by Rachel Woods
Spencer and the guy had been talking for almost fifteen minutes, a conversation that seemed… He didn’t know what it was and couldn’t really describe it. Or maybe, he didn’t want to describe it. There was a weird chemistry between them and in their body language. It disturbed him. The guy was sitting a bit too close to her, and when he responded to something Spencer said, he would lean toward her, casual and comfortable, and Spencer didn’t shrink back from him.
From the SUV, Sione had a vantage point of not quite forty-five degrees, and even from the passenger’s seat, the view was no better. He could only see the guy’s left side, his shoulder, and most of his back. His face was an obscured silhouette.
The guy put his hand on her cheek, and Sione felt as though something in his chest was expanding, threatening to explode. He took deep breaths, trying to calm himself, but it was hard as hell not to jump out of the SUV, run across the street, grab the guy, and slam him down to the concrete. Who the hell did the guy think he was, touching Spencer like that, so…intimately.
That was the word in his head. Intimate. A word that worried more than angered him. They reminded him of two people who had once been involved; former lovers who weren’t friends but maybe not enemies either.
Spencer removed the guy’s hand but not in an aggressive way. She didn’t push his hand back, but instead, for some reason, she allowed the guy to hold on to her hand. She knew this guy, Sione realized. Whoever the hell he was, she knew him. But that didn’t make sense. How could she know the guy Ben had sent to make the exchange? Who the hell was he? He wasn’t some triad thug, like Sione had expected he would be. This guy was black. Maybe from Jamaica? Ben had connections to gangs in Kingston, so maybe the guy was some criminal associate. Sione exhaled. He wasn’t in the mood to deal with some Caribbean gangbanger, who would probably have a gun—something stolen, unregistered, and loaded with hollow points.
He’d have to disarm the guy. Pistol-whip him with his own weapon and then use the methods Richard had taught him to render a man unconscious in three to five seconds. Then Sione would steal whatever Ben wanted and leave his gangster associate with a note, which would say something like I have want you want. Contact me to get it. He wouldn’t bother signing it. Ben would know that—
Spencer stood abruptly and quickly disappeared into the crowd, allowing the crush of fans to swallow her. The guy leaned against the slatted back of the bench, obviously watching Spencer as she walked away. Sione kept the binoculars trained on the guy on the bench, an odd feeling of familiarity settling over him. Did he know the guy?
Sione lowered the binoculars.
No, that was impossible. It didn’t make sense. He and Ben had run in different circles and hung with different crowds after Sione had left Belize to live with his Tongan relatives in the South Pacific. Still, there was something about the guy, he thought, as he peered through the windshield. Sione leaned forward, trying to make out the guy’s features, which weren’t a blur but still undistinguishable.
Cursing his own stupidity, Sione glanced at the binoculars clutched in his right hand and then raised them to his eyes. It took him a few seconds, but he located the guy again. The guy was standing now, still facing the direction in which Spencer had gone when she walked away from him.
He was tall with a muscular frame, similar to Sione’s build. The guy wouldn’t be easy to take down. But Richard had taught him how to get a man to the ground in a matter of seconds, and once the guy was flat on his ass, Sione would—
The guy turned, facing the direction of the surface lot where Sione sat in the SUV.
The face in the binoculars, magnified, hit him like a punch in the gut.
Sione jerked back, his chest tight, restricting his breathing. His stomach twisted as the binoculars fell from his trembling hand, sliding across the plastic mat on the floorboard beneath him.
Panicked and confused, Sione reached for the binoculars, fumbling them several times before he was finally able to grab them and press the lenses against his eyes, desperate to find the guy he’d seen with Spencer, to prove he’d been wrong about what he’d seen. His mind had to be playing tricks on him. It had been some kind of crazy optical illusion because it couldn’t be…
Ben Chang.
