Dark Protector

by Celia Aaron

  Nate’s voice barely made it to my ears. “Even a dumbass like you is smart enough to know I don’t tell Conrad shit. You took his girl. You’ll pay the price. Why is it that every other motherfucker in this city knows not to even look at Con the wrong way, but you go and take a big shit right on his doorstep? What made you think that was a good idea?”

  “You want me to kill her? Just keep talking.”

  Nate laughed. “Be as butthurt as you want. Just like your mom. No skin off my back.”

  The one working streetlight in the alley would be enough of a backlight to show Berty right where I was if he happened to look up. Shit. No time to do anything about it. I dropped to my knees and crawled between the scraggly bushes in front of the broken window, careful to avoid throwing a shadow on the glass.

  “I said I’d let her go. So why don’t you two fuck off out of here and let me walk?” Desperation tinged Berty’s words. A low whimper told me that Charlie was still alive—terrified, but alive.

  My eyes adjusted to the dark basement. Light filtered in through the window, but not enough to see much. The glow from the door at the top of the stairs gave me a glimpse of a leg tied to a chair. Charlie. She sat toward the back of the room. I couldn’t see Berty, but his presence oozed around me like an oil slick on water.

  Nate kept talking, one trait I could count on from him. “If we let you go, how long before you go get what’s left of your pissant soldiers and come after us?”

  “I won’t!” Berty’s voice came from deeper in the basement. Inky black.

  “Look, man, just because I’m good looking doesn’t mean I’m dumb.”

  I closed my eyes and slid the barrel of my 9 mm through the broken pane. A scuffling noise in the dark funneled into my ears. Berty was pacing. I adjusted the gun up and to the right.

  “If this is how it’s going to be, I may as well go ahead and waste this bitch.” The clicking sound of a shaking gun being raised. He’d stopped a few paces behind Charlie, deep in the shadow of the basement.

  Eyes still closed, I adjusted my aim slightly to the right.

  Nate whistled. “I wouldn’t do that, Berty. Conrad wouldn’t appreciate it. He’d kill you slow. It’d last for weeks.”

  “Conrad.” Berty’s voice changed, the tremble growing. “Why are you the one talking? Where the fuck is he?” His fear rose, and the clicking intensified.

  I angled the barrel a few centimeters up, my finger on the trigger. I could imagine his hand shaking, his stance, the sweat running down his temple and dripping from the scar at his jaw. The barrel of his gun pointed at the side of Charlie’s head.

  “Conrad!” Berty’s yell was punctuated by the shot from my 9 mm.

  He fired at the same time, the shot thunking into the cinderblock wall. Then the thud of his body hitting the floor, Charlie’s scream, and Nate’s footsteps pounding down the stairs. I jumped to my feet and dashed back into the house and down into the basement.

  “Nate?” I asked the darkness.

  “Yeah, I got the grease bag’s gun. He’s alive. Barely. Want me to finish him?”

  I knelt in front of Charlie and pulled out my knife. With quick cuts, I freed her bonds. Her body shook so violently I had trouble getting my arms around her to lift her from the chair. She struck out at me, her hands flailing against my face and chest.

  “Charlie! You’re safe.” I crushed her to me. “Shhh. You’re safe. I swear.”

  She quieted except for the sobs that worked their way up her throat.

  “Con! What are we going to do with him?”

  Everything in me wanted to stomp Berty’s brain into the concrete floor. But I hadn’t been ordered to do it. Vince had left him alive for a reason. And questioning command wasn’t part of my job description. I got paid to kill. If I didn’t get paid, I didn’t do shit. The hitman’s code.

  Sirens started up in the distance. Someone in the neighborhood had finally worked up the nerve to dial 911.

  “Leave him.” The words tasted like shit in my mouth.

  “What?” The disbelief in Nate’s voice chafed.

  “If he bleeds out, good. If he doesn’t, I’m sure I’ll be coming for him soon.” I headed to the stairs. “The new boss won’t want him around any more than the old boss did, and there’s no blood tie to save him this time.”

