by Gabi Moore
We lay like this for a while, in that blissful, half dream state that only comes after a good, deep fuck, and held one another. I softened out of her and pulled a slick, white trail of cum over the curve of her ass cheek. It wasn’t quite the most beautiful thing in the world, but it was close.
“I never liked drug deals,” she said, absentmindedly. “None of it ever sat right with me. I always knew, deep down, that that wasn’t who I really was… I’m so sorry, Jack, for everything, I’m so sorry that I--”
“Shhhhh…” I said and kissed her nape again. “You don’t have to explain anything. You don’t have to apologize. Not to me, anyway.”
“I framed you, Jack. They could have killed you,” she whispered.
I waited a moment before responding.
“But they didn’t.”
“How can you just forgive me like that? How can you just let it all go?”
It was a good question. In our industry, revenge was the grisly engine at the heart of everything. An eye for an eye. A life for a life. I don’t know why it felt so easy to “let it go”, honestly. But it did.
“Well, do you forgive me? I was prepared to kill you too, you know.”
“I guess …I guess I do,” she said as though she was only thinking about it for the first time. “I do forgive you.”
“Yeah? Well why? Why don’t we have knives at each other’s throats right now…?” It was something I’d wondered myself. She grabbed my arms and wrapped them more tightly around her shoulders, like a shawl, and kissed my forearms.
“Because …because this feels so much better.”
She couldn’t see it, but I smiled. That was the reason why. Because a professional killer and a hardened criminal mastermind were right for each other precisely because they had had enough. Enough of the killing. Enough of the lying and vengeance and petty politics. There was nothing special in that night in the container, only that it opened the tiniest window through which we could see something else. Another life. And in one way or another, we’d been chasing that glimpse ever since.
“We’d better get cleaned up, Melissa will be here any second now” I said and nuzzled into her hair. She moaned and wriggled in my arms.
“Ok, ok …but just one more time,” she said and started up again with those hips of hers.
“Again? Woman, are you trying to kill me?” I laughed.
“Well, I am a badass mafia woman, you know, you’d better do as I say…” she purred.
I smiled. The warm rasp of her voice was enough to rouse me again, and my dick ached and thickened all over again, still wet from her, but ready for more.
“I love you, Jack,” she whispered as I popped the head of my cock into the snug hole again. I paused. I waited. This was a moment I had never prepared for.
“I love you too, Evie” I said, and it all felt right.
I made her come again, and this time she yelped and bit hard down into the pillow, her hair flopping everywhere. It was 100% true. I did love her.
Fuck, did I love her.
Chapter 19 - Evelyn
I was busy examining myself in the mirror when I heard Melissa’s car tires crunching on the gravel outside.
I didn’t look like a woman who had spent all morning fucking, but it didn’t hurt to check, I suppose. My belly was small but prominent, like I was smuggling a small watermelon. It wasn’t a bad look, but it certainly didn’t go with my leopard-print jacket and glossy black leggings. Nobody expected a woman like me to be waltzing around glowing and fawning about the wonder of new life she was carrying and all that crap – least of all me. But soon I’d have to get something with a little more give. Roomier pants. Elasticated waists. The future looked dark and strange indeed…
Jack easily hoisted up our bags and lined them up at the front door. We had only stayed here a few nights, but I guess my so-called nesting instinct was getting out of hand and I almost felt a little tearful to leave it behind. I was Evelyn Van Horn, expert bad bitch, pro marksman and MMA champ. I was fearless, conniving and tough as nails, and there was nothing that I couldn’t handle. Except maybe pregnancy. And the fact that last night I had told a man that I loved him for the first time in my life. And except for the fact that that scared me half to death, and I was just waiting now to see if my whole world would come clattering down now that I had opened up to him.
In those nature documentaries, the pregnant females are always vulnerable. They’re slower moving, too heavy, too fragile. Easy prey. I had just assumed I would never have to endure the humiliation of being a pregnant woman, and a pregnant woman in love, no less. But here I was, and my big secret was that I was kind of getting into it. Maybe there were different ways to be strong. What if all the shit I rolled my eyes at in the past had some merit after all? Maybe mothers were gritty and tough, and maybe sincerely trusting a man wasn’t the end of the world, or a personality flaw.
“Hola hola! Look’s like your Uber’s arrived!”
I turned to see Melissa walk in with a big, goofy grin and outstretched hands. I ran over to her, threw my arms around her and gave her a big, over the top hug. Hell, I’d only met the woman a few times in my life, but if I was going to try on this sappy new personality of mine, I might as well go all the way, right? She accepted my hug in earnest and returned it, then gently lay her hand on my belly.
“Remind me how long, mama?”
“I’m due in three and a half months,” I said.
Her eyebrows went up high.
“Really? And so small! God, I hate you, I went out like, this big when I had my Mateo,” she said and mimed a giant belly out in front of her. She saw Jack and gave him a big hug, too. The room just suddenly seemed so much fuller with her in it. She was a short woman, but her loud voice, strong perfume and energy were just too much for that tiny motel room.
