THARNISHED HEARTS

by Allen, J. C

Her mouth.

  In the half second that I realized I had an open shot, Falcon was shaking his hand, screaming at Eve, but in doing so, he had dropped her to about hip level, leaving her body exposed. I took my shot and hit Falcon…

  Right in the shoulder.

  Not enough to kill him.

  “You motherfucker!” I roared, charging at him.

  I tackled him off the ledge of the subway station and onto the tracks, falling on top of him. He gave a loud grunt while I tried to ignore the searing pain my ankle, which I suspected was sprained at best and broken at worst. I sat up on him, prepared to deliver a strong punch when, out of nowhere, he bucked his hips forward, knocking them off me.

  “Your family has been a fucking curse in my life, Derek!” he roared as he grabbed my leg and pulled me in. “You’re not going to fucking get away!”

  I sat up but was quickly knocked back down by a swift punch to the jaw. I moved my hips away as best as I could when I hit something… barrel-like. I turned and saw it was Falcon’s gun.

  I grabbed it, turned, and then got hit in the jaw again. The gun went back several feet. I got to my knees, but Falcon rose and kicked me in the jaw. I fell forward, my head resting on the train tracks. I looked up just in time to see Falcon standing over me, his foot raised.

  “How appropriate,” he said. “I’ll kill you just like I killed your father.”

  I rolled out at literally the last second, Falcon’s foot scraping my ear as he missed killing me by maybe a millisecond.

  I got to my feet, in a fighting position, with Falcon also having his fists up.

  “You wanted your fight?!?” he roared. “Let’s go, Derek! Mano e mano! Tell your girl to stay the hell out of the fight!”

  As if to make a point, he turned to Eve, now hovering over the edge, her ropes still bound around her.

  “It’s alright baby, I got this,” I said. I rolled up my sleeves, clenched my fists, and prepared for the final fight of my life. “You said my family name has been a curse upon your life. But you pale to understand what you did to mine. At worst, my father robbed you of a business opportunity. You robbed me of my family, my wife, and my child. And you nearly robbed me of Eve. You think you have it bad? You don’t know bad.”

  “Fuck you, Knight!”

  The mask falls off. The charming, even-keeled sociopath reveals himself for what he really is. And now, we can fight as we always have meant.

  “Bring it!”

  And like two wildebeests who would lock horns, we charged forward. Falcon threw a right cross, which I deftly blocked before delivering my own right cross. It caught Falcon in the face, but it barely staggered him. I followed that up with a punch to the gut, and though he doubled over, he then charged at me, headbutting me and knocking me back a few feet.

  “Hahahahaha!” Falcon laughed, rising back up. “Good, good! You got a little fight in ya, Derek! I always thought you were the weakest of them all, but you’ve proved a worthy adversary!”

  I ignored his words and again came at him, this time throwing a left cross. He ducked under it, gave me an uppercut, and followed that with a cross and a right punch. All three connected.

  I staggered back, spat the blood on the ground, and wiped it away.

  “This is what you wanted, is it not?!?” he roared.

  “I want you dead!”

  “Too bad you can’t always get what you want!”

  For a third time, I charged in, this time coming right up into him, locking his arms up. I threw a couple of knees to his body, knocking the wind out of him, and dropping him to his knees. I delivered a knee strike to the face and a kick, bringing him to the ground. I went to curb-stomp him, but he backed away, surprisingly elusive for a fat man.

  But he was getting winded. If I could just keep it up…

  “Good, Derek, good,” he said.

  And then, in what could only be described as the most Falcon move ever, he pulled out a knife from his boot. He laughed as he moved forward.

  “Mano e mano, huh?” I said, using my youth and speed to dodge him, though the advantages weren’t as great as with ninety-nine percent of men his age.

  “I told you, I have sought to eradicate your family line for so long! You think I’ll play nice when your father fucked me over all those years ago?!?”

  To fight fire, you have to fight fire.

  Then he threw the knife at me, and I could not dodge it.

