by Hazel Grace
Without thought, I step back, knocking into Marty’s frame, but he doesn’t wrap his arm around me to comfort me.
No, he wants me to see this. To know what they’re going to do to her.
Bishop reaches down to grab another arrow, dipping the tip into a small bucket before placing it in the fire. The arrow roars with flames as he lifts his weapon than his shoulder and elbow to aim.
“Bishop,” I cajole. “Wait, she—” He releases the arrow making a perfect home right next to Bianca’s ear.
“You missed,” Marty deadpans.
“No, I didn’t.” He rolls his massive shoulders. “Was saving the kill shot for you.” He flicks his attention to us. “Unless you changed your mind.”
I can’t move, listening to Bianca’s muffled panic and Bishop appearing as though he didn’t just send a fiery arrow into anyone’s direction.
These men are insane.
I mean, I knew that it’s just that I never saw the others to confirm that this was all real. This group called B723 is a band of assassins who take out who they feel righteous and still sleep at night.
“We gonna do this or no?” Bishop’s steel tone hits my chest, producing goosebumps to line my forearms and a violent shiver to hit my exterior, but I also wait for Marty’s answer.
“Take five,” he finally replies. “I need to have a one on one with my girl.”
Stormi doesn’t turn to look at me, more than likely too shocked to do anything on her own. Bishop doesn’t look surprised at my pausing Bianca’s demise but still sends a glare in my direction for wasting his time. I wish he’d fucking use half his brain and chilled out for a second. I’m aware he gives two flying fucks what people think about him, and that’s great, but Stormi doesn’t need to see this shit.
We’re ending things tonight.
Bianca claims to know nothing about who hired them, stating that Hollis approached her about what she would gain and how much she’d make off murdering Reagan.
Five grand and a kilo of coke, that’s all my sister’s worth these days.
Everyone after this will be dead except the men or women who put the hit out on my sister. And beginning from square one again is more frustrating than Stormi giving me her opinion about—in so many words—how much of a villain I am.
Round and round, my head has been spinning about what to do, how to end all of this, what am I going to do next because all my leads are gone. I’m not going to sit around and wait for another wave of assholes to swing by in their SUVs and try for round three. I also can’t keep Reagan in Italy forever.
“Stormi,” I convey, rounding her body so that I can block out both Bishop and Bianca from her vision. “I’m not begin to ask you why you’re out here, but I need you to go back.”
“Alone?” Her tone is small and almost child-like, making me want to drop everything in my hands to wrap them around her.
Nope.
Not in front of Bishop and because I need some of my balls back.
“Can you find it, the house?” She stares at me for a split second before bowing her head. There’s no use in denying that I’m going to do unimaginable things to my captive. I can see Stormi’s brain moving a mile a minute at this point. “Alright, go ahead then.”
She opens her mouth before promptly closing it, but I already know what’s going to leave it. I don’t know why she bothers to ask, we’ve been there, done that.
“What is it?” I press. “You want to know if I’m going to hurt her. Kill her. The answer is both. I told you she wasn’t anything to me. Now she’s worthless.”
“You didn’t get any information out of her?”
“No.” She averts her eyes from me. “And you don’t want me to take her out.” Those blues flick back to mine. “Isn’t that right?”
“I’m not going to answer those sort of questions, I’m not God.”
She’ll never understand—ever.
If she believes a cop or a special agent who has a terrorist in his or her midst is going to lay out lollipops and ask nicely to obtain intel, she’s more sheltered than I thought she was.
“You do know I took care of Hollis, right?”
“I figured,” she mutters.
I inch closer to her, the need to spill all of my so-called sins pricking at the back of my neck for some reason.
Maybe I need her to tell me she doesn’t want me to make this all easier. That she can’t stand the sight of me and hasn’t thought about me at all in the last forty-eight hours.
All of this—it shouldn’t matter.
I could torture my own damn self for letting me get this deep. I knew that from the first moment I saw her something was different and off-kilter.
The axis of my own world got knocked off, and I need it back on.
I need me to be me again.
My role is not only important to my country but my family—Reagan and B723. I’m not going to abandon it.
“I did it for you,” I convey. “I did it because he fucking touched you and said fucked up shit about what he still wanted to do. I saw the look in your eyes when I asked, so I executed him. And I’d do it again to anyone who dared fuck with you. Do you understand me?”
She bobs her head in, I think, acknowledgment.
“I need you to go now.” The woman still doesn’t move, testing my patience and the inner beast inside that wants to snap and bark at her to dip out. “What else do you want from me?”
“Nothing,” she deadpans off a weak whisper. “You...don’t have to do things like that for me.”
“Do you want me to spare her life, Stormi?”
What the fuck?
Yo, I’m really starting to lose my shit.
“Did she seem remorseful at all?” My brows clench, who cares?
I shrug. “I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention. I’ve been off my game lately.”
Annoyingly so, but it’s true.
Stormi has been on my mind twenty-four, seven, and every time I glimpse at Bianca, I’m reminded of the night in my living room. The look of betrayal that Stormi sent my way. The way she screamed at me to leave her room. Memories of all the things I’ve done to this woman crash and collide into one giant ball of regret. I rocked this girl’s world, and my dick wasn’t the main attraction or cause.