11
Houston, Texas
The Third Ward
With shaking hands, Sione sent a text to Peter, giving him the direction in which Ben was heading. Less than a minute later, Peter responded, confirming he’d spotted Ben and was ready to follow the bastard.
Don’t lose him! Sione texted.
He would have to kill Ben Chang. Ben’s death was the only way they would be free. Richard had once told him all threats must be eliminated, or they will eventually be carried out against you. His father had been right.
As long as Ben was alive, he would always be a threat to their happiness.
As long as Ben was alive, Spencer would never be able to satisfy the debt she owed Ben. The burner phone was proof of that. The assignments Ben had forced her to do in Belize were supposed to have been good enough to forgive her debt, but Ben had lied to her and tricked her into thinking she would be free of him.
Ben had never planned to hold up his end of their agreement. He’d always intended for Spencer to be one of his puppets, using the debt she owed him to control her, pulling the strings, forcing her to obey his sick, sadistic commands.
His cell phone vibrated. Sione stared at the display screen. Peter had texted him an address to a house near the University of Houston. According to Peter, Ben had parked in front of the home, gotten out, and had gone inside.
Sione programmed the address into the SUV’s GPS. From the map on the display screen, the house was located in Houston’s Third Ward. Southeast of downtown and east of the Medical Center, it was a predominantly black neighborhood that, centuries ago, had featured some of the finest Victorian homes in the city. Those homes had been abandoned by their upper crust occupants after various modes of public transportation gave undesirables unfettered access to the area. The grand houses still stood; however, some had deteriorated over the years due to various economic depressions, becoming flop houses and then crack houses.
After several deep breaths, Sione started the SUV, pulled out of the parking space, and followed the directions from the GPS. His pulse raced as thoughts of how he would kill Ben consumed him.
Sione imagined he would break Ben’s neck.
Wouldn’t be hard to do. Crush the trachea. Richard had taught him how to do it; he had wanted it to be Sione’s patented move. When a body was found with the throat crushed, his father had once told him, men would immediately know by whose hands death came to whatever bastard was sent to hell where he belonged.
Sione had been fourteen when Richard had revealed his grand designs for Sione’s life. Much like Richard, Sione would be a businessman with a side hustle in death. The gentleman killer, as Richard liked to think of himself. In the mercenary world of wet work, his father was known as the suave assassin, tall, well-built, handsome, and hazel-eyed.
Despite Richard’s gruesome penchant for cutting off the hand of his victims, his father was respected, and highly sought after, for his civilized, sometimes elitist, approach to murder. And though he could be sanctimonious, he was often forgiven when he went off on judgmental rants, declaring that those he got rid of were heathens who had been damned because they had rejected God.
By the time he was fifteen, Sione had become accustomed to his father’s brutality—and annoyed by his hypocrisy—which terrified and fascinated him. Even more horrifying than his father’s “side business” was the conflict he wrestled with—he knew his father was a cold-hearted killer, but he loved Richard fiercely and was often impressed by his homicidal exploits. Richard had never hesitated to describe his kills in graphic detail with grandiose sermonizing and editorializing. Most of the time, Sione believed his father’s heinous business was entirely justified.
Making sure to observe the traffic laws,
staying just a bit under the posted speed limit, Sione drove along the feeder road and then made a right, following the instructions of the disembodied female voice. Each side of the street boasted a mix of cracked and crumbling urban blight with abandoned buildings with boarded-up windows and overgrown, neglected lawns. As he approached the University of Houston, which encompassed several blocks in all directions, things brightened up a bit, but as he continued on, away from the college, darkness ensued, punctuated every now and then by an anti-crime street light. The street was full of shadows and mystery with side streets cloaked in inky blackness, roads that seemed to lead to nowhere.
At a traffic signal, he slowed for the yellow light and stopped when the light turned red.
Sione took a deep breath and pushed the thoughts of Richard to the far recesses of his mind where, hopefully, they wouldn’t haunt him. Thinking about justification for murder brought up an old internal debate he had yet to settle—was he more like his father than he wanted to be, which was nothing like his father, at all.
