Marked

by Charisse Spiers

  I watch the lights above the doors, waiting for it to finally hit 6. When it does I maneuver through the bodies until I can finally break free, entering the sixth floor, immediately greeted by a long counter and the name of the company hung on the wall behind it. The receptionist is beautiful, Asian, maybe thirty tops, and her long black hair is pulled into a low bun, her makeup light but perfect. She’s wearing just enough jewelry to accentuate her skin tone. I walk toward the counter and look over at her sitting in the chair at the computer screen. Typical receptionist: crisp white button-down shirt tucked in a black pencil skirt. She probably even has the immaculate designer shoes that make the entire outfit.

  She has yet to even look up at me, wearing a Bluetooth earpiece that she keeps speaking the same greeting into, because the phone has already rang like four times since I've stepped up to this counter. "Please hold," she says and finally acknowledges that I'm standing here. "Can I help you?"

  "I'm here to see Charles Williams III."

  At the sound of his name she goes blank, staring at me as if she's suddenly forgotten her job. "I'm sorry. Do you have an appointment?"

  "No. He's not expecting me."

  She blinks a few times, still staring at me. "I apologize, but Mr. Williams requires all meetings to be scheduled.” She pauses, staring at my face, before clearing her throat. “Are you a relative?"

  "Something like that."

  She stands, adjusting her shirt and then rubs her hands down the side of her skirt. "Of course. Excuse me. You can wait here. Let me see if he's available."

  She walks down a hallway, leaving me at the counter alone. I place my hands on top, bending forward to glance in the direction she just left. She is standing in front of a closed door with her hand raised about to knock, but in a pause, as if she's afraid to. Damn, is he that big of an asshole?

  She finally knocks, entering almost immediately after, the door shutting behind her. I pull my cellphone from my purse again, just enough to see the screen. I press the lock button to light up the screen, confirming the time. Fuck. It's going faster than I thought. I quickly pull it out and text Kaston.

  Me: Hey, I'm at the reception desk waiting to see if he will see me obviously. Don't flip your shit, but we may need to re-evaluate this time frame.

  I press send, waiting for an answer. One comes back almost immediately. "Damn, what are you doing, staring at your phone?" My voice is a whisper, feeling as if I need to be quiet.

  Kaston: Thirty minutes was the agreement...

  Me: I cannot control that shit.

  Kaston: Better make it quick then.

  Me: Asshole…

  "He will see you now," she says, catching me off guard. Her face is stiffer than it was before she left. I toss my phone in my purse as it vibrates and follow her down the same hallway she did before.

  She opens the door and steps out of the way, letting me enter. "Thanks," I say and walk in the large office. She closes the door behind me, leaving me in here alone. I glance around the fully furnished room, stocked with bookshelves and a game of put put golf close to the desk. The leather, executive style chair is turned toward the back wall, away from me. "Victoria said you're here to see me. What is it that I can do for you?"

  The chair turns, revealing the man that the deep voice belongs to. His hair is dark but peppered with strands of gray showing his age. He has to be in his late fifties or right at sixty. I walk toward him to get a better view. "I came to deliver something to you."

  "And you are?"

  When I get within a close distance I get a better view of his face, catching me off guard. If I had to guess our faces are a direct reflection of each other right now, because everything Mom has ever said I now understand completely, even with him much older. I quickly recover from my surprise and hold out my hand. He looks at it and an arrogant grin spreads on his face. "Lux Larsen, Katherine's daughter."

  At the mention of her name his smirk disappears and his eyes widen. He places his fists on his desk and stands, still looking at me. I drop my hand. We stand here, staring at each other. "Katherine Larsen," he whispers, as if he's just heard the name of a ghost. "How old are you?"

  "Twenty-five."

  His eyes zone out as if he's doing the math. "Who's your father?"

  "Apparently you are, Chuck."

  He walks over to the window and braces one hand on the frame, sliding the other in the pocket of his trousers. I look down at the picture frames on his desk, revealing a family. I notice a woman, assuming his wife, and two other kids, two boys, both fully grown. "Come here."

  "Why?"

  "I want to look at you."

