I pin him out in the crowd and smile.
“If you want sucking off, ask your wife. I don’t fall to my knees for no man,” I yell back for him to hear me loud and clear.
“What about your wife?” he yells back, “We were told she had been shot, where is she?” he asks.
“Come and see for yourself, just you, then I’ll go quietly,” I yell.
I twirl slowly lifting my hoodie showing I have no weapons, well, what I want him to think. Not that my gun has any bullets.
“You’ve always wanted to put me away for a long stretch, you get what you want today.”
He slowly approaches and side steps to look through the restaurant’s windows. Cammie’s body is lying just inside, beside me but he can see enough. He winces and steps back two steps. Thinking I am unarmed he doesn’t move far.
“I know you Drake, you wouldn’t go quietly unless you want something in return. What do you want?”
“Regardless of what you think of me, my wife did not deserve to die. Tommy the Tank shot her. Him and Sammy Winchester plotted against me because I double crossed him when we stole the diamond from Lord Ponsonby. He would’ve no doubt gone to ground after I killed Sammy, he’s changed his appearance, only Stan knows what he looks like and how to find him. Ask Stan where he is.”
“Stanley West?”
I nod and brace myself.
“I never thought I’d see the day when hard man Drake turned into a grass before going back to prison. You’ll be lucky if you’re ever free again,” he laughs at me.
Casting one last glance at the guns trained on me, I use the pain of Cammie lying in her own blood and briefly close my eyes.
“I’m already free,” I grin, using my hand to widen my sleeve letting the gun slide free. As it hits my hand, in one smooth motion, I swing it up and aim straight for his head.
“You never intended to hand yourself in, did you?” he blanches.
“The only one I give myself to is bled out on the floor.” I grind out through grated teeth, all pretence of calmness gone.
Shouts for me to put down my weapon go unnoticed and I step back into the doorway.
My final stand.
My final smirk to the authority that thought they could control me.
My final act of defiance.
My final fuck you.
I make it clear my thumb is clicking the safety off and the calls for me to drop the gun become more ferocious.
“BOOM,” I yell pulling the trigger.
Simultaneously, forceful impacts to my chest and arms push me back and I fall to the floor beside my wife.
Looking down my body, I see two shots to my chest and one in my left arm and two in my right arm. I knew they would shoot. I hoped they would. They wouldn’t take the chance with my record and a restaurant full of innocent people.
I reach for Cammie’s hand and sigh with relief when I feel her skin joined with mine.
Death does not scare me. Leaving this world that has only brought me one piece of happiness does not scare me because she is no longer a part of it. Some may call me a coward, choosing to die because my wife has. The one’s that know me, will know it has to be done this way. My life could never exist without her.
The first time I laid eyes on Camila Darcy in her white button down shirt and faded blue jeans under her black apron, working in the coffee shop, I was done for. In turn, so was the rest of humanity.
To stay alive without her, I would undoubtedly find no peace, happiness or love. Only hatred and a violence so raw every man who crossed my path, would never stand a chance of surviving.
I never thought this was how it would end, but looking back, this was always going to happen. Everything I have done in my life, I deserve to die in immense pain and in the dark. Selfish to the core and right to the end, with Cammie’s hand in mine, I couldn’t care about being in the dark because I couldn’t be more in the light than I am right now.
My heart doesn’t have to beat to belong to her, in life and in death our souls are united. All I have to do is let go and look for the light that is her love for me.
Closing my eyes and embracing the pain, I go back to a time that gave me a real reason to be alive. The first night I spent with Cammie, the first time I held her in that dive of a bed and breakfast. The night her bare skin writhed under mine like expensive silk. She was agonisingly beautiful, her eyes scorching into mine, branding me and holding me as hers.
Forever hers, and before I…
“Do not let the fucker die. He doesn’t fucking deserve it.” Detective Henry Barnes bellows over the paramedics working on Drake Deveroux.
One by one the medics pull away and one even wipes his brow from exerting everything he had into saving the man.
“It’s too late. He’s gone.”
Detective Barnes sighs and knows his victory he had planned earlier that day as he got the call that Deveroux was giving himself in and had admitted to a string of crimes no longer held the same gratification.