At sixteen, when Sione had left Belize and traveled to A’arotanga at the request and expense of his uncle, Siosi, he’d slowly, steadily allowed his uncle’s influence to win him over. He had never liked the idea of being a smooth, good-looking mercenary with a heart of gold, twisting Scripture so he could feel okay about taking a life.
But he no longer lived on a remote Pacific island where an army of aunts had acted as shepherds, offering spiritual guidance and making sure he went to church every Sunday. And, worst of all, his uncle had passed away several years ago.
There was no one to stop him from crossing the line.
There was nothing to prevent him from turning into his father.
12
Houston, Texas
The Third Ward
After driving back and forth along the street several times, Sione decided he was familiar enough with the layout of the house and was ready, if not anxious, to make his move. The old two-story Victorian towered proudly on the corner of Birchdale and Fawn Streets with a well-kept lawn that extended from the front of the house and around to the side of the house, which he’d figured was the best approach for a breach.
The right side of the house, which faced Fawn Street, featured basic landscaping, mainly a large cluster of hedges, clinging to the lower lever of the home. A long concrete driveway ran the length of the back of the house, sloping up to a two-car detached garage with an L-shaped open breezeway leading to a back door.
After parking the SUV two streets away, Sione got out and headed up Fawn Street back to the house. The neighborhood was dark with only a few houses illuminated by porch lights. Staying close to the curb, he took brisk, purposeful strides through the shadows. Except for the faint bark of a dog and the occasional swish of tires on some adjacent street, the night was quiet and still, the temperature mild, slightly humid. The calm atmosphere was a stark contrast to the raging tumult within him, but he tried to take deep, measured breaths and tried to stay focused and relax his muscles.
Nothing could ease the tension that had him coiled so tight he thought he might explode.
Coming abreast of the house, he cut right and hurried up the driveway toward the breezeway. The back door was wood with a glass insert covered by mini blinds. The door was locked, which he expected. Turning, he followed the L-shaped breezeway to the garage door. It, too, was locked, but when he kicked the splintered wood just above the knob, it flew back, and he lunged forward, using his shoulder to stop the door from slamming against the wall.
Sione closed the door behind him and then removed his phone from the front pocket of his jeans, where he’d shoved it, and accessed an app that functioned as a flashlight. He splashed light around the interior of the garage until he found what he’d been looking for, something he could use to break into the back door.
Walking to a tool shelf on the opposite side of the garage, he grabbed the hammer, left the garage, and went back to the back door. With the hammer head, he broke a section of the glass near the bottom of the frame and then reached into the jagged opening. Ignoring the sting of glass shards scraping his skin, he found the lock, turned it, withdrew his hand, and then opened the door.
He stepped inside. Allowing his eyes to adjust to the darkness, he realized he was in the kitchen. The refrigerator hummed, and somewhere to his left, a clock ticked, the long hand counting the seconds. Anxious, and yet wary, Sione stood still, wondering if he’d lost his advantage, waiting for some surprise attack from Ben, who might have surveillance cameras around the house and might have already seen him kicking the garage door in and breaking into the back door.
There was no way to know for sure, but he would have to be ready for anything and everything. From the kitchen, he passed through a small butler’s pantry and then into a large dining room. Out of the dining room, he headed down a hall to the foyer, where a flight of stairs ascended in a straight line along the wall.
Sione crept up the stairs, careful and stealth. He wasn’t really planning a sneak attack, but he didn’t want to give Ben the heads up, an opportunity to set a trap or execute some offensive strike, like a gallon of gasoline tossed at his face, neck and chest, followed by a flaming match.
He wasn’t going to underestimate the dragon.