  I walk toward the window into the sunlight, standing before him. He looks at me again. "Fuck. I have a family. Did she set you up for this? This is about money, isn't it? Why after this long? Where is she?"

  I slap him without thinking. "How dare you insult her? She never so much as breathed a syllable of your name to me. I didn't know your name from a stranger on the street until I found this in her things." I reach in my purse and grab the envelope with the letter, shoving it into his chest. "She just fucking died, you asshole. She obviously didn't have enough guts to give this to you, so I thought I would deliver it personally."

  He grabs the letter and opens it, saying nothing more. I wait, watching him read it in its entirety. Upon finishing he clenches his hand into a fist around the letter, crinkling half of it. "Katherine wrote this?"

  "No, I made that shit up. What the fuck do you think?"

  "Damn...you're more like me than my sons. You really are mine, aren't you? Shit. I can't believe this, any of it. Do you realize what she's accusing me of? I've never fucking raped her. Is that what she thought?"

  "You expect me to just believe you? I'm the one that lived with her for eighteen years. I just met you. She didn't get that fucked up over nothing."

  He grabs ahold of my arm and leads me toward his desk. I sit in the chair as he props his body against his desk, and then lowers his voice.

  "You don't go public with this shit, got it? I don't fucking owe anyone an explanation in regards to my personal affairs, but I'm not going to sit by and let someone that ran away like a coward instead of telling me I had a child on the way destroy everything I've spent years building. Something like this being leaked to the media could ruin me, especially as much as you look like me. It's scary to be honest. You want to know what happened? I remember that day, and I did nothing any different with her than I did any other day, but I had just lost out on a multimillion-dollar merger that almost cost me my job. I was stressed and she left at lunch without letting me know. I needed her. She was my assistant, and yes, my very private girlfriend. It was never supposed to get to that, but when you spend more time with someone at work than at home things happen, especially with a woman like Katherine. I cared about her. Plus, I had been drinking. She came in here and she seemed upset, mumbling things about leaving and starting over, but she had also done something similar when I refused to leave my wife to be with her publicly, and then I took her on a business trip with me for a few days and she was back to being my Katherine, even with all of the complications of our relationship. I'm a businessman, and with that comes a reputation. I can't trample around acting like a college frat boy. She said no all the time in this very office; worried someone would walk in. It never really meant no. She never raised her voice, never pushed me off, and never did anything to differentiate that time from all the previous ones. If she was serious and that affected her life, then I'm sincerely sorry, but I really had no idea. She should have come to me years ago."

  I stand, suddenly more confused than when I walked in here. Maybe I shouldn't have come. It's solved nothing, pretty much just like Kaston said, and only making her look worse. No matter what she's still my mother. It's her words against his. I'll never really know what happened. It doesn't even matter. I don't know what I thought I would accomplish by getting a look at the man that helped create me; maybe to appease my anger,
my guilt, or to help me hate him so that I could understand her behavior all those years. Instead, it's just frustrated me more.

  Kaston was right yet again. I should just be content with what I do have instead of looking for what I don’t.

  "Lux. Where are you going?"

  I stop halfway across the room and turn toward him. "You have a life. I shouldn't have come. It was a foolish mistake on my part. I'm grown. I just wanted to understand the woman she's been all of my life, and I thought I finally had."

  The sound of the door opening interrupts me. "Dad, are you ready to go over the quarterly numbers?" I look at the man standing in the doorway, maybe a year younger tops. "I'm sorry. Am I interrupting something? I thought your schedule was clear for the afternoon." He walks over to me and holds out his hand. "I'm Dylan," he says, looking between his father and me. His eyebrows dip as if he's confused. "And you are?"

  I look back at the man responsible for my birth, the single act that led to my hell for twenty-five years. I'm not giving the people that don't deserve it another day, because dammit I deserve happiness in some form too. "Not someone that matters, Dylan. I'm just visiting an old friend of my mother's.” I pause. “It's ironic how two people here by the same coincidence can end up with such very different lives. I'm sorry to have intruded on your schedule. Goodbye, Mr. Williams." I turn. "Goodbye, Dylan."