“Did she at least apologize?”
“Why does it matter?” I snap. “Go home, Stormi. I got shit to do.”
Pivoting on my heels, I attempt to ignore she’s here. If she wants to stay and watch me use Bianca as target practice, so be it. I’ve already told her to go multiple times.
“I was just trying to answer your question,” she chides at my back. “If she didn’t say sorry or appear sorry that she tried to take your sister’s life, then go ahead. Give her what you think she deserves if it’ll make you—” I spin around.
“Nothing is going to make me feel better.”
And that’s the realest thing I’ve ever told her. Nothing but her.
“You’re looking for my permission. You don’t want me to hate you.”
“I don’t care if you hate me.”
Lies.
She scoffs at my response, but I’m grounded to my spot, and I’m not going to budge from what I just said. I’ve already laid out enough of my feelings, I’m not doing it anymore.
“Well...I don’t,” she replies, reclaiming her position in front of me. “I don’t hate you, Marty. I wish I did, though. You’ve made this complicated.”
“You’ve made this complicated,” I counter back like a fucking child before I jerk my head. “Go on home.”
“Look at me,” she orders before raising her chin. “This isn’t me. I don’t make these kinds of decisions. But with no evidence, justice won’t be served. It’s your word against hers and letting Bianca go...would probably be hard for you.” I open my mouth, but she raises her hand to stop me. “Take care of your family. Who knows...maybe I’d kill for mine too if I had one.”
“I gotta go.” Bishop bru
shes by me, breaking the moment as the screen from his cell phone lights up his hardened features.
“What’s up?” I call out after him breaching through the woods behind Stormi. “We’re about to—”
“I’ll buzz you later,” is all he says back as he sprints through the darkness and disappears. He could’ve taken Stormi back to the house with him the douchebag.
“Fuck,” I mutter, dropping everything that I’m holding to the ground. I swear to God each time Stormi shows up, she fucks up something I’m doing.
“Will you walk me home?” I steer my attention back to the blonde turned blue-haired in front of me, and she bats her eyelashes innocently—my ass.
She knows how to play me. I don’t care how naive or guiltless she was before, Stormi has mastered the art of knowing how to make me kneel at her feet and stop what the fuck I’m doing.
“Go south,” I transmit before the worry of her going the wrong way and truly getting lost enters my brain.
My hands transform into fists at my being incapable of telling her to go fuck off somewhere. It’d save me a lot of money and time to just let nature run its course and claim her if it so well pleased.
Stormi does exactly what I instruct her to do, marching to where Bishop just disappeared and hitting the green brush. I bite my tongue to keep from calling out to her.
She’ll be fine, it’s like a human compass, she has a sense of direction.
I think.
Flaring my nostrils, I tell Bishop’s dog to stay, and I move, stalking after her to make sure she makes it to the backdoor of my cabin. For the most part, she does fine until she strays to the left, and I scare the shit out of her to keep moving forward.
When we make it past the bunker and through the backyard, I do what I said I was going to and drop her ass by the backdoor. I then notice that Bishop’s truck is gone when Mills busts outside like a concerned mother after her child has been brought home.
“Get the fuck back in the house,” I bark out. “You dumb ass.”
Mills scans Stormi’s body, hopefully looking for marks, but my possessive ass slaps him in the back of the head to follow my order.
“I said five minutes,” Mills scolds her, disregarding me altogether.
“I heard a dog,” she replies back. “And I was—”
He crosses his arms along his chest. “You were what? You about gave me and Em a fucking heart attack, Cin. Geezus Christ, dude, I’m too young for this shit.”
Stormi’s hand finds his forearm, and she steps closer to him, chin raised to meet his face.
I don’t get their connection, but it’s fucking there–right in front of my face, and I hate it. I loathe how she’s always felt so comfortable with him and that he let her. That he didn’t follow my lead, but maybe it’s because he was the lesser of the two idiots between us. I truly believe he thought her innocent the whole time while I was too blind to see anything but what I wanted.
“I’m so sorry,” she vouches softly. “I didn’t mean to scare you, honestly.” Mills blows out a harsh tsk from his lips, and I allow them thirty more seconds before he gets another blow to the head.
“Alright,” I digress, yanking Mills back by his bicep. “Last warning, dipshit. How the hell you’re part of B723 is beyond my ass if you can’t watch a woman for Christ sakes.”
Mills peers over at me. “You turn her down when she looks at you like she does.” He turns on his heels. “You dick.”
Wow, shots fired.
On his own, he goes back inside, followed by hollers to Em about how I found her and shit.
“You done causing trouble for one night?” I prod, gaining the biggest pain in my ass’s attention. She hits me with an exasperated look, clearly unaffected at how everyone but Bishop gave a shit.
Apparently, she’s not only my issue but has become everyone else’s. She gained everyone’s heart or headspace, making us all a bundle of nerves when we think something happened to her.
She’d be a first.