  But, by the fate and fortune of everything that had ever existed, the handle, not the sharp end, hit me. It bounced off harmlessly.

  “You are the luckiest motherfucker alive,” he growled.

  And then, in what was entirely predictable, he reached into his other boot and grabbed another knife.

  “But lightning doesn’t strike twice, boy, and—”

  And then I heard a gunshot ring out.

  Falcon stumbled forward, yelling in surprise. I looked over his shoulder and stared stunned as Roost, of all people, stood at the edge. He was very much alive, very much angry, and very much in a position to kill him.

  “Ya ain’t never said I gotta stay out of it, ya fuck!” he yelled.

  At this point, Falcon was on the ground, writhing in pain. He would not escape. I would finally have my revenge.

  “Do you,” he said, coughing up blood as he rolled over to face me. “Do you wanna know what your parents sounded like when I killed them?”

  I checked to make sure Falcon had no weapons and then quickly turned back. Roost had gotten Eve free of her ropes and handed her his gun. She hopped down next to me and held him at gunpoint. I quickly ran over and grabbed Falcon’s gun, and the two of us stood over him.

  “Your father screamed like the little bitch that he was,” Falcon said, cackling as he drew his last breaths. “And your mother, the whore that she was—”

  “Together?” I said.

  “Let’s end this fucker,” Eve responded.

  “One, two, three!”

  Six shots screamed for our pistols, and each one offered an after-image of something we had lost.

  BANG!

  My parents…

  BANG!

  Her future…

  BANG!

  My brother…

  BANG!

  Her sanity…

  BANG!

  My wife and child…

  BANG!

  Her dignity.

  And yet, somehow, Falcon still lived, albeit not for much longer.

  He looked up, sneering. His yellow and black teeth now had blood oozing from between them. Angry, frothy bubbles of spit popped out and started a grotesque stream of pinkish drool down the side of his mouth.

  It was an appropriately shameful ending for such a shameful man.

  “A boy and his whore…” he croaked, “… how—”

  The seventh shot, much louder than any of mine, took off the upper-right portion of Falcon’s skull, leaving only a wide, wondering left eye to blink back at us in confusion for a few seconds before he finally slumped to the street. I turned, looked up at Roost’s smoking gun, and smiled.

  “I couldn’t let ya have all of the fun, ya know,” he said chuckling. “It was always gonna take a team effort to take that asshole out. But good news. Ya won.”

  We won.

  We actually won.

  I turned to Eve, exhausted beyond measure. All of the punches, all of the wounds, all of the emotional exhaustion and moments of near-death seemed to suddenly come crashing down on us. It was not lost on me just how lucky we had been to win this battle; no, how lucky we were to win this day. One trigger-happy Falcon would have ended my life in the streets. A fake countdown from the Falcon could have ended Eve’s life. A better-placed bullet could have ended Roost’s life.

  But the funny thing about fate was, as long as it favored you, you didn’t have to worry about replicating it. We got to live another day.

  And, finally, the bane of our existence, the greatest existential threat to our team, my family, and our brother
hood, was finally erased.

  “We actually did it,” Eve said, as stunned and in shock as I was.

  I kept staring at the body, half-expecting it to rise like a zombie and turn into a new kind of demon. I kept waiting for the surrounding Black Falcons to suddenly stampede at us and make our victory one in which we went down with everyone as well.

  But nothing of that sort happened.

  And it was highly unlikely that anything like that would ever happen again.

  “Wow,” I said. “Wow.”

  “Goddamn right, wow,” Roost said. “The two of ya can finally live in peace.”

  I turned to Eve, making a show of tossing Falcon’s gun—after making sure the safety was on—to the ground. Eve did the same.

  “No more violence,” I said. “No more bloodshed. It’s just us now.”

  A wide smile came on her face. I happened to catch Roost grinning even wider in that moment too.

  “It’s funny you should say that,” Eve said. “All four of us here can celebrate now.”