He wanted him behind bars. He wanted to be able to go bed at night knowing he was behind bars for the rest of his life and he was the reason society would be a little safer from the likes of Drake Deveroux.
“Detective, he didn’t have a single bullet in the gun he had aimed at you.” A younger officer tells him, holding the gun up in a plastic, evidence bag.
He couldn’t help but laugh. To his last breath, Drake had played him. He had used the police force to die. He never thought Drake had enough compassion to care about the girl enough to not want to live without her.
He had the confession of two separate robberies and a murder, yet all that was left was two bodies lying side by side.
Two bodies, side by side holding onto each other by simply holding hands.
“In all my years of dealing with bodies and crime scenes, I’ve never seen a dead man smiling before.”
He looks down to the woman taking photos of the scene.
“That’s because you’ve never met the devil before, he went by the name of Drake Deveroux,” he huffs, knowing she didn’t have a clue what he was going on about.
“And the woman?” she asks.
He had looked into Camila Darcy when he first came across her in Drake’s flat as he was arresting him for the brutal attack on Calvin James. A fiery little thing. She had no record, decent parents from what he could tell, came from a good background. He couldn’t fathom how Drake managed to bag himself a good woman who should have been afraid of his world.
“She made the mistake of falling in love with the devil.”
Epilogue - Nine months later
Stan
The back street dive on Lawson’s road is heavy with smoke and every set of eyes land on me when I walk through the door. A stranger in their territory. I stride with a purpose and with every intention of taking any cunt out who tries to stand in my way.
I stand in the middle of the bar and slowly make a full circle until I see what I came for. Nine months I have been waiting for this and the time is finally here.
He clocks me and scrambles off his stool. Walking slowly towards him, he rights himself and holds his head high. Motherfucker.
“My old friend,” he grins, dirtily, “How did you find me?” he asks.
“I listened to the whispers, they’re always talking when you pay them.”
I know why I am here.
He knows why I am here.
Time to get this over with.
“One last drink before we leave?” he asks, watching what I’m showing him when I open my jacket to show him I’m not fucking around.
“I’ll take that as a no,” he mutters, walking out in front of me.
The hour is late and I push my gun into his back, forcing him to walk towards my van.
“Open the door,” I tell him, when get to it.
I nudge the gun deeper into his back and he does as he’s told. When he opens the door, he bulks back into me.
“You…You killed her?” he
stammers.
“No shit, Tom. What did you expect? You should’ve heard her crying out for you to save her. Don’t worry, she was only in pain for as long as Cammie was, although I hurt her a lot worse than you did to my friend.”
He doesn’t see it coming and he slumps into the back of the van when I swing the butt of my gun onto his head.
The drive to the embankment isn’t far and after three smokes, he begins to come around.
I turn in my seat to look in the back.
“I should have known Drake would come back from the grave to get me,” he groans, tenderly touching his head where I hit him.
“You always underestimated him, you should’ve left him alone. You signed your own death certificate when you went after Marg, then to send Sly Sammy to do in his wife, you must’ve known you were a dead man walking?”
I light another cigarette and inhale deeply. I’d heard on the grape vine that Tommy had found out about Drake paying Sly Sammy a visit after he was released from prison for payback for trying to get to Cammie while he was banged up. Drake only gave him a slap or two but that was enough for Tommy to get him on side when he began plotting against Drake.
“Unless, losing all that money, which makes my life very comfortable by the way, made you lose all sanity and you honestly thought you would walk away from this?”
“He had to pay and he did. I’ve watched all the coverage of that day on the news, he got himself killed and the cunt still tried taking me down with him, grassing me up.”
Drake wasn’t being a grass. He was sending me a message. He knew the police would come knocking on my door wanting the so called information I had on Tommy. I had none but Drake knew by them coming to me, I would know who was really behind their deaths when it would emerge Sly Sammy was the one who shot Cammie.
Drake never lived by the law and he hurt more people over the years than I could keep up with, but he was my friend, not one of those fake fuckers that smile to your face and then stab you in the back the second it’s turned. He was loyal to those he cared about and was one of a kind. Now he’s gone and a hole is left in mine and my family’s lives.
It’s time to make that hole a little less empty.
“Show time,” I grin and climb out of the van.
