by S T Branton
The sedan veered to the left, beams flashing across me, and I squeezed my eyes down to slits against the sudden glare. Over the squeal of the tires, I heard a muffled thump.
My heart leapt into my throat. Had Rocco been hit? It wouldn’t be the same as cutting him down on my own, but I was still perfectly willing to execute the wounded.
Vengeance was vengeance.
As for the witness in the car? They’d split as soon as they saw the gun. That’s how it worked in the movies.
Nearing the narrow intersection, I saw that the victim wasn’t Rocco after all. The idiot who had led the pack directly into harm’s way was the one to reap karma’s just rewards. His cohorts held him up, and he hobbled painfully, perched birdlike on one leg. All four of them caught sight of me and turned to look at their fearless leader.
Rocco brushed dust from a charcoal suit that was much nicer than the ones worn by his underlings. He sneered as the car backed up and roared between us. A cloud of dirty exhaust choked my vision, but I could still hear the boss’s voice, smooth and dripping with arrogance.
“Let it go,” he told his goons. “You take care of Vincent, you understand me? Bring him to the safehouse, and don’t you dare leave him. Now get out of here. I’ll handle the broad.”
Adrenaline pounded through my veins. Never in my wildest murder-dreams had I envisioned a one-on-one confrontation with the man I’d been preparing myself to face for five long years. I barely remembered who I was before Rocco Durant shit all over my life. And here he was, practically offering himself up like a sacrificial lamb.
The moment the smoke cleared, I was staring into the black eye of his gun. He smirked as he cocked the hammer.
“You made a bad mistake, little girl.”
Fuck that.
I drew my revolver faster than I’d ever done anything in my life. The shot went wide, but not that wide. Not enough to kill the bastard, but enough to make him miss. Ears ringing, I saw him curse. The familiar wash of approaching headlights illuminated his jacked-up face.
Then he was hauling ass again, suit jacket flapping. Never in my wildest fantasies had I imagined Rocco Durant rabbiting on me like that. I should have known, though. They were all the same: tough on the outside, nothing underneath.
Gritting my teeth, I gave chase again. These heels weren’t meant for running. My feet were starting to complain, but there was no way I could give up a chance like this. Besides, Rocco couldn’t last forever. He had aged poorly since my parents’ death, and he hadn’t been young to begin with. Sooner or later, he’d run out of steam.
“It’s a dead end, Rocco!” I yelled. Not a good idea. I needed all the breath I had if I wanted to keep running. Part of me wanted to rip my shoes off, but it would give him a few extra, valuable seconds, and going barefoot in this neighborhood was just asking for trouble. The last thing I needed was broken glass to the foot.
So, I kept plugging away, focusing on maintaining my considerable momentum. I hadn’t told a lie; it was a dead end. The crumbling brick wall loomed up ahead.
If this was some screwed-up game of chicken, Rocco Durant was going to lose, and badly.
He shot off to the right so fast I almost didn’t see his shadow disappearing into some secret passage. I skidded to a stop, cursing the air blue. The space where he’d squeezed himself through was barely wide enough for a guy his size to fit; I was almost impressed he could move so quickly.
I threw myself after him. The walls seemed to close in all at once, grimy and full of mildew. I didn’t risk looking anywhere other than forward, but I thought I saw pipes crossing over my head.
Where the hell were we? And where were we going?
There was one great benefit of having a single goal, so all-consuming that I couldn’t even dream of doing something else. I had a lot of time to think about it. So, I slipped into a familiar headspace as I ran after Rocco Durant down a slot carved between two buildings.
I was twenty-three again, brimming with rage and compressing a flood of angry tears down into a concentrated form of pure hatred. Making Rocco understand what he’d done was a lost cause. It wasn’t possible. He couldn’t grasp the anguish I felt when I was told the cops couldn’t and wouldn’t do anything about my parents’ murders.
While Rocco and his boys paid every corrupt officer in the borough to turn a blind eye, I funneled my family’s savings into lawyers’ fees. I had been willing to give anything to bring Rocco to justice. The insurance money. The house. The heirlooms I pawned all over the city.