  I walk out with one thing on my mind, and that's getting the fuck out of here. I need a damn leave from an emergency leave. I may stay at the beach longer than I had originally planned.

  The walk back to the parking garage is a blur. I never even checked my phone. I open the door and get in the truck, waiting for Kaston to take us away from here. "How'd it go?"

  I look at him. "I think I'll let you take me on that date now."

  He looks a little taken back at my response. "Where to?"

  "Shooting range. The way I feel right now can only be released one way, and that's pulling a trigger. For that I need bullets and a gun. You in or you out?"

  "I'm always in when it comes to you." He reaches over and kisses my lips, not asking any more questions about what happened, at least not for now. I'm sure it's coming, and I'll have to explain. I want to, because I actually want to tell him everything. He's now my best friend. I don't want to admit it yet, not even to myself, but I believe I'm going to lose this battle. Love is trying to recruit me. My heart is slipping away from me, no matter how tight of a grip I have on it.

  I walk up beside her and lay the pistol and full magazine down on the wood counter in front of us, my ear protection hanging around my neck. I look at her, staring off down the range at the target, as if she's calculating. There is something about a woman that knows her way around a gun that's sexy. It's one thing that hooked me with her, that night in the alley. Who would have ever thought you could get a hard-on with a gun pointed at your head?

  She's still contemplating. I want so bad to ask her what happened up there, but I don't think it's time. I was seconds away from getting out of that truck and going up there to show my ass. "Do you ever wonder why some kids have it so shitty and some never have to deal with anything bad at all?"

  She never looks at me, only keeps staring straight ahead. I turn my back toward the range and prop my hands on the wood, before looking over at her. "I have in the past. Why do you ask?"

  "Just wondering if I'm ever going to get a fucking break; to be one of the lucky ones."

  She places her ear protection over her ears and then picks up the pistol and magazine, before slamming the magazine into place. "Firing," she calls out as she racks the slide back, bringing a bullet into the chamber. I slide the muffs up the back of my neck, pulling them into place over my ears as she aims at the target, both hands gripped around the handle, and then starts to unload the magazine without a break. When it's empty she releases the magazine and lays the gun back down on its side, alongside the empty magazine, and then pulls her ear protection down to hang around her neck. "I feel a little better."

  I match her motions and then grab her hand and pull her toward me. "No, beautiful. Why feel better when you can feel phenomenal?"

  I turn us around, aligning her back to my front, and remain behind her, but facing my target. "Anyone can learn to shoot a gun, and you may even be good at it, but don't empty a full magazine on one person. It only takes one bullet. Aim for the kill shot."

  I place my arms around her and lean closer to her ear, before grabbing the gun off the wood. "If you need to use a gun, it's probably because someone is trying to harm you; its intended purpose. Your adrenaline will be pumping and you won't be able to think properly, leaving more room to make mistakes. That's why it has to become an instinct, nothing more, nothing less. Let's pretend, because had Chevy not been there things could have turned out very different."

  I slam the magazine in place, causing her to flinch, before placing it in the palm of her hand. "Grip it like you would my cock: firm, but gentle."

  "Really," she asks sarcastically. "You're going to compare it to your cock? And this is supposed to relax me?"

  "Well, in some ways they are both similar. If you don't know how to use it, it can be deadly. Both can go off prematurely if the user gets trigger-happy. Know what you're getting upfront to avoid permanent consequences that can't be reversed. Bottom line: respect it and it will respect you."

  She turns her head to look at me, and starts laughing, hard, leaving me with a cocky grin on my face. "What the fuck is wrong with you," she asks between laughs, trying to catch her breath, her arms resting on the wood in front of her from being bent forward. "I will forever be scarred after that. Holy shit. Stop giving me mental associations of your cock with normal, everyday things. I think about it enough as it is. You're turning me into a nymphomaniac."

  "But it worked, did it not? You're totally relaxed and thinking about my cock. I have you exactly where I want you."

  She slams her ass against my crotch, no doubt aiming for my dick. "Men aren't the only ones with weapons of mass destruction, you know. No gun can be operated without an owner. Keep that in mind, killer."