  “All four of us?” I said, laughing. “I mean, I guess if you want to take Falcon’s corpse, we can do some—”

  “No, silly,” she said, taking my hand and putting it on her belly. “You can’t see the fourth one. But they are here.”

  It hit me immediately.

  “Oh my God, Eve… really? When did you know?”

  She smiled at me, pulled me close, and kissed me.

  Man, that felt better and was better treatment than any Tylenol could be.

  “This morning, actually,” she said. “When you went to Roost’s for some strategy, it occurred to me I hadn’t had my period. I got some tests done and confirmed I was pregnant. I thought about telling you but didn’t want to put any more weight on you. But now that this is over… we can begin our new life.”

  “Oh man, oh man, oh man!” I screamed deliriously. “Yes! I’m gonna be a dad! For real this time!”

  I was reminded of all of the sensations I had felt when Maggie had told me she was pregnant—and, yes, the heartbreak that followed when she and our child were killed.

  But unlike then, the greatest threat to the well-being of our child was gone. I never had to worry again about someone coming to gun for our child or…

  Well, I wasn’t going to do that here, not with the remains of my greatest enemy still a few feet away. But that was coming very, very soon. It would not take long for me to drop to one knee.

  “Eve, you are amazing,” I said, pulling her in for a long, long, long kiss. “I love you so much. I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with you.”

  Eve smiled, pulled me in for an equally long kiss, and whispered “I love you too.”

  “Hey ya love birds,” Roost said with a chuckle. “As sweet and romantic as this is, why don’t we say we get the hell outta here, huh? We gotta get a cleanup crew here, and the cops gonna be wantin’ to talk to us. We can smooth it all over, but ya two need to get the hell out.”

  “Wanna give us a hand?” I said.

  “Jesus, gotta do everythin’ for ya, huh?”

  We all shared a laugh as I helped Eve up first and then went up myself.

  “You know,” I said. “I said I’d be sober for the near future… but I think tonight has merited a drink.”

  “I think tonight has merited a bar’s worth of drinkin’,” Roost said.

  He and Eve traded some more jokes about drinking and how much could be had to celebrate, but I took the moment to step back to the tracks. I took one last look at the remains of Falcon just before leaving.

  Dad. Mom. Dustin. Maggie. My daughter.

  It’s over.

  It’s finally over.

  We won.

  You all can rest in peace now.

  16

  Eve

  Two Days Later

  As Derek, Tara, Matty, and I sat on the couches of Derek’s lobby, with everyone drinking champagne except for me, it seemed the only commonality we all had was that no one could believe what the other had done—but no one seemed to mind in the slightest.

  Even though Derek had seen the crime scene photos showing that six Falcons were dead in his own apartment because of my actions, he just found himself dumbfounded that I had actually pulled it off. Of course, this didn’t stop him from calling me the most badass woman ever, which led to a fun debate between Tara and me as to who had killed more Falcons. Matty and Derek just took turns clinking glasses and mumbling to each other at that point.

  Meanwhile, I couldn’t believe the good fortune that Derek had had confronting the Black Falcons at my street corner. It was probably a damn good thing that he had called in the support of the Black Reapers for assistance, as that seemed to steer the battle in our favor. I only wished that I had gotten to meet them, but given how it sounded like Matty had good relations with them, I was reasonably sure that I would see them again.

  Derek and I couldn’t believe the balls that Matty and Tara had portrayed in flying into battle as they did, using Matty’s bike as a battering ram to take out Falcon’s personal guard before swinging around to protect Derek. As usual, Tara had some bragging words about how much she had done, which led to more barbs between her and Matty. At this point, there wasn’t anything anyone could say that wouldn’t make one of us laugh.

  “Well, regardless of who was the hero and who was the assistant,” Derek said, raising a glass. “Allow me to give a toast to all of you. To us.”

  “To us,” we all said in unison.

  “There was a moment not too long ago,” Derek said. “When you all came over and raided my fridge.”

  “Hell of a time to put the bill on us,” Matty said with some chuckles.

