by Nikki Wild
“You probably should have thought of that from the beginning,” Delfino’s cool voice replied. “Now you’ve got to lie in the bed you made.”
“Like hell I do,” Jackal growled, and Lucy cried out again. My vision blurred, the world transforming into vague streaks in shades of red. I mounted the stairs, doing my best to keep my ascent as silent as possible.
The only weapons I had with me were my hands. And I intended to wrap them tight around Delfino’s and Jackal’s throats. The only question was who would die first. Both of them had put their hands on Lucy. Both of them had hurt her in unspeakable ways. My Lucy. The bastards…
“Let her go,” Delfino said, a crack of emotion splintering his cold baritone. He recovered swiftly enough. “You let her go—now—or I’m going to make you regret ever setting foot in this town.”
“Oh, not to worry,” Jackal sneered, “I already regret riding into your little shithole of a town, Delfino. But now you’re going to make sure I make it out of here alive.”
“You think either of us are making it out of here alive?” Delfino snorted, a kind of nihilistic amusement in his voice. “This is the end for both of us now, Jackal. I’m going to be just as much of a dead man as you are. I have nothing to lose.”
“Maybe you’re willing to kick the bucket,” Jackal chuckled, “but I sure as hell ain’t. And I don’t think that your pretty little bitch here is, either.”
Bitch? I could see Delfino from the hallway now. He had a gun. Shit. That complicated things. It complicated things a lot. I was going to need some kind of weapon too, something more than just my fists. Quietly, I unplugged the lamp sitting on a console table in the hall, then yanked the cord out of the lamp itself. Slowly, steadily, I wound it around both sets of my fingers.
But it seemed like Delfino wasn’t about to let that comment slide any more than I was. His finger dropped from the trigger guard to the trigger… but then Lucy whimpered again.
“I told you not to hurt her,” Delfino gritted.
“Since you ain’t gonna help me,” Jackal hissed, “I don’t think I’m particularly beholden to what you want. Given the circumstances, I think you’re beholden to what I want. So here’s how it’s gonna work. I’m gonna take your car. My bike’s a little obvious, as far as modes of transportation go, so I think the way to go is somethin’ more… subtle.” He laughed, followed by another sharp cry from Lucy. “I’m going to take this little cunt with me—as insurance—and then—”
Delfino squeezed. An explosion echoed.
Jackal dropped.
Lucy screamed.
But it wasn’t fear. Not just fear. This was pain, too. Terror, and agony.
My blood boiled.
No more waiting. I’d wasted enough time already. I was going to do what I did best. I was going to destroy this motherfucker.
I charged, slamming into Delfino from behind, knocking him to the floor. He reared up, predictably, but before he could turn around I slid the cord around his throat and pulled, twisting for leverage. A furious roar choked off as the wire tightened against his trachea. I didn’t let up. I wanted to hear the fucker gag and wheeze.
Delfino got his hand up, squeezed his fingers up under the cord, and won himself a breath for his effort. He made it onto his knees and shoved us both backward, out of the room and into the wall of the hallway behind us.
The console table tipped over. The backs of my shoulders made awful indents in the drywall. My broken ribs screamed and I loosened my grip enough for Delfino to duck out of the garrote. My fingers were still tangled in the wire and I couldn’t get them out quick enough to block his fist. My whole skull vibrated with the blow.
Get him down, the survival instinct in the back of my mind said. You get him on the ground, he’s done for.
I finally managed to get the cord out of my hands, and when Delfino struck at me again, I pushed his fist away and jabbed him hard in the eye socket. He reeled and I tackled him around the waist, his head striking the doorframe as he went down. He was dazed. I took full advantage of that.
I straddled him. Brought my fist down as quick and as hard as I could, over and over, while holding him by his shirt with my opposite hand. I felt his pulse quicken, heart slamming against his chest almost in time to the downward swing of my punches. Blood bloomed at his nostrils and lips. One eye blackened, already swelling shut. His cheekbone crumpled, but I didn’t stop. He brought his arms up to defend himself, but I shoved them aside.
Then one hand grabbed my face, tilting my chin back. As I struggled blindly, Delfino jammed one of his fists into my side. Right into my broken ribs.
I sucked in air as my vision flashed white. Delfino used his grip on my face to throw me sideways. I rolled, doubled, and a second blow—this one a sharp kick—made me heave.
Shit!
“You thought you could just charge in here and take me out?” Delfino asked, a rueful laugh the undercurrent to his words. He stood, slowly, spitting blood onto the hardwood floors. “Who the fuck do you think you are, you little shit?”
His next kick got me right in the sternum, and I screamed. At this rate, my entire ribcage would be a fractured mess—though I wouldn’t really have to worry much about that if I never made it out of this room alive.
“I think I’m the guy that’s about to kick your ass,” I said, my voice strained from the assault I’d taken to my ribs. That made Delfino laugh even more, a smile splitting his face.
“You know,” the old man said, shaking his head, “I think I might have liked you, Richards, if you weren’t such a fucking pain in my ass. But I don’t have time for this.”
The mobster slowly, almost casually, stepped closer as I lay there on the floor, trying to breathe through the pain running rampant in my torso. At first I didn’t know what the hell was coming next as he stared down at me, steely eyes assessing me, weighing me, finding me wanting. I watched as he lowered his foot onto my throat.
“I’ll make time, though,” he said as my hands started to scrabble at his ankle. “To kill you nice and slow…”
I did my best to pull him off of me, put up one hell of a fight, but despite my being somewhat stronger than the old man, he definitely weighed more. Already I could feel my windpipe closing, the strain of my hyoid bone as he began to apply pressure. He’d either break the bone and collapse my windpipe, or hold his foot their long enough for me to suffocate. I really wasn’t excited to find out which one it would be.
I tried to gurgle out some kind of protest, but as I looked up into his eyes, I could see that I wasn’t dealing with a reasonable, calm Delfino. This was the Delfino that had always been lurking beneath the surface, the cold-blooded killer who’d run a town full of mobsters for the last decade.
But then another gunshot gave Delfino pause.
I sucked in a breath as he removed his foot from my throat, the air rattling its way down to my lungs, expanding them painfully against my bruised and broken bones. Gathering the wherewithal to raise my head, I saw Lucy standing beside the broken window that Jackal had used to make his entrance. The gun was in her hand now, and she had it pointed right at Delfino. In the confusion, I’d forgotten all about it.
She’d missed, clearly. Delfino was still standing, looking none the worse for wear, despite what I’d done to him. But she’d gotten his attention. He wet his bloodied lips.
“Lucy,” Delfino said, his voice calm and assuring, “give that to me.”
“Shut up,” she hissed. Her hands were trembling. They shook harder as he took a step over the threshold toward her. “Get back!”
“You’re not going to shoot me,” he said, looking into her eyes as he held out his hand for the weapon. The manipulator had returned, and I watched as the expression on Lucy’s face shifted, though to what emotion, I couldn’t tell. Even as lightning flashed, illuminating her pale complexion, the look there was… strange. I just couldn’t place it. And that scared me more than anything else.
“You’re going to give
me the gun,” Delfino continued. “You are going to hand me that gun, now, and all of this is going to be fine.”
“Just put it down, Lulu,” I said weakly. My voice