Curvy for Him 1

by Winters, Annabelle

“Turn around and walk away and maybe I won’t kill you all when this is over,” I growl through gritted teeth. “Actually, you know what? I’m lying. You guys are all gonna fucking die. All I can promise is that I’ll do it quick.”

  “Hey, we’re just following orders,” says Number Two, blinking as he sees how serious I am. “Like he said, Gustav just wants to talk.”

  “You coulda told me that when you walked in an hour ago!” I thunder. “Instead of smashing through my door like fucking psychos!”

  “Yeah, well, things changed in the past hour,” says Number One. He turns and nods at Number Two. “Toss them some clothes, will ya? I’ve seen enough of Armand’s ass today to last me a lifetime.”

  Number Two looks around before seeing the shelf of gym clothes for sale behind the counter. He grabs a pile of trackpants and sweatshirts and flings them over to me. I grab them and hand Astrid a set, kneeling square in front of her as she hurriedly puts them on behind me. Then I stand up and slowly dress myself, taking my time so I can assess the situation.

  I believe Number One when he says something changed over the past hour. No way these guys would have paid me a courtesy visit and then come blasting through my door an hour later!

  “All right,” I say when I’m dressed and my breathing is under control, my instincts on high alert. I’ve got four loaded guns pointing at me, and although if I were alone I might try something, I can’t risk Astrid taking a bullet. “All right,” I say again, holding my arms out to the side, palms open. “I’ll talk to Gus. But she’s got no part in this. Let her go, and I’ll come quietly.”

  “You’ll come quietly either way,” Number One says. “Both of you.”

  A chill comes over me when I see Number One’s hand tremble. Clearly he’s rattled. That’s not a good sign. If he’s rattled, it means Gustav’s rattled. And when Gustav gets rattled, people die. Sometimes a lot of people.

  Darkness wafts over me as I realize that there’s no way they’re letting Astrid walk away. Not after she’s seen these guys, heard the name Gustav. The old man is paranoid about witnesses. Hell, in twenty years of killing for Gus, he’s never directly given me a kill-order! It’s always been through one of his guys. Always a degree of separation, just in case I end up on a witness stand someday. Is the old man losing it? Cleaning house? Is the law catching up to him?

  Only one way to find out, I think as I take a deep breath and come to terms with the fact that I’m going with these guys, going to the lion’s den.

  And Astrid’s coming with me.

  Despair reaches up through me like a living beast, choking me from the inside as I want to kick myself for letting that woman walk through this door! There’s a reason I never let anyone get close to me over the years! Nobody has ever had leverage over me. No family. No friends. No woman I ever gave a shit about. I was my own man, and suddenly I’m not! Suddenly I’m vulnerable! Suddenly I have a weakness!

  “You guys ready?” says Number One, gesturing with his gun toward the door.

  I close my eyes and shake my head, taking deep breaths as I feel my world falling apart. I’m about to snarl out a reply to this asshole, but I stop cold when I hear Astrid speak from behind me.

  “Yes,” she says, her voice trembling but in a way that makes me turn and stare at her.

  “Yes,” she says again, but she isn’t looking at Number One. She isn’t looking at the guns pointed at us. She’s looking at me. Into my eyes. Into my soul.

  And my heart almost stops when I realize that she isn’t answering Number One’s question.

  She’s answering my question.

  And suddenly that darkness is blasted away by a feeling of love so overwhelming that I can barely speak. There are four gunmen in the room, but I don’t give a shit anymore. They can shoot me in the back if they want. I can die now, because my life feels complete.

  With a roar I pull Astrid into me, hugging her so hard I feel the air pushed out of her so fast she gasps.

  Yes, I’ll marry you, is what she just said to me! Yes, I’ll marry you!

  And now that sense of despair is replaced with a beacon of hope. Now I understand that this woman just made a bold choice, a choice to stand beside me no matter what, even if it means we’re lying beside each other in an unmarked grave by tomorrow morning! She doesn’t make me weak, I realize with shocked delight. She makes me stronger! That’s what a woman does for her man, isn’t it?! She makes him more of a man, not less!

  She makes him a complete man.