  “How kind of you to pay. No, no, I’m not going to mention that… although if you want to pay, I won’t mind. No, what I wanted to say was that in that moment, watching all four of us interact… it felt like for the first time I had a family again.”

  “Aww, Derek,” I said, curling up against him.

  “For real,” he said, his voice cracking a bit. “Roost will tell you as much as anyone how much of a mess I was after the Black Falcons killed my biological family. Obviously, I was hurting because of their loss, and that’s not something I’ll ever forget. But I think part of the reason my pain lasted so long was because I refused to connect to anyone. I just shut the world out, trying to push it away by alcohol.”

  He looked down at his drink, drawing a laugh from the three of us, and shrugged, continuing.

  “But then I met this girl.”

  “Oh, Jesus, Romeo and Juliet in the modern era,” Tara said. “Boy, you so sappy.”

  “I’m just telling the truth,” Derek said, looking at me with the cutest smile I’d ever seen on his face. “I met this girl whom I immediately fell for. I crossed paths with her on the street when she was held prisoner by the enemy, and yet, even then, I could see that she had a spark and a fire to her that was unlike anything I’d ever seen. To be honest, I’m half surprised she didn’t see me and just push me away.”

  I just giggled and slapped his chest, leaning in to cuddle against him. I listened to his heart beat as he went on.

  “Over the ensuing month and a half or so, we went through some hell, we went through some bliss, we went through a lot of good times—”

  “Ya can thank Falcon for blowin’ up that office, now that it don’t smell like sex anymore!”

  I laughed as Eve and Tara looked horrified at the dark humor, but I didn’t mind it one bit. In fact, it was a much needed joke for how I felt about that place. If I could laugh about a joke on the shop, then I really was moving forward.

  “Anyways, in that time, Eve,” he said, now looking to face me. “You did more for me than I can ever imagine. Not only did you help avenge the loss of my loved ones, you made me a complete, whole man once more. You reminded me of what it means to be happy, what it means to have a purpose, and what it means to love. And, now, about eight months from now, you’re going to show m
e what it means to be a dad.”

  Even Matty made an “aww” sound at that. I nearly cried when I heard Derek say that as he put his hands on my stomach.

  “But, there’s one thing that has not yet been addressed.”

  I looked at him in confusion.

  “I’ve said how much I’ve enjoyed the last month and a half, and how much I look forward to being a father. But what about beyond that?”

  Oh, Derek…

  “Well, I can tell you this. Before I met you, I was living day to day. Every day, just getting out of bed was a victory. It was a damn miracle that Falcon didn’t just end us in that time, because as melancholy as I was, the idea of thinking about the future was laughable. Roost will even tell you the club had a contingency plan for when—not if, when—I offed myself.”

  “Yah, it’s true,” Matty said. “But we’re sure as hell glad you ain’t thinkin’ ‘bout anythin’ like that anymore.”

  “Not in the slightest. Now, in fact, I’m looking ahead. I can’t stop thinking about the future. I know that there are several ways it could go. We could stay here. We could move to Italy. We could move somewhere else. I could stay with the club. I could retire and hand it off to Roost.”

  “Hah! Yer kiddin’ yerself if ya think I’m takin’ that mantle.”

  “OK, maybe I’ll retire and hand it off to someone else. But anyways! Throughout all of these possible futures, there’s one commonality in all of them, Eve, and that’s you. No matter where I go, no matter what I do, no matter how things turn out, you are in that future. I’ve thought about this for some time now and, like you, I wanted to wait until after the business with Falcon was done. I almost thought of doing this right after we killed him, but I didn’t want the lingering memory to be of Falcon in the background as he was.”

  “Probably for the best,” I said as the other two chuckled, but their laughs died down.

  They knew what was about to happen. As did I, as evidenced by my wetting eyes and welling tears.

  “Now, though, there are no obstacles, nothing in the way for our future. And because of that, I want to cement that future forever.”

  With that, he gently got me off of him, stood briefly, and then started to go to one knee. I caught out of the corner of my eye Tara recording this. I started to cry as one of my greatest childhood wishes came true.