Anything.
But nothing worked. There was no hard evidence, they said. Nothing beyond a reasonable doubt. My parents’ murders were done by a professional who didn’t leave a trace.
I was left broke and alone in a city that didn’t give a shit about me. So, I decided to take justice into my own hands. Back then, I didn’t know how bloody justice could be, but I learned. I adapted.
Now, I was more than ready to bring the hammer down.
Up ahead, Durant broke free of the crude alley, and I smelled an acrid tinge of saltwater. The docks. My instincts kicked into overdrive. Whatever his crazy plan was, I had to stop him from going through with it and getting away. I wouldn’t put it past the scumbag to jump straight in the water, and if he did that, I’d lose everything I’d spent the past half a decade trying to accomplish.
That wasn’t going to happen. My fingers found the curve of the revolver grip. I yanked it out of the holster. It was a long shot, but worth it if it landed. I took a moment, breathed, then squeezed the trigger.
The gun bucked, and the report left my ears ringing again. I saw Rocco Durant’s stride falter.
Yes!
He twisted around and fired back at me. A chunk flew out of the wall a few feet ahead of me. Close, but not close enough. I didn’t even flinch as I moved toward him. The hunt was everything, and I would not be dissuaded. If he killed me, I’d come back as a damn ghost and haunt the shit out of him for the rest of his life. That was how determined I was to make this awful prick pay for what he did. Was it more than he deserved?
Absolutely not. He deserved all that and more.
By the time I got down to the river, Durant was hobbling. His left pant leg wet with blood. The lights of the Brooklyn Bridge and the New York skyline lit him up from behind. I leveled the gun and shot again, hitting him square in the shoulder. He let out a harsh bark of pain—music to my ears.
Rocco Durant’s suffering had only just begun.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered. “My ankle. My damned ankle!”
He dropped to one knee as I approached, and then he fell, a few feet shy of the end of a pier. Grit and mud stained that expensive charcoal suit. He pushed toward the gray water with his good foot, until I came up and stepped on it, grinding the point of my heel on the bone.
He held up his hands. “All right! Shit, that hurts. For a chick, you sure got some balls, you know that?”
“Yeah, I know.” I flicked out the revolver’s chamber, spun it, and locked it in again. There was one bullet left, and I had a pretty good idea of where it should go. The space between Rocco Durant’s eyes looked like prime real estate to me.
I pointed the steel muzzle at his face.
“Listen.” He licked his lips nervously. Sweat beaded on his thick, wide brow. Even prone, he was huge, his chest heaved, and I heard him fumbling for enough breath to form the right words. I’d been right about him; he was getting old. “Listen. We can cut a deal, you and me. How much do you want? I’ve got everything.”
A sick smile formed on his lips. It didn’t quite reach his eyes, which were still as hard as the first time I saw him in the bar. “I can make your dreams come true, girlie. Vacation house? Luxury car? Enough money that you’ll never have to think about working again? Lay it on me. I’ll make it happen.”
I clenched my jaw. Listening to him attempt to bargain for his life only grated on my nerves. As if he could buy his way out after all the ways he had torn my life t
o shreds.
“You know what I want,” I said, cocking the hammer with my thumb. “And I’m about to get it.”
Rocco Durant laughed. He laughed so hard his body curled in on itself where he lay. Tears gathered in the corners of his eyes. “Is that what you think talking tough sounds like? I guess I ain’t surprised. Your parents were soft targets. Especially your pops.” He wiped his hand across his face and grinned at me. “Oh, you think I didn’t recognize you? You got a nice, tight shape, just like your mom. How could I not?”
I froze. The hand holding the gun shook with shock and rage. Suddenly, I couldn’t seem to muster the strength to pull the trigger. It was like being frozen in the middle of a raging wildfire. Every ounce of my being screamed to kill the worthless piece of human garbage laid out before me, and yet, the mention of my parents had me transfixed.