  “Fuck.” A fleshy thunk followed by a pained groan sounded from the dark, then Nate followed me up the stairs. “I love kicking a man when he’s down.”

  I would deal with Berty later. My most pressing concern was cradled in my arms. When I reached the top of the stairs, I realized her shirt had been cut up the middle, her breasts exposed. Red rage coated every cell in my body, and I almost turned back toward the stairs to end the piece of shit in the basement.

  Nate glanced at Charlie and shook his head. “We have to jet, man. Five-O.”

  He was right. We hurried out the back door and into the alley. He cranked up my car as I sat in the back with Charlie. Her eyes were clenched shut, and tears ran down her porcelain cheeks.

  We pulled away, tires squealing as Nate raced from the alley. The nightmare of Lerner Street faded behind us. If Berty survived, there would be hell to pay. If Berty died, there would be hell to pay. I only hoped I’d made the right decision to leave him alive. The uneasy pit in my stomach told me I hadn’t.

  5

  Charlie

  The killer held me close as the car sped through the slick city streets. My face ached, and I could still taste the tang of blood on my tongue. The shaking didn’t stop, my body revolting against everything that had happened over the past few hours. Hours that felt like days. Pain that seared into my soul, and a fear I didn’t know if I could recover from.

  “She alive?” The driver took a hard left.

  “Yeah.” The killer ran his hands along my back and sides before pulling me away from him. His eyes surveyed my ripped shirt, then my face. “She’s beat up, but she’ll live.” He leaned up, his hard chest pressing into my shuddering frame, and shook off his suit jacket. “Here.” The killer wrapped it around me. Warm from his body heat, it was a balm on my skin.

  The scent of gun oil, some sort of aftershave, and man enveloped me as he pulled me back into his arms. I didn’t miss the glint of metal from the gun in his shoulder holster.

  “You’re going to be all right.” He tucked my head under his chin.

  I couldn’t speak. The memory of Berty cutting my shirt open replayed in my mind. Revulsion froze me, trapped me back inside that dark basement with the men who wanted to hurt me.

  “If you taste half as good as you look.” Berty licked his lips and slid the knife up the fabric of my shirt.

  I dug my nails into my palms, the pain reminding me that I wasn’t bound anymore. Not by rope, anyway. The killer’s encircling arms held me fast, but didn’t inspire terror the way Berty had. I stifled a sob that tried to explode from my chest.

  “Charlie, you’re safe.” He smoothed his wide palm up and down my back. “I won’t let anyone hurt you. I swear.” His raspy voice wrapped around me, pulled me deeper into him.

  My cheek rested against his chest, the steady thump of his heart filling my left ear. How many hearts had he stopped tonight?

  My eyes adjusted to the gloom and intermittent flash of street lights. Dark red bloomed across his blue button-down, spreading from his shoulder.

  “You’re bleeding.”

  “I’m fine. Bullet went straight through.”

  Nate laughed. “Got tagged by that fucking amateur. You’re off your game, man.”

  The killer shifted, pressing his shoulders back into the seat but didn’t relax his grip on me.

  “Let me go.” The words came out in a weak voice that I didn’t recognize. One that I thought I’d gotten rid of years before.

  “I can’t. Not yet.” His hand kept stroking my back in smooth movements.

  A strange calm fell over me, though my body still trembled. This man, the one who held me so close, also held
my destiny in his hands. I couldn’t escape him. His built frame and his guns told me as much. If he wanted me dead, I would stop breathing. No escape.

  “Charlie.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Look at me.”

  A single tear rolled down my cheek as I craned my head to stare in his eyes. Dark brows and thick lashes framed sapphire blue irises. Stubble dotted the strong line of his jaw, and everything in his bearing felt tense, raw.

  He brought his palm to my cheek. I flinched, but he only used the pad of his thumb to wipe my tear away. “I won’t hurt you. You’re safer with me than anywhere else.”

  “Please just let me go.” I didn’t want to be here, surrounded by violent men. I wanted my bed, my boring TV shows, and my lonely days spent creating the illusion of love and affection from the stems of roses and baby’s breath.