“Ready to go?” I said, turning to Jack. He smiled at me. This was it. In 24 hours, we’d be in a new country, in a new life, hundreds of miles away from Little Joey’s crumbling empire, from the endless motels, from the drug deals that I always hated so much…
We piled into Melissa’s car. It was a little pitiful, how small and shoddy our luggage looked, but we had traveled light on purpose. We had enough money, and a safe place to go, and that was what mattered. She started the engine and we pulled off in silence. It was crazy, but I wanted him again. If I wasn’t already pregnant, the morning we had just spent with one another would surely have done the trick. I glanced over at him in the passenger seat, and he quickly turned to look at me. He knew what I was thinking. And I knew what he was thinking. And fuck if it didn’t turn me on so much it hurt.
We drove on in silence for a while, me in the back seat playing out various fantasies in my fevered pregnancy brain. Anything was possible now. We’d find new jobs. Why not have another baby? I wanted to just fuck him for a month solid. Or what about buying a farm? A Bed and Breakfast? I’d go back to MMA after the birth. I hadn’t even picked out a name yet. It would be a girl, obviously. I just knew it would. I wanted his cock. His big, thick, juicy cock. I loved the fact that even though it was as big as it was, it seemed to fit so neatly inside me, like it was designed for nothing but that. I loved how gentle he always was …except when he wasn’t.
“Melissa, have you heard any news lately? Any word on the street?” Jack said.
Melissa gave a long, low whistle under her breath and stared straight ahead at the road, a faraway look on her face.
“To be honest, I try not to think about any of that,” she said. “but it’s not good, from what I hear, no.”
“You left,” he said.
It wasn’t a question. There was just something in her demeanor that made it obvious that she was no longer bound to the organization in any way.
“Man, everybody left,” she said and laughed cynically. Most of the capos have fucked off, you know, they were loyal to Angelo but I think they were just waiting for an excuse, they had their own things lined up, maybe something will come fro
m a new line up north they tried to get Joey to go for. But it’s all messed up now. I don’t think anybody knows what will happen next.”
We were getting closer to the airport now. The clinking of Melissa’s bangles on her wrist sounded like music to me. The story she was telling seemed like a fairy tale, something that happened to other people, imaginary people, in a world far away that didn’t really exist anymore.
“We saw some stuff on the news. The Feds went in for Roger Blunt and his crew. Do you know anything about that?” Jack asked.
“Man, the Feds weren’t just after him,” she said. “We don’t know who snitched. Honestly, it’s a question of who didn’t snitch, you know? Joey had nothing to offer anyone. He tore down everything his father built and still expected everyone to kiss his ass. Thing is, he walked right into the traps the Feds laid for him. That’s how it looks to me, anyway. His own people ratted him out, but they didn’t exactly have to paint a bullseye on his head. Sad. But whatever, he got what he deserved.”
There was a distinct bitterness in her voice. I knew that Melissa had lost her sister recently, but I had never pressed for the details. Knowing what I did of Little Joey, I could only guess.
“What about… about Joey’s mother?” I asked from the back seat, saying what everyone else was thinking. The atmosphere in the car changed immediately. That wasn’t on the news. IN fact, it was the secret that I had carried around for years, a hidden weapon I hoped I’d never have to use. Melissa took her time with a long, ragged sigh.
“You know what? I think everybody kind of knew already. Joey looks nothing like his father. We all suspected it. Even I suspected it. But Angelo never said a word so we all just went with it…”
Jack stared out the window, his chin in his hands.
“It’s kind of a tragedy, isn’t it? All that time he wasn’t even his son.”
Melissa snorted. “Yeah, the tragedy is that he’s dead now and everyone can’t kill him again now that we all know he’s just some bastard kid.”
The bitterness was back. I decided to drop the topic, but I could feel, as we all drove on in silence, that everyone’s thoughts were busy, each in a slightly different direction.
It had been so long ago, but I still remember that night. One of those humid summer evenings that you just want to spend outside, under the stars. I was going to “babysit” Little Joey. Angelo was out of town and his mother was at a conference that evening …or so she said. After dinner he went upstairs to watch TV, and I stayed in the kitchen and tidied up. That’s when I saw it. Joey’s mom picking her way up the sidewalk in her high heels. With a man. A man that had the same oily, vicious look that Joey had. The same slick black hair, the same narrow eyes.
He kissed her in the street. Squeezed her ass. I watched it all from the window of their house, my hands wrist deep in sudsy water and my heart beating. They whispered some parting words and I quickly dried off my hands. A few moments later when she came into the house, I made a show of walking in from the other room, acting surprised to see her, smiling. Did Angelo know? Did Joey? She gave me a strange look that evening and sent me home early. I never breathed a word of it to anyone else. The wife of the most violent and notorious drug lord in this hemisphere was cheating on him. And anybody with eyes could have seen whose child Joey really was.
The next few summers, when I pushed to do small jobs for Angelo here and there, I knew it was his wife that was quietly encouraging him in the background. I had never threatened her. But the fact that she had instantly and silently begun to give me special treatment was enough to cement in my mind just how important the thing I had seen was. How dangerous. Everyone liked to think that I had climbed the ranks because I knew who to sleep with. The truth was I had her on my side, giving me whatever I needed to keep my mouth shut.