“Don’t you dare say a thing about her.” The voice that left me did not sound like my own. It was a feral growl, the snarl of a wild beast. I felt myself teetering on the brink of something vast and searing.
“You know what she said to me that day?” Rocco asked. His tone was maddeningly conversational, like we were old friends reminiscing. “She told me to go to hell.” The smile on his mouth turned cruel. “I said I’d be happy to take her with me.”
I’d meant to keep my cool, but this was more than I could take. I shoved the barrel of the gun right up against his forehead. “I’ve been waiting for this for a long time, Rocco.”
My trigger finger trembled. He glared up at me, defiant, but then his gaze shifted abruptly. His eyes widened as they focused somewhere over my head. I sensed a deep shadow descending.
I didn’t have time for more than a quick glance over my shoulder. A flash of gold and the looming shape of something both large and seemingly on fire blotted out the whole skyline across the river with its brightness. New York’s sorry crop of stars had nothing on this monster.
It was heading straight for us.
I had to laugh. Hadn’t I seen this in every disaster movie ever made? It looked like the end of the world. But instead of fire and brimstone, the world was washed away by pure golden light.
CHAPTER THREE
When I opened my eyes, it was clear the world hadn’t ended. The sky had regained its polluted dull gray, and I could feel the wet of the pier pressing into my skin.
I was alive—and so was Rocco Durant.
The wounded thug was struggling to stand, the blood on his clothing half dry. He looked like death, but that didn’t keep him from making a break toward the alley.
“Hey!” I jumped to my feet, ignoring the way the world rocked unsteadily. I leaned in to bolt after him for the third or fourth time that evening, but something in the water caught my eye. I turned, convinced it was a trick of sight, but no—it was real.
There was a guy in the water.
He didn’t float for long. As I watched, his body began to slip below the surface. The dark water climbed up over his chin and then his nose.
I glanced at Rocco, still shambling toward freedom, and back at the sinking stranger. It was impossible to describe how utterly torn I felt in that instant.
On one hand, the revenge I had dreamed about for the past five years was escaping from under my nose. On the other, it was pretty clear that if I didn’t do something, this stranger was going to drown. The decision had to be made quickly.
I raised my gun. Maybe I could get off one last, lucky shot.
No. The thought hit me so hard it was like it had come from someone else. Don’t waste that bullet. Save it, and save that man. Running toward the edge of the dock, I pushed off with both feet, and catapulted myself into the depths.
The shock of the cold forced all the air from my lungs. I had to fight not to inhale the water. My open eyes were freezing in their sockets, but closing them was an impossibility. Down below, something shimmered in the blackness. I swam toward it. I wasn’t sure how far down I went, but the moment I discerned the shape of his body, I reached out, grabbed him, and pulled with all my might.
One hand wasn’t enough, despite his current weightlessness. I slung his limp arm over my shoulder and towed him to the surface. My legs burned from kicking. The stiletto boots weighed down my feet. I regretted wearing them, but to be fair, taking a dip in the river hadn’t made it onto my to-do list.
I came up not too far from the dock, and on my way over to its solid surface, I racked my brain to come up with a plan for lifting this guy out of the water. His lips were already blue. I had to get him warm and dry fast, which seemed like a problem. I was no weakling, but this guy was heavy as shit.
“Dammit to hell, you better be alive,” I muttered, spitting water. “I’m not carrying your corpse anywhere.”
Once we reached the pier, I treaded water for a moment, considering my options. I could do a Hail Mary heave and hope he’d stay put while I got myself out, or I could scramble onto the concrete first and hope he didn’t sink too far to recover. Neither seemed like a good choice.
Holding on to the edge of the dock with one hand, I maneuvered the guy’s arm so that it rested flat on the surface, but I couldn’t get him to stop sliding back into the water. He was total dead weight, and I didn’t have a buoy to hold him up.
My fingers and toes were going numb, I’d swallowed more river water than I cared to think about, and this whole treading-water situation was not going to last forever. So, I chose the hidden third option, which was to pull him the long way down the length of the dock to the actual shoreline. The moment I could stand, I gripped him under the arms and started dragging.