“Again,” she replies. “I heard a dog.”
“So animal noises are how to prod you out to a possibly dangerous situation?” I look heavenward at the glimmering sky of stars. “If I would’ve known that I wouldn’t have busted into your house the way I did.”
“Why not?” she presses. “You like making a scene.”
I blow out a harsh exhale. “No, I don’t.”
“Really, because you’ve gone at it with Mills twice, Bishop once, I’m still waiting on you and Emmy to argue about me and—”
“Point made, sweetheart.”
“Marty.”
“Mhm?”
Out of my peripheral, I see her step closer to me. “Do you have to go back?”
“Yes.” I don’t bother moving my staring at the stars. If I do, I’ll lose out to what I’m supposed to be doing tonight.
“Okay,” she deadpans. That has me glancing back down at her.
The look of acceptance dawns her features, and she touches my chest, peering up at me like she used to before everything went down with Bianca.
She tilts herself on her tiptoes and kisses my cheek gently, settling herself back to her full height but doesn’t erase any space between us.
“What do you want from me, Stormi?”
“Nothing,” she replies. “When you’re done...I’ll make you something to eat.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know...” She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. “Have you eaten today?” Sort of, Mills brought me a sandwich earlier, but my stomach begins to gurgle at the mention of food all of a sudden.
Except I feel as though this sweetness that she’s displaying is a load of bullshit.
“And if I have?” My eyes narrow in on her, but she doesn’t falter or stray away. In fact, she hits me head-on with that innocent act.
“Then...okay.” She lifts her shoulders. “I was just trying to be—” My hands firmly grip her biceps, and I guide her backward until her back hits the wood siding of the cabin.
“Listen here, sweetheart,” I growl, lowering my head inches from her face. “This kindness crap isn’t going to make me stop. It isn’t going to make me change my mind. You hate what I do, I got it. However, I’m not going to change for anyone. Got me?”
“I wasn’t—” My hand slams into the siding next to her ear in frustration because I’m having conflicted feelings about if she should have a say.
If I should just go inside and watch her make me something in my kitchen while I fucking fantasize about shit, that’ll never happen. She makes me want to shift plans that’ll fit her morals, and that’s not who I am. It’s not what I do.
“You make everything hard, Stormi,” I carp. “Everything. Stop staring at me like I’m going to revision shit that meets your standards. I’m not your villain that turns into the prince. Mills calls you Cinderella, I’m not Prince Whomever-The-Fuck. You can’t mold me into something you—”
“I’m not molding you, asshole,” she argues. “I was trying to be nice.”
“I don’t want you to be nice to me.”
“Well, too fucking bad, that’s who I am.”
“And since when do you swear so much?”
“Since I decided that I wasn’t going to be anyone’s bitch anymore,” she upbraids before her small hands locate my chest, giving it a shove. It doesn’t do shit but make me loom closer.
“You were never anyone’s bitch, baby,” I mutter, inhaling my shampoo. I bought her some, it smelled like flowers that I thought she’d like. However, discovering her wanting to lather herself in my shit has my cock responding to the thought.
“Not anymore,” she answers. “And if you’re not hungry, so be it.”
“I”m going to go kill that bitch now," I claim. “And then that’s it. We’ll be back to avoiding each other.”
“If that’s what you want.”
“It’s what I know.”
“Fine. Go butcher that woman and come back to see how I respond.” My bo
dy presses hers deeper into the treated wood, showing her exactly how I’m reciprocating.
“See you later then, sweetheart.” I move, forcing myself to pry away from her and back towards the blackness to where I belong.
Stormi is too bright.
I’m too fucked up.
She thinks she placed something in my head that’s not going to get rid of Bianca, but she’s so fucking wrong it’s not even funny. I’ve been waiting to get my hands on that bitch for weeks.
“I’ll be waiting,” Stormi calls out behind me.
No, you won’t.
You’ll think about it.
You’ll be disgusted by it.
You’ll never be able to accept that taking out the bad only fuels the shit I’ve gone through.
He doesn’t think I’m going to wait for him.
But I do.
I wait because I’m beginning to understand that the love of a family member—your blood—is a powerful entity. Reagan and Marty are no doubt close, so he’d go through all of this to protect her.
I guess my own selfishness blocked how much this may be stressing him out. I can hardly relate, not having any siblings of my own or a parent that actually cares, but when I think of someone hurting Marty, a surge of violence courses through me.
It’s new and frightening, a different side of me that is starting to emerge from the depths of somewhere.
I’m aware that I’m capable of stabbing someone, but that was because my own life was at risk, and Marty deserved it.
But I barely felt guilty about it.
Those righteous ethics I’ve been holding onto I don’t know if they’re becoming blurred or disconnected, but it’s confusing.
Nevertheless, my feelings for Marty are the only clear thing that sticks out pure and true.
For two hours and twelve minutes, I’ve been sitting on my bed waiting for the wood that makes up the staircase to protest at Marty’s weight. They’d be easier to hear now that Emmy and Mills have stopped talking and teasing each other downstairs, which makes me believe both of them have fallen asleep or left.