  His gaze ran from my hair to my chin, and then down to the collar of his jacket at my throat, as if he were memorizing every curve and line of my face. “I can’t. Not until this mess is sorted out.”

  Another tear rolled from my eye. He caught it and ran a light fingertip over the cut along the bridge of my nose. I winced.

  “It’s not broken.” His jaw clenched tight. “Did they…did they hurt you anywhere else?”

  I knew what he was asking. “They were going to, but—” The words caught in my throat, and I shook my head in the negative. A ghost with bloody fists and hatred in his eyes pushed to the forefront of my mind. He burst through the door as I cowered inside. Crimson bloomed from the wound in his chest, and he faded back into the fog of memories. “I just want to go home.”

  “Lady, if Conrad thinks you’re better off with him, then you are.” The driver flipped through the radio presets and settled on an R&B station. “In case you missed it, some pretty heavy types seem to think you’re his main squeeze. Better for you to keep close to the guys with the guns than be out in the world just ready for the plucking.”

  “Why?”

  Nate sighed. “I just told you—”

  “No.” I put more force into my words. “Why would they think I was with you?” I studied the killer’s—Conrad’s—eyes, but they remained inscrutable, somehow dark despite their light hue.

  “It doesn’t matter.” He didn’t look away, just studied me as if he were trying to discover me, the real me I kept hidden from the world. The one that had been kicked enough to know that the best way to stay alive was to keep your head down.

  “It matters to me.” Defiance—a trait I thought I’d lost—cropped up in my voice.

  He sighed, and the sound carried a weariness that mirrored the bone deep exhaustion that settled inside me. My adrenaline had dried up, and I felt as if I could sleep for days. Still, he didn’t offer an explanation, just stared at me with those otherworldly eyes.

  Fatigue washed over me like a tidal wave, and I slumped against him. He slid his arms around me again, wrapping me in warm iron bands.

  He’d saved me from Berty only to lock me up in a different sort of prison. I wasn’t free, but for some reason, I believed him when he said he wouldn’t hurt me. I closed my eyes and breathed him in. For the moment, I was safe in the arms of a killer.

  6

  Conrad

  Charlie rested against me, her relaxed breaths calming the pit of rage that smoldered inside me. She smelled like something from her flower shop, light and sweet. Not even what happened in that shithole basement could tarnish her.

  Berty had given her two shiners and almost broken her nose. But he hadn’t done anything else, didn’t have the chance. I owed Nate for this. Big-time.

  Her terrified scream echoed in my mind. Guilt tried to surface, the emotion so foreign that it was almost unrecognizable. How many men had I killed? I’d lost count a long time ago. Remorse never reared its ugly head, no matter how many fathers, sons, and brothers I brought to a bloody end. But Charlie was different. She was my collateral damage, a victim of the death and destruction that always followed in my wake. Her suffering shook me, stripped me down to the bare elements and mocked the shattered remnants of my soul.

  She trembled again, a violent wracking shudder. I pressed my lips to her hair and held her, wishing I could take her dark memories away and simply add them to my collection. Whatever Berty had inflicted would be a tiny chip in the corner of my room full of bloody trophies.

  “Where to, man? What are you going to do with her?” Nate gunned it past darkened businesses and brick walls covered with graffiti.

  I couldn’t take her to the spot above Carnie’s Bar where I tended to lay low. It was a fucking dump, the place where I washed the blood off my hands and drank the kills away. “My place in Old City.”

  “No shit? I knew you had a nice place hidden away somewhere, but you never invited me to the housewarming.” Nate got onto the freeway, putting much needed distance between us and the bloodbath on Lerner. We passed a sand truck trying to get ahead of the black ice that streaked across the pavement.

  “Yeah, I’ll need you to forget the address once this is all over.”

  Nate glared at me in the rear view, half his face in shadow. He’d been a low-level enforcer for Berty’s dad, Serge Genoa. Then Vince had come along with a better offer. On my advice, Nate took the new deal. He’d been employed by the new boss for months before the official power exchange—my bullet in the old boss’s head—occurred.