It was sad, really, that I never got to play the most exciting card this whole game had dealt me. But Melissa was right. In the end, Joey had gotten what he deserved.
Chapter 20 - Jack
While I could never put it on a resume, having been a hitman is probably the best training you can have for a lot of other jobs. People think you have to be some kind of idiot, or some morally compromised thug to do the work that I did. But the truth is that you just need to remain calm. That’s it. If I was ever successful at what I did, it was because I knew how to relax when everyone else was getting riled up. When it comes down to it, knowing how to look at adversity square in the face and act calmly and rationally is all you need to be a good hitman – or a good anything, really.
That goes for chicken farming, too. If any of my old partners had seen me in the early days, I would have been a laughing stock for sure. But chickens are not that different from people. They get scared, they get territorial. You can predict how they’ll behave. You can always spot a good one, can always tell when one is going to be a disruption to the rest of the flock. I was probably the world’s only hitmen who retired to become a chicken farmer in Spain. But, fuck it. Sometimes life doesn’t pan out the way you quite expect it will.
I wiped the sweat from my brow, trudged up the stone path and hauled a few buckets of feed I’d prepared the night before. I was getting the real hang of staggering my yearlings and layers, so that each cycle I was getting a pretty reliable egg yield. One bucket under each arm, I walked over to the main camp, stopping for a second to turn my face up and into the warm yellow sun. It had taken us a long time to turn this place into what it was now, but it was beautiful, if I did say so myself.
It was a lush thirty acres, with a mature olive grove, a view to the North of the Bay of Biscay and to the east a faint blue row of low, softly undulating mountains. And chickens. Sweet, fluffy beauties who laid small eggs with yolks almost as deeply golden as the sun. I carried on walking to the camp, unlocked the gate with my boot and marched in. I heard a faint trickling noise. I followed it to the barn and realized with irritation that the borehole tank was leaking again.
I quickly sprinkled down the feed, turned the buckets upside down on the hutches and went to have a closer look. A long, thin dribble of water snaked all the way from a one-inch slash at the top of the barrel, making a muddy brown puddle at the base.
“Shit…” I muttered, and took my shirt off to lean in for a better look. The tank was new, but had this weird weakness right at one of the seams that had given me trouble before. Nevermind. Calm and rational, like I said. My previous repair hadn’t held. I’d need to fix it again, and soon if I didn’t want the girls to be running around caked in mud for the next week.
I kicked off my boots, too, and pressed bare feet down into the icy cold, squelchy mud. I could now see the problem. Luckily, the tear in the fiberglass was high up enough that it wouldn’t drain out the entire tank. Feet muddy, I went to fetch some tools: a handheld sander, a glue gun and a coke bottle. Not exactly high tech, but I’d be able to get in for better repairs later. I took some shears to the coke bottle and cut a square of plastic to patch the leak. After sanding the edges lightly, I’d apply some glue and paste it on, then pray the water pressure wouldn’t be enough to blow it off again.
“I leave you alone for one second…”
I turned to see her in the barn doorway, wide smile on her pretty face.
“Fucking thing’s gone again. I just need to patch it for a second, just till I can get that guy in to have a proper look…”
“God I love it when you work without your shirt on,” she purred.
I smiled at her sideways. I never knew why she found me doing impromptu hack jobs so sexy, but I’d go with it.
“Yeah? You like my big sexy glue gun, do you?” I said, and brandished it at her. The water continued dribbling out in a long, thin stream overhead. She walked in, took a look at it, then smiled at me.
“Oh yes I do, and I love your big old …coke bottle?” she said with a crooked smile, and held up the mangled plastic bottle.
“Yeah well, I’m Macgyvering over here, you’re a woman, you wouldn’t understan
d,” I said, and tried to lay on the patch at just the right angle. She giggled and turned the sander over in her hands before setting it aside. She came over, lay her hands onto my flanks and stroked me teasingly.
“Can you Macgyver later?” she said.
My hands froze. I loved it when she wanted it this bad. When she was so horny she’d trek all over this farm just to find me for a quickie under the brambles. I loved how coy she was, too, as if it wasn’t blindingly obvious from the first second.
Before I had time to answer, she had spun me around and was planting a big, juicy kiss on me, standing up on her tip toes to reach. The mud below squelched as she flopped against me, her greedy little hands moving all over me. I could still feel the warm sun on the cotton of her dress. Could smell it in her hair, even though it was braided tight into two pigtails on either side. She was my Evie, the same woman I had fled my home with almost seven years ago, the same woman that had helped me build this barn. She never changed though. Her face was still as bright and lively as it always was, and her little body still felt lithe and vivacious in my arms.
I smiled at her enthusiasm. Her tongue still wrapped around mine, she gave me a gently but decisive push and I went staggering back and into the tank, making the water inside heave and slosh. She laughed as the flow of water out the hole temporarily increased.
“You’re not helping, by the way” I said drily, and she gave me a devilish grin as her hands worked quickly to unzip my overalls.