Making sure no one is around, I open the back door and point the gun at Tommy. Back in the day he could’ve easily overpowered me, but these days he is slower and too drunk half the time from what I’ve heard.
“Get out,” I tell him.
He does what I tell him and climbs out.
“What about Claudia?” he asks, turning to look back at her.
“Oh yeah, how could I forget that bitch,” I laugh.
“Pick her up, she’s you bird after all. Only right you should carry her to your grave. I thought I’d give one act of kindness and bury you together.”
“Fuck you, Stan.”
“Now now, there’s no need to be rude. I actually have a family who I need to get back to. I’m going to make this quick, I could’ve taken you to an unused warehouse and tortured the shit out of you before letting you die like I did with her,” I remind him.
He carries Claudia’s lifeless body across the abandoned field and under the bridge exactly where I want him.
“There ain’t no grave here,” he states.
“Spot on, Thomas,” I smirk, “Do you think I’d give you the curtesy of burying you?”
“You’ll get done for this, someone will find us floating and call it in…”
“While I find it sweet that you care for my freedom, I don’t give a shit if you’re found. It can’t be traced back to me, I have a water tight alibi. Didn’t you know? I’m getting drunk at my friends grave unable to handle his death. Marg is sitting with me, feeling the same pain I do.”
There is nothing he could say that will stop me from killing him tonight. In fact, I’m bored with this prick.
“See you around, Tom….or not,” I shrug and squeeze the trigger repeatedly until his body along with Claudia’s falls into the river with a loud splash.
The sun is rising on the horizon and the first rays of light shine over the marble white headstone set over Drake and Cammie’s grave.
As planned, Marg and William were already at the cemetery when I arrived not long ago.
“Thought you should know, he’s dead, Drake…both of them,” I add at the end, hoping wherever he is he can hear me.
A small hand lands on my shoulder and I pull Marg under my arm. Their deaths have hit her hard and most days she barely leaves the house. She recuperated from the attack but she will spend the rest of her life with a slight sag on the left side of her face from where Tommy broke her jaw.
The day Drake and Cammie were killed, she wouldn’t believe it. She was adamant Cammie would be back because she had to stir the soup. She has good and bad days, but the good days are rare.
“I miss them,” she cries, into her tissue.
“Me too.”
“Hey, what you doing? You can’t be here, the gate isn’t supposed to be opened till eight o’clock.”
Bingo. My alibi.
The grounds keeper comes towards us and softens when he sees how upset Marg is.
“I apologise, we’re leaving now anyway.” William tells him, making sure he gets a good eyeful of me stumbling and waving a whiskey bottle around.
I lean on William and make a show of him helping me out of the cemetery and until we are out sight.
“There’s nothing left but ghosts now, Stan. Look after your wife and little girl, life is precious,” Marg cries, pulling me in for a quick hug.
I leave them both at the gates and head home to my grieving wife. Being early, the roads are empty and I make it home in under an hour. All the years we have been together and she still puts up with me and my bullshit. She’s spent many nights alone when I was out searching for Tommy, she was too sad to fight me on it. Getting Tommy was as much for her as everyone else. She doesn’t understand why her friends were killed and I haven’t tried to enlighten her. I never meant for her to become a permanent fixture in my life, I wasn’t the man Drake was. When she fell pregnant something inside me popped and she became everything, yet I still couldn’t bring myself to be open with her of how I deal with life. She’s all I have now and I intend to keep her and my daughter safe and be the man they deserve.
Unlocking the door and punching in the alarm code before it blasts out, I assume she is asleep when the house is silent. She’s not, she’s curled up on the sofa and wide awake.
She doesn’t move as I approach her but she’s watching my every move. I bend and kiss her forehead before leaning back and sitting on the coffee table before her.
“We need to talk,” I say, quietly.
“Is it about the blood on your jacket?” she whispers, her voice thick from not speaking in a long while.
“Yes darling.”
She deserves to know the man she married, the father of her child and the man who shares her bed. I owe it to her to tell her who Cammie and Drake really were and why they were killed.
“I’m listening.”
I look down at my wedding band and hope to fuck I will still be wearing it after I finish.
“Get comfortable, it all started in 2002 when Drake first met Cammie…”
Perfectly Obsessed Page 31
