or vice versa. I just liked him. I had long ago stopped taking any money from him. He paid for my school which I didn’t really attend, and my own expenses were easily taken care of with the money that my senior students paid me. I never charged them. They just said they’d stop coming if I kept training them for free. And that was that.

  I went with Toni. One mission as his talented student and sidekick turned to three more, and Toni wanted me to follow in his footsteps. He said I should go to college. But making a few trips with him made me realize that as thrilling as his life was, I didn’t want to live like him. I didn’t want to risk my life every day for anything.

  I told him that.

  Toni is a sh
ady man. I don’t know how much authority he has in the government, but he made me promise him one thing.

  “I know you love what I do Anna,” he said, “So promise me, every once in a while, you’ll come with me. Maybe once in six months, maybe once in five years. I want you to always remember how much you’re capable of. Which is why until the day I retire, promise me you’ll keep being my sidekick.”

  “I won’t be qualified,” I had resisted, “I told you, I won’t be training to be a spy.”

  “I’m an important man, Anna. The entire CIA knows I have a daughter I like to take out on missions.”

  Yep. That had sealed the deal. I agreed to come with him whenever I’d want an escape from my life. And that is how I became an underqualified yet highly efficient, freelancing spy.

  The last time I went with Toni was eight months ago.

  After making that promise to him, and making a shit ton of money from my escapades with him, I gave Mark a heart attack by failing senior year of high school. I don’t know how word about me spread, but the same year I was called upon for help by the Chief of Police of my city. I became a contractual employee for the police department. I’m not a detective, I’m someone they hire when they need my help with gathering information.

  I know my way around the streets. I’ve practically trained boys working at restaurants, cleaning streets, picking up mails, delivering pizzas. I have my way of knowing things.

  It’s been five years since this system was established. I’m still an off the record freelancer. Sometimes I help the local police, one time I helped the FBI, sometimes I help Toni. Most times, I just teach minors how to get out of tricky situations.

  Mark obviously found out about my fiasco when I failed senior year. I dropped out and never went back. I told him the truth. I expected to be thrown out, but I had money so I was prepared. His reaction is what made our bond what it is today.

  He sat in stunned silence for fifteen minutes once I had finished telling him what I had been up to. Then he asked for all my stories. I told him on the condition that he never say shit to anyone else. We spent the entire night talking. The next day, Mark refused to go to work and I ended up telling him all about what I had been doing for the past year again. When there was nothing more I could say, he told me, “I cannot believe I had such a talent living under my roof. I’m a horrible father for saying this Anna, but I am so proud! You’re the coolest kid ever. Fuck convention, sweetheart. I want you to do whatever you want. You have RDesigns backing you, if you ever need my help.”