Continuing up the stairs, he thought about how his uncle used to always say that he and Ben were like Cain and Abel. One was bound to end up killing the other. Well, he thought, it won’t be my blood crying out from the ground. But wearing the mark of a killer, even though no one would be able to see it and only he would know what he had done, was a burden he wasn’t certain he could bear.
At the top of the stairs, Sione walked down a short hall, toward a door that was slightly ajar. Three strides and he was pushing the door open, peering into the room.
Ben sat at a rickety wooden desk, holding a small piece of paper, his head bent slightly, as though he was studying it.
Driving to the address Peter had texted him, Sione had imagined what he would say to Ben when he saw him for the first time in more than a year. Staring at him, Sione realized there was nothing to say; words didn’t matter. The feelings screaming through him could not be put into words.
The feelings demanded blood, not conversation.
Sione slammed the door behind him to break the silence. Ben didn’t flinch. He didn’t seem to give a damn even though he had to know that he was no longer alone.
Sione tried to breathe but couldn’t seem to catch his breath. Abruptly, Ben stood, and a dull roar began in Sione’s ears. Time seemed to slow and then stop for a moment, during which dozens of emotions swirled in his head, like a kaleidoscope: guilt, anger, fear, grief, and some emotion that steadily eclipsed all others—anticipation laced with excitement.
He was anxious to kill Ben.
He’d waited years for the chance to get rid of Ben Chang for good, forever. Trepidation threatened his excitement. Wariness rushed in, and for a split second, he worried that things might go from bad to worse. What if he couldn’t handle being Cain? What if the blood crying out would haunt him? Forcing himself to focus, Sione tried to push the doubts away.
Ben faced Sione. “Well, well, old friend,” he said. “It has been a long time.”
“Hasn’t been long enough,” Sione said, his stance relaxed, as though he had stopped by to sit a spell, as Spencer’s grandmother would say. He was trying to read Ben, looking for slight, imperceptible muscle movements, trying to discern how Ben would begin his attack. Ben stood calm and relaxed and even had a trace of a smile. Richard had taught them to appear oblivious, or bored, until the first strike. Never telegraph your attack. Don’t give the enemy a chance to devise a counterattack before you rush him.
“So, old friend,” Ben said. “What do you want?”
“I want you gone for good,” Sione said. “I want you dead.”
“Is that so?” Ben cocked his head. “And how do you plan to accomplish that?”
The question worried Sion
e, more than it should have. He wasn’t sure he knew the answer. All he knew was Ben had to die or—
Ben lunged.
Sione had messed up. Much like Richard, Ben was good at allowing the enemy to think he had the advantage, tricking the opponent into believing they were winning the battle. Not always about strength. Most times, it’s about deception, misdirection, misguided perception.
Slightly off guard, Sione sidestepped and then kicked Ben in the hand. Another quick kick in the knee knocked Ben’s feet from beneath him. On the floor, Ben grabbed Sione’s foot, twisted, and yanked. Sione exhaled and rolled when he crashed to the floor, but it still knocked a bit of the wind from him. Before he could push himself to a sitting position, Ben executed a leaping crawl and was quickly on top of him. Shit! The fight had gotten to the ground too quickly. Sione had been hoping to avoid a floor fight—he wasn’t his best on the ground.
The enemy will always try to get you to the ground because that’s the best place to kick the shit out of you. Avoid that situation, if possible. But it won’t always be possible. So get the son of a bitch off you, then get back on your feet, and finish him off. Remember, the battle ends when the enemy has stopped breathing.
Ben’s hands were around his throat, thumbs and palms pressing against his windpipe. Trying to render him unconscious, Sione knew. Once the enemy is no longer conscious, you can finish him off as you please, Richard had taught them. I prefer a nice, clean shot between the eyes, close range.
Ben’s preference was to shoot the unconscious victim in the legs, kneecaps and feet and then douse the body with gasoline and set it on fire. Not willing to experience hell on earth, burning alive and unable to move, Sione jabbed several fingers into Ben’s eyes.
