Grin

by Keane, Stuart

  This time, it was different.

  This time, it was pre-empted murder, an assassination attempt, a violation of her personal space – again – and a defiant show of retaliation from a man who was running scared from Dani, the one person who could bring his empire to the ground.

  It changed the game.

  This time, it was different.

  And Dani now felt a difference, apathetic to her emotions and a moral compass. This man, the man responsible for bringing her life crashing to the ground, had to pay. No longer would she feel guilty for taking their lives, no longer would she doubt the violent actions of her vigilante justice.

  No longer would she hesitate.

  No longer would she fear Rhodes and his army. After all, she had nothing to lose because of him; he’d taken everything from her.

  At that moment, her path became clear, a stark clarity laid her destiny before her.

  Would she die? Maybe. Would she suffer? Most likely.

  Would she reap justice for her family? Totally.

  Would she get revenge on those who wronged her? Yes.

  Dani smiled, the muscles of her face contorting her grin into a macabre grimace, one born of desperation and anger, one etched with payback. The young girl felt her sanity slip, her grip on reality fall to the wayside, and she welcomed it, felt a freedom that she’d never experienced before. Everything suddenly seemed brighter, more colourful, a lot less terrifying.

  Teddy appeared in her mind’s eye, his chubby face crying, then exploding and rewinding, she saw his young brain and skull spray outwards like a firework, like a small stick of dynamite had gone off inside his cranium, then climb back into her brother’s reforming skull, like an exploding watermelon but in reverse. Dani saw the image repeat itself over and over and over.

  Several times.

  Dani gripped her temples, scratched and clawed at her skin, drawing blood, pulling hair from the roots. She screamed; her face aimed at the ceiling, her neck muscles coursing with hot, boiling blood. Her eyes widened and she felt a chuckle escape her lips, a small laugh signaling her loss of grip on reality. She closed her eyes, exhausted.

  She saw her mother’s frail body obliterated by buckshot meant for an animal, saw her father die at Bradley’s hand; his face caved in slowly and brutally by the man’s huge weight and realised she hadn’t actually seen this, but the image was so vivid and detailed and authentic, it seemed real. It knocked the wind from her rasping lungs, made her gasp and clutch her blood-soaked chest. Dani twitched and shuddered, but couldn’t shake the images from her fragile mind, couldn’t escape their macabre grasp and couldn’t push the horrific, gruesome thoughts away. She saw the grotesque murder for what it was – a massacre.

  Something clicked in Dani.

  Something evil, something sinister, she felt the darkness coiling around her heart.

  She opened her eyes and her consciousness was lost, shoved deep down in a shadowy shell of a woman with nothing left, who had nothing to lose.

  A woman with one mission in life, one goal.

  Revenge.

  At any cost.

  Laughing, Dani walked out of the bathroom. She picked up a black bag from the closet and exited the flat, leaving a trail of blood and death and destruction.

  It’s time to end this.

  It’s time.

  PART THREE

  Vengeance

  SEVENTEEN

  “We haven’t heard from Sanchez?”

  Bradley ran a coarse hand through his hair and sighed, his weary eyes observing the picturesque scene before him. From his position on the balcony, he could see across the vast, foggy London landscape. The buildings stretched to the sky like dying fingers grasping at a lease for life. Off to the left, the unmistakable shape of the London Eye sat silently in the early mist, its circular shape beautiful and somewhat eerie in the morning haze.

  Andrews sipped a coffee beside him, his overgrown lips slurping on the rim of the cup, the noise shattering the chilled elegance of the silent morning. Bradley shook his head; London only fell silent for a short time in the morning, normally between five and six, before the commuters and workers came out in sentient droves. Relishing the silence was one of life’s little luxuries, one that was now lost on this morning. He shot a distasteful glance in his colleague’s direction. “Sanchez will call. The woman doesn’t stand a chance against him.”

  “You mean Dani?”

  “Yes…Dani.” Bradley narrowed his eyes and breathed in, the cool air caressing his lungs.

  Andrews chuckled. “It’s okay, you can say her name. Just because you didn’t kill her, just because you failed in your mission…”

  “Fuck you,” he spat.

  “No, fuck you,” Andrews retorted. “I’m not the stupid cunt who left a witness alive as part of a sick and demented game. I’m not the man who couldn’t finish off a teenage girl. Fuck me; you’re no better than Dennis.”

  Bradley said nothing. He deserved the abuse. Rhodes had hired him for a purpose and had given him the task because of his ruthless efficiency, a trait that appeared vacant during that part of the mission, one that now put their entire company in jeopardy. Bradley looked down on the empty streets of London and half expected to see Dani, the girl with the scars and stupid determination, looking back at him.

  He wondered how long it would take her to arrive.

  He knew she would. He remembered that spark, that electricity in those young, immature eyes, one that spoke of persistence and a can-do attitude. He remembered her goading, remembered his own hormonal throbbing at how it turned him on, how he resisted the urge to do anything about it, how he refused to choke the kid out mid-fuck, and watch her eyes bulging in her bloody face as he filled her tightness with his seed.

  He loved the feel of slick blood on his cock.

  He closed his eyes, quickly pushing the image from his mind.

  He steadied himself on the railing and breathed slowly. “She’s mine.”

  Andrews sipped his coffee again, swallowing deeply. “Huh?”

  Bradley cocked the Beretta in his hand and slid it into his holster. He breathed another lungful of frosty air and walked back into the tower. “When she gets here, I’m taking her down. This is my mess; I’m going to clean it up.”

  Andrews chuckled. “That’s if Sanchez doesn’t do the work for you.”

  *****

  Dani stared at the metal floor of the tube carriage, her eyes tracing the lines of the design, focusing her for the task ahead. She noticed smeared mud and droplets of water, an indication of the early morning weather, evidence of the daily commute, the beginning of a typical London morning. The carriage clacked as they shot through another of London’s many dark tunnels, the metal canister rocking sideways, jostling Dani in her seat.

  She tugged at the pull cords that hung from the hood on her jacket, tightening them, hiding her face beneath the black material. From her experience, tube passengers kept themselves to themselves, burying their one-track minds in books and phones and newspapers. No one made eye contact anymore, and no one started conversation.

  The girl looked up and spotted two men, seats apart from each other, both silent. They wore cheap suits and both rustled a crinkled copy of Metro in their hands. Rookies, up and comers. The richer types usually wore long, luxury coats over their expensive suits, protecting their investment of a wardrobe from the harsh elements, a folded, pink Financial Times tucked beneath their moneymaking arm. They usually carried a leather briefcase and merged into the crowd as one, slipping between people with no effort and years of experience. You could spot them a mile away.

  These guys? They would push and shove people away, fight against the swelling of the London foot traffic. They didn’t have a briefcase because they spent their starting salary on their commute and/or a local abode, if they didn’t already fund an unwanted family or excessive lifestyle born from such a vocation. Maybe some of them funded each of those things, but they were easy to spot, the routine of
such a commute something they were yet to learn.

  As if to confirm her point, the closest man knocked his lunchbox to the floor as he reached for his battered umbrella. The chaos that resulted from such an action saw him drop his newspaper, the umbrella clanged and rolled as it toppled to the floor and the man stumbled as he reached for the falling object all too late. It concluded with him on his knees, checking the damage to this lunch, his hair unkempt from the cool air whistling through the open window in the doors beside him.

  Dani pulled her eyes away and gazed out of the window, the dark tunnels whirred by, occasionally interrupted by an empty station that was surplus to their route, a prelude to her destination. She glanced at the map above the window, one crudely marked with a red outline of a bulbous penis, and realised she was three stops away.

  Three more stops.

  She estimated fifteen more minutes.

  Her eyes dropped to the black bag between her legs, her mind counting the minutes off subconsciously, in time to the clacking of the carriage.

  Almost time.

  *****

  “I’m not scared of a fucking teenager,” Rhodes asserted, dropping an ice cube into a tumbler. He reached for a bottle of Jim Beam, unscrewed the lid, and poured two fingers into the glass. He sloshed the amber liquid around, the ice clinking against the sides, and turned back to his men. “The day I become scared of a fucking teenager is the day I give up this company and that ain’t fucking happening!”

  Bradley nodded, as did Andrews. Both stood on the other side of his desk, awaiting instruction. “I think we should double up on security, just in case,” Bradley uttered. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

  Rhodes laughed, one gargled with mucus from a residing cough. He hacked, spitting a wad of green phlegm into his trash can. “You’re serious, aren’t you? You think this broad can do some serious damage?”

  “I do, sir. She took out Corey and Alan. I wasn’t their biggest fan, not by a long shot, but she got the drop on them pretty easily. They were competent at their job, efficient, if slightly liable. It rings alarm bells.”

  “It’s not hard to outwit two drunk fucktards,” Rhodes spat. Andrews stepped forward but was silenced by his angry boss, who held an open hand up in mock apology. Andrews stepped back, his head lowered. Rhodes sipped at his drink, hissing as the burning liquid warmed his dry throat. “It’s not hard at all, but I suppose you have a point. Have we heard from Sanchez yet?”

  Both men shook their heads, neither speaking.

  “Hmmmm.” Rhodes sat in his chair. He placed the glass on the table and dialled a number from his phone. After several speakerphone rings, he hung up. He necked the remaining bourbon and sighed. “Right, man the gates. Make sure all entrances are secure and as for the front door, and the reception area downstairs, I want it sealed off. No one in, no one out. Got it?”

  Bradley nodded and left the room, going to work.

  “Andrews, I want you downstairs, at the front door, take two men with you. Get three of your best men and have them commandeer the lobby outside, and gets some teams between here and the lifts. Got it?”

  Andrews nodded.

  “I don’t think we’ll need it, but you never know.”

  *****

  Dani watched the street below, observed as people went about their business, their activities rendered silent by the double paned glass before her. A horn sounded somewhere in the distance and several cars of foreign origin silently crept by.

  The world going about its business.

  Her eyes flicked to the black tower before her.

  Rhodes Enterprises, a structure standing forty floors tall, protected and maintained by a security crew of thirty-six, stood bleak and outright on the immaculate concrete opposite. The shape of the monstrosity reminded her of a giant black lava lamp, the glass sparkling in the early morning sunlight. She almost expected the middle windows to light up and amuse passersby with blobs of wax in hot water. It didn’t, it just stood impassively, important and domineering above the businesses around it, they themselves shrouded in its shadow.

  A front, a fake, a dummy corporation that housed an orgy of prostitution, drugs, arms dealing and murder, all hidden behind documentation of a financial loans company. She imagined he had cops and auditors, accountants and all manners of menial workers in his pocket.

  What bullshit, Dani thought.

  She gently massaged the puffy facial scars with her fingers, stroking the tips along the corrupted, blemished flesh. In times of stress, she found the action soothed her, but also reminded her of her failures, of the obstacles she’d overcome in life.

  The tragedy that changed her scope on everything was crammed into the span of four-hundred or so days, but it felt a lot longer. She remembered laying in the hospital bed, wondering if she would ever be the same, if she would ever cherish the experience of a prom or a faithful boyfriend, a relationship or a marriage and parenthood, or even some resemblance of normalcy ever again.

  Dani held onto that hope for the entire duration of rehab, for an entire sixty-three days.

  She refused to look in a mirror, outright declined a look at her mutilated reflection for that period, the very thought of which threatened to push her over the edge and send her swirling into a mass depression. Therefore, she lived every day positively, the shred of lingering hope that her face would heal naturally, in line. She remembered how crucial it was that her severed tissue and muscle lined up, how they utilised the sutures to coax the separated flesh back together, like two sheets of material. The memory returned of how important those first few days were in order to maintain her visage, to reduce the scarring and ensure her facial functions returned to normal.

  The many nurses and doctors, all of whom blurred into one on the back of heavy medication and advanced surgical procedures, identity-covering masks and outfits, were her rock, the one thing keeping her going.

  In the final days, she faced her fear head on, chancing a shot at redemption, facing her worst thoughts in a hope to get on with her life. She dreamed of moving on, relocating, finding a job, possibly finishing school and making something of her life, to do her family proud.

  Of course, at that point, she didn’t realise just how the events had transpired, how her father was the reason for her life crumbling to the ground before it started.

  When she set eyes on her scarred face, she knew her life would never be the same.

  Not one iota of her life would return to normal.

  Dani felt a surge, a rush of hot blood to the brain. Her life came crashing down around her at that very moment, in that lavender scented hospital bed. In that moment, walls crashed around her, school vanished into the distance, one specked with blood, dead rotting bodies and terrifying fear and loss.

  She was no longer a normal teenager. Her dreams of a prom and a husband and a life, of an education and normalcy, were long gone, burnt to a crisp at the very sight of her mutilated, horrendous reflection.

  Dani didn’t cry.

  Dani didn’t feel anything.

  Up to that point, the only mystery that scared her was the unveiling of a report card or a duff Christmas present from an out-of-touch relative. The revelation of her visage was something wholly different, entirely horrendous.

  It was the moment she realised her life was over.

  Only after her discharge, weeks later, did she realise that DI Scott was such an important presence, a faded image on the cusp of her drug-induced state. After a conversation with a doctor, she discovered that the officer had stopped by three times a week, sometimes more, to see her during rehabilitation, to ensure she made it back to health. She remembered a genuine warmth emanating from the gesture, one lacking since no family members had come to see her, to check on her welfare. As for Scott, she always made it her mission to see him again, to thank him for his support, as anonymous and unrealised as it was.

  She never did.

  She closed her eyes and placed his crumpled business card on the
table beside her.

  She might still get that chance.

  But first, she had work to do.

  Dani opened her eyes and turned to the items on the hotel bed behind her. She gazed over the equipment positioned across the flowery duvet and closed her eyes again, memorising the arsenal at her disposal.

  A bulletproof vest, complete with underclothing, skintight. Two MK7 submachine guns, silenced and double-clipped. Two hundred rounds each. Two silenced Berettas with three clips each, containing 9mm parabellum bullets. A SPAS 12 shotgun with extendable stock and fifty shells. Three hand grenades. A bowie knife.

  Dani looked at the black bag, one that would allow easy access to all of the weapons, and smiled. She felt the tug of her scars.

  The woman turned back to the window and gazed across the street.

  They did this to you.

  To Mom.

  To Teddy.

  To Dad.

  They took your life away from you; they ruined your future and massacred your family. They destroyed you. Dani felt a salty tear rolling down her cheek and didn’t swat it away. She let it flow and swallowed when she realised something.

  Dani was no more.

  Dani used to be an innocent young girl with a bright future and a doting family.

  That girl died in her brother’s bedroom that night, she just held on too long, a passenger who missed their stop.

  You’ve been fighting and fighting. Now, the moment has arrived.

  Now, she was no one, an anonymous blotch on the landscape of life.

  She was vengeance.

  She was payback.

  Dani smiled, a darkness tempering her eyes, consuming her.

  You’re no longer Dani – you’re something else.

  You have a new name, one that will begin its reign of terror today.

  As the last shreds of sanity slivered away, leaving the hotel room and Dani’s consciousness for the final time, the woman cackled to herself.