  9

  ARMAND

  “The man is dead,” says Gustav, running his hand through his thinning hair in a way that I can tell means he’s nervous. “Murdered in his bed. An inside job.”

  I frown as I look at the old man sitting in his high-backed wooden chair. He looks smaller than I remember. More shriveled. But his eyes are gray and focused like a wolf’s. Sharp and piercing like the ruthless mob boss he is. He’s not losing it, I decide. But that only means that if he’s this rattled, something big is up.

  “What man?” I say, scanning the massive open room in Gus’s lakeside bungalow on the outskirts of town. There isn’t much furniture in here. Gus was always on his feet, always walking, always on the move. I liked that about him. Sitting is murder on the body.

  “Mory Michaels,” Gus says, grinding his teeth as he runs his hand through his hair once more.

  I frown again, but this time because I suddenly understand why Gus is so freaked out. Mory Michaels is a rival mob boss. Secretive. Reclusive. Totally behind the scenes. He and Gus go way back. Rumor has it they’d come to an agreement decades ago, after a brutal mob war had decimated both sides and got the Feds probing into what the hell was going on in our town. They’d declared a truce, divided up territory, and shaken hands on it. This was back in a time when a handshake between men meant something. That’s another thing I always liked about Gus. His word meant something.

  I swallow hard as I put the pieces together. I’m not like one of Gus’s soldiers—not really. I’m an independent contractor, and Gus always respected that.

  “Sorry to hear that, I guess,” I say in a deadpan tone. “But that doesn’t explain why you sent your goons to smash through my door when you coulda just knocked. I thought you were civilized, Gus.”

  “Drastic times call for drastic measures, Armand,” says Gus, his teeth still gnashing.

  “Sounds like your problem, not mine,” I say.

  Gus glances at Astrid with his gray wolf-eyes, that one look telling me everything I need to know. My body stiffens as I decide I’m going to kill everyone in this room. Simple as that. You don’t threaten my woman. You don’t threaten my . . . fiancée?!

  I blink as I remember that I only just met this woman, and now we’re engaged! Maybe we’ll be dead by tonight! All of life’s major events compressed into twenty-four hours! A lifetime in one fucking day!

  But I feel my heart twist as images of Astrid round and pregnant, her belly swollen with my babies pushes its way into my mind. We aren’t going to die today. We have so much more to do together. I know it. I feel it. And I will have it. I’ll have that future with Astrid, and I don’t care what I have to do to get it.

  “What do you want, Gus? Another hit? Sure. Give me a name and it’s done. It’s done, and then I’m done. We’re done. One more and you leave me alone. You leave us alone.”

  Gus narrows his eyes, his lips tightening into something between a smile and a grimace. He gives me this half-shrug, half-nod, like he’s saying sure, you got it. But he still hasn’t said a word. What’s he hiding?

  “Do I have your word?” I say, my jaw clenching as I hold Gus’s gaze.

  Gus sighs and looks down for a moment. “My word isn’t the problem,” he says grimly. “It’s your word that’s the issue here.”

  I frown as I see something in Gus’s eyes that reminds me that the old man has al
ways been a man of honor, that even though he’d chosen a life of crime, he still had morals. His business was money-lending and protection, in a way no different from what a bank or a private security firm might do. He never lost his way by dealing killer drugs or doing something vile like human trafficking.

  Yeah, Gus had morals and so do I, I think as I cock my head and try to figure out why Gus had me dragged here at gunpoint instead of just fucking asking me nicely. I have lines I don’t cross, lines I never crossed as a killer. I was cold-blooded, but I never took pleasure in spilling another man’s blood. I never killed anybody who didn’t have it coming, and Gus knew better than to even ask.

  Which means that if he didn’t ask this time, it’s because he knew I’d say no.

  “You asking me to kill an innocent man?” I say in a whisper. “Someone who doesn’t have it coming?”

  “Oh, this person has it coming,” Gus says, rubbing his gray stubble. He turns to Astrid, smiling tightly as he looks her dead on. “What would you say about a woman who poisons her husband so she can take over his empire?”