He made a weird metallic rattling in the shallows. I looked down to see that half the reason he weighed so damned much was because he was wearing armor. Not the modern, bulletproof kind, either. This was the kind with plates and chainmail. I frowned. Had I just fished a cosplayer out of the river?
Even hardcore fanboys deserved to be saved.
He was older than I first thought. Shocks of gray ran through his dripping hair, and the lines around his eyes and mouth were deep, or at least, I suspected they would be if he were warm and dry. It was tough to tell anything meaningful about him while his skin was so pale and drawn.
At his side, something glowed—the thing that had allowed me to find him in the first place. I knelt down to get a better look. It appeared to be some kind of handle, about as long as my forearm and heavy. There was real damage potential there, but I could tell it was missing something.
Even out of the water, it glowed from within like live embers. It was definitely the strangest shit I’d seen in a while, and I’d seen a lot of shit.
“You gotta find her now!”
My head snapped up at the sound of voices too nearby for comfort.
“We’re gonna take care of this bitch for the boss. And then we’re gonna live like kings.”
I crouched down beside the still-motionless body of the man I rescued, feeling for the shape of my revolver against my thigh. All I felt was the holster. A white-hot bolt of panic ran through me as I dropped my gaze to find it empty. The gun was probably half buried in the mud at the river bottom by now.
“Shit,” I whispered. Once didn’t seem like enough. “Shit!”
The second curse pierced the air a little louder than I intended, and a goon turned in my direction.
“Shut up,” he called. “I think I heard something.”
He rounded the posts at the base of the pier and got an eyeful of me, hunkered down by what appeared to be a corpse, my clothes heavy with moisture.
“Well, well,” he said. An oily smirk spread across his ratty features. “Look what the cat dragged in.” He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. The others seemed to materialize out of thin air. “Ain’t this a fine how-do-you-do? Fancy meeting you all the way out here.”
Ugh. I wanted nothing more than for him to stop talking and pick a fight already. All my nerve endings hummed with adrenaline. My heartbeat throbbed in my ears and throat. For th
e first time, I began to dread that this was truly the end of the line.
That didn’t mean I was done fighting, though. Far from it. But I needed a better weapon than my fists.
“What’s the matter, sweet cheeks? Cat got your tongue?” The three of them advanced on me.
I glared at the guy who’d spoken, a skinny dude shaped like a pencil. “What is it with you assholes and cats? Are you so obsessed with pussy because you don’t get any?” Despite the brave retort, fear crept unbidden into the back of my throat. I heard my voice tremble just a little bit, and I knew they heard it, too.
They were all smiling now, leering. Pencil-Dick put a hand in his pocket. My mind raced to predict what he would pull out. A knife? A gun? Zip-ties and a blindfold? The fact that I couldn’t rule out the last option made my stomach absolutely crawl.
“Don’t worry, princess.” He spoke in a grotesque caricature of a soothing tone. “We won’t kill you right away. First, we’re gonna have some real fun. Do a number on that pretty kitty, you get me?”
Vomit threatened my throat, but I choked it back. No more distance could be put between me and the tight semicircle of mob sharks. The water lapped at my back. Again, I glanced around, searching for something with which to defend myself. The glow of that peculiar handle drew my eyes. I grasped it and tugged it loose from the stranger’s belt.
Sorry, guy. A girl’s gotta stay alive somehow.
The goon triplets took another step closer. Now armed, I raised the glowing object above my head, pleased to note that it did indeed have a substantial amount of heft. It gave them pause for approximately half a second before they burst out laughing.
“What’s that?” Pencil-Dick demanded between guffaws. “Your participation trophy for a job half-finished?” He elbowed his buddies.
He was evidently the comedian of the group, because their amusement doubled.
I scowled. “Let’s see how far I can shove this participation trophy up your ass.”
That got their attention. Pencil-Dick’s hand gripped something inside his pocket. He started to withdraw it. The glint of metal peeked between his fingers. I thought I was going to die.