  I grab her chin in my hand, turning it toward me further. "I'm well aware that your pussy owns my cock. Would you like me to prove it in front of an audience?"

  Her eyes veer to the security camera hanging from the overhang behind us. "Uh, no. I'm all for public fucking with the risk of being caught, but voyeurism is crossing the line."

  "Then I suggest you keep that in mind, because my cock doesn't understand rules or morality. Your pussy comes within reaching distance and it's going in. That's just what comes with ownership." I kiss her and then release her. "Like I said before, grip it like my cock. You have one chance with one bullet to take him out. Understood?"

  "Fine, bossy. You seriously act like I've never done this before."

  "I'm sure that you have, but I'm about to teach you the best way. Always be open to learning better ways than you already know, because there is always someone else with better understanding and experience for the skill at hand. That's the ultimate way to become the best."

  She grips the handle in one hand, aiming it toward the target, and then looks back at me. "Is this better?"

  I grab her free hand and place it on the other side of the handle, mirroring her right, then align my body to the back of hers. I run my hands down the length of her arms, steadying her stance, and then down her body, before placing them on her hips. Her body slightly shivers when my lips come closer to her ear. "Holding it in both keeps it steadier. Pay attention to your surroundings like wind and distance since the bullet has to travel. When you aim, sight it in and then exhale to relax yourself before pulling the trigger. Instant kill shot is head or heart. Anything else is torment, making him bleed out. Avoid it. Make it quick and clean. You ready?"

  "Only if you show me what you do to take your mind off of what you're about to do. I want to understand how you deal with it mentally."

  "You sure?"

  "Absofuck
inglutely. I want to know you like you want to know me. I want to understand."

  "Okay. Shut down everything else in your mind. Your target is a live body standing in the location you've deemed appropriate for the hit. We've been watching him for weeks now. We know his schedule, his favorite places, his hunting grounds. You've studied his file like you've studied for a final. You know everything he's done prior to taking his life, because you cannot make a mistake. He's useless to society. He's an endangerment to people. He's worth more dead than alive."

  "I'm listening."

  "This one is a sexual predator. He has a public record, but he's gotten smarter since he got caught. He's been marked. The client came in because her twelve-year-old son was a victim. The family didn't think to check the public database online when they hired him to privately coach their son for baseball, because most people don't think of sex offenders being normal people. He was a local, a residential neighbor, and he was at every ballgame. He also molested and committed sexual battery with her son one afternoon at practice, forever changing him. He quit baseball to avoid going back. He never opened his mouth, clearly ashamed and scared, carrying around that dirty laundry for months. One day it got to be too much and he put his father's .38 in his mouth and pulled the trigger. No one had any idea it had even happened until they read the suicide note. That family will now have to live their entire life without him: his sister without a brother, his father and mother without a son, and his grandparents without a grandchild. Now, when they want to go see him they have to make a special trip to the cemetery."

  She starts to lower the gun. "Don't fucking move."

  "Kaston, that's sick."

  "It's also life, Lux. Ugly things happen in the world we live in. That was an actual case my dad had when I was in high school. The world is full of sick fucks. Some survive the madness, some eliminate themselves, and some have it taken from them. This is how I live with it. That was the same way my father lived with it. He taught me most, and some I've learned along the way from others, as well as from training of my own, but I've always been expected to respect human life. A hundred kids that don't have to live with an unwanted touch are more valuable than some piece of shit that deserves to burn in Hell. Before I turned to the dark side not all that long ago, I was a detective, hoping one day to work for the FBI or the CIA. No matter how, I wanted to put the bad people away. It's the one thing I've been passionate about all my life. It's the only thing that makes me feel like life is worth living...at least until I met you. I still find myself wanting to take away all of your pain. I got a second chance at having a normal childhood, but some don't. My father kept that part of his life separate until I was a senior about to graduate high school, and only then because I was moving back to the states for college. He wanted me to understand things in case something happened to him while we were miles apart. I had a good childhood, Lux. I got to be a normal kid, so now when you look at your target, knowing what he's done and what he's capable of still doing, what do you do?"