  I stare at Gus as he looks back at me. “A woman?” I say, feeling my throat tighten. “I’ve never killed a woman, Gus. I don’t kill women. No innocent men. No kids. And no goddamn women!”

  Gus closes his eyes and sighs, shaking his head slowly. When he opens his eyes, his gaze darts back to Astrid and then to me again. “And I’ve always respected that line for you, Armand. However I have no choice here. Which means you have no choice either.”

  “There’s always a choice,” I snap back at Gustav, that protective instinct taking me close to losing my shit and leaping across the room. I’d snap this geezer’s neck before his gunmen can pump enough lead into me to slow me down. “You’ve got a fucking army at your disposal, Gus! Why me?!”

  Gus shakes his head. “Thirty years ago I shook the hand of Mory Michaels and promised him a truce.”

  “Well, Mory’s dead now, which means you aren’t bound by that promise.”

  Gus snorts. “You know me better than that, Armand.” He shakes his head. “It means I’m bound forever by that promise. I will never break the truce first, which means I can’t send in my army, guns blazing. I need an outsider. An independent. A man who’s lived his life in the shadows. It has to be you, Armand. I cannot allow this woman to take over Mory’s empire.”

  “Why not?” I say with a shrug. “As long as she keeps the truce, stays to her territory, minds her own business, what do you care? Live and let live, Gus! Lighten up, buddy!”

  “There’s no light in this woman, Armand,” says Gus, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Mory was the only one holding her in check all these years. Now he’s gone, and God help the children if she takes the reins.”

  I shake my head as if to clear it. Maybe old Gus has lost it. “God help the children? What the fuck are you talking about, Gus?”

  “Something so vile it sickens even a cold bastard like myself,” says Gus. “Armand, this woman has built a career that gives her access to children. Young children. Young girls.”

  I almost choke as I try to process what Gus is telling me. “You’re insane,” I mutter, shaking my head. I turn to Astrid and roll my eyes. “We’re leaving, Astrid. Old man’s lost it.”

  “No, wait,” she says, her eyes focused on Gus like she’s actually believing the shit he’s spouting. “I want to hear this.”

  “No, you don’t,” I say, grabbing her arm and trying to pull her towards me. Gus might be losing it, but he’s still a man of honor. He’s not going to fucking execute us. And torturing a loved one to get me to do something isn’t his style either. Those threatening glances towards Astrid was a bluff. Gustav’s always been good at that. I almost fell for it, but I know better now. This is his problem, not mine.

  “Yes, I do!” Astrid snaps, pulling away from me and taking three steps towards Gus as every gun in the room points towards her. She stops in her tracks, but her face is peaked, her eyes shining with determination, her soft body tensed up with strength that I can see flowing through her! It’s fucking exhilarating, and I stand there and stare at my woman in astonishment. “Children are my life, Armand. I need to know what he means!”

  Gus leans forward on his chair, his face lighting up with what I know is admiration. He narrows his eyes, like he’s wondering if he can trust her. Then he nods, takes a breath, and leans back in his chair.

  “You have children?” he says softly.

  Astrid shakes her head. Then she flicks a glance over at me before focusing on Gus again. “Not yet,” she says, and I tighten when I see how her right hand cups her rounded belly involuntarily, like she knows my seed is inside her already. “But I’m a teacher. I’ve had a hand in raising hundreds of girls over the years. I need to know what you’re talking about.”

  Gus frowns, rubbing his stubble. “A teacher? Where?”

  “St. Francis for Girls,” she says.

  Gus’s jaw drops so fast I think he might die in his chair, and I swear he gasps so loud I think he’s choking. Much as I respect the man, I’m not giving him mouth to mouth. Let Number One do it.

  But Gus isn’t dying. He’s chuckling, shaking his head as he coughs and sputters. “Do you two believe in fate?” he asks, still shaking his head as his smile widens.

  I raise an eyebrow and think about everything that’s happened over the past day. I’ve never been particularly spiritual, but I have noticed certain patterns in my own life that seemed like it was part of a plan: coincidences, strokes of luck, sometimes events that defied probability, like there was someone watching out for me in all those dangerous situations I got myself into. Like I was being pulled along a certain path.

  “Yes, I believe in fate,” says Astrid, turning and flashing me another quick look.

  “How about you, Armand?” says Gus.

  “Just spit it out, old man,” I growl, refusing to answer. “What you got? What’s making you smile like a crazy old fart?”

  “Destiny,” says Gus with a twinkle in his eye. He winks at me and shrugs. “Looks like you won’t need to betray your morals after all, Armand. Because your woman is going to take care of things. All’s well that ends well. A perfect ending. Happily ever after for all of us!” He takes a breath and turns back to Astrid. “All of us except for LuAnn, of course. You know her, don’t you? LuAnn Michaels?”

  10

  ONE WEEK LATER

  ASTRID

  I stare blankly at the empty classroom. It’s 6 a.m. and the girls won’t be in for another hour, but I came in because I couldn’t sleep. I haven’t been able to sleep for a week. It all seems like a dream.

  I want to say it seems like a nightmare, but that wouldn’t be right. Armand and I are together, and this past week has only made me more sure of it, of him, of us.

  Unfortunately, that’s the only thing I’m sure about right now. And if we were a normal couple living a normal life, that would be enough. But we aren’t a normal couple, and this most certainly isn’t shaping up to be a normal life.

  “Not unless normal means planning to kill your school principal-boss because she’s running a side-gig in human trafficking,” I mutter out loud as I stare at the tiny vial sitting on my desk, right next to an apple that little Paulina brought for me two days ago.

  The vial contains a neurotoxin—a synthetic poison that Gus told us was making its way around criminal circles because it’s virtually undetectable in an autopsy. It paralyzes the heart muscles, causing immediate cardiac arrest. Yup. Makes it look like the victim just up and died. Doesn’t even need to be injected into a vein, Gus told me. Just a few drops in a cup of tea will do it. Pretty much destroys the hit-man business, he’d quipped to Armand, who wasn’t amused in the least.

  Indeed, Armand’s been going crazy after I agreed to do this and Gus let us go back to our daily routines.

  “You aren’t going
to take a life,” he told me the other day, shaking his head like it was his choice, not mine. “You don’t know what it’ll do to you, Astrid.”

  “How can I walk away knowing what I know about LuAnn?!” I shot back, not sure if I was indignant that he was underestimating me or just scared . . . scared of myself!

  “You don’t know Gus like I do,” he’d said. “He’s a master manipulator. Can bluff his way in and out of Fort Knox if he wanted, with gold ingots sticking out of his pockets. He made his first million playing poker in the underground dens! He’s playing you. Playing both of us! Fuck knows why he wants LuAnn dead, but that’s his problem, not ours.”

  “If LuAnn’s really doing what Gus says she’s doing, then it’s my problem!” I screamed at him, ignoring the madness of the fact that my hitman fiancé was trying to talk me out of murdering someone! How the hell had my life taken such a turn in just a week!

  Fate, I think as I stare at that apple and cock my head. I blink as I look at the vial again, glancing back at the apple. Then I take a breath and reach into my bag for the small syringe. I tear open the package, pull out the syringe, and with trembling fingers slide it into the mouth of the vial. I draw out a lethal dose of the poison, and with a slow breath plunge the needle through the skin of the apple. I inject the poison into the red fruit, my heart racing as this shit suddenly gets real.

  “You going to eat that?” comes a voice from behind me, and I drop the syringe on the table and turn so fast I almost stumble. It’s LuAnn, and from the way she’s looking at me with her cold blue eyes, I know the game is up and I’ve lost. Of course I’ve lost! What the hell was I thinking! I’m a goddamn fourth-grade teacher! Just because I spread my fat thighs for a killer doesn’t mean I can suddenly flip a switch and become a goddamn Mata Hari assassin!

  “Red and delicious,” says LuAnn as she strolls around to the front of the table, where the vial and syringe are staring up at her like the little tattletales they are. “Lots of sugar, though. It’ll go straight to your hips.” She takes a breath and looks into my eyes, and I know immediately that everything Gus told me about her is true. “Or straight to your heart,” she whispers, picking up the apple and holding it up. “Go on, Mrs. Astrid. Take a bite.”