  Nate and I came from the same set of broken down blocks in North Philly. We’d grown up in the shadow of the Genoa family, our fathers working for Berty’s father until Nate’s died from cirrhosis and mine from a bullet. Then we’d stepped into their shoes, no questions asked. Nate and I were cut from the same cloth. The difference? He took a life when he had to. Killing was my religion.

  “Head to Washington Square.”

  “You fucking kidding me?” Nate drummed on the steering wheel. “That’s bullshit, man. I’ve been living in Trish’s fucking guest room ever since Ma kicked me out, and you got a place on Washington Square?”

  I would usually bust his balls about his expensive shoes, whores, and booze habits, but not now. Not when Charlie was nestled in my arms. God, she’d been beaten, nearly raped, and I was the monster who was grateful for the chance to hold her after it all.

  “Hey.” Nate’s tone turned more serious. “What are we going to do if Berty makes it?”

  I glanced down at Charlie. “We’ll deal with it.”

  “But Vi—”

  “No more names.” I shook my head at his reflection in the rear view. The less Charlie knew, the safer she’d be.

  He threw a hand up, then slammed it back down on the steering wheel. “Fine, what do you think the boss will do?”

  “He’ll give the order on Berty, and I’ll take care of it.”

  The brighter lights of Old Town appeared, the high-rise condos for the wealthy millennials and the older brick homes that tended to stay with certain families. I’d capitalized on one of my hits about five years prior and bought the entire top floor of a ten-story colonial building on Washington Square. My victim’s loss of life was my gain.

  Nate still wasn’t satisfied. “Okay, sure, but why didn’t he already give the order?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not my job to—”

  “Question the boss.” He finished the sentence for me with an additional note of sarcasm.

  “I’m glad I was finally able to teach you something.” Five years younger than me, Nate still tried to buck the system. He didn’t understand that the system was all guys like us had. Without men like the Genoas or Vince—ones with money, a legitimate business front, and a seedy underbelly that thrived on protection money and the sale of drugs and prostitutes—Nate and I were useless. We were loaded guns with no one to pull the triggers.

  “Fucker.” He took the downtown exit and maneuvered past the Liberty Bell and the other tourist spots, all deserted in the icy night.

  “I just want to go home,” Charlie murmured.

  I ran a hand throu
gh her soft hair, the brown strands falling between my fingers. She had to stay close until the shakeup was over, until Vince had consolidated power and no one else—other than the usual suspects—was out for my blood.

  I only hoped I’d be able to let her go once it was all over.

  7

  Charlie

  We rode an elevator to the top floor of an apartment building. Conrad kept his arm wrapped around my waist. His body heat seeped into me, warming away the chill left over from the frigid basement. I clutched his jacket tighter around me as the elevator dinged and opened into a wide living space.

  “Way to hold out on me, asshole.” Nate walked out first, his head on a swivel. “Just look at all this nice shit.”

  Conrad walked me forward. The elevator closed behind us, and he hit a light switch. The room brightened, revealing a comfortable living room. Leather sofas, a plush rug, and a big screen TV sat front and center. One wall consisted of six wide windows with latticed panes of glass that looked out on the park. To the right, a large marble island presided over the kitchen, the appliances stainless steel and gleaming in the soft light. My tiny apartment on the edge of Mantua was a moldy closet compared to this place.

  Seeing this home, hearing the elevator close behind me—it snapped me out of my shock. I needed to get away. Not to go to the cops, but to close up my shop and get the hell out of town. The thought of leaving everything I’d built stung, but it wouldn’t be the first time I’d started all over. I could handle it.

  “Let’s get you cleaned up.” Conrad walked me past the living area, his strong arm steering me toward a darkened door.

  Nate plopped down onto one of the couches and tucked his hands behind his head. “Fuck Trish’s guest room. I’m staying here.”

  “No, you’re not.” Conrad’s low voice rumbled across the room. “We’ll discuss this later.”

  “Okay. Yeah. Later. You got Skine-max?” He flipped the TV on as Conrad led me through a door into a wide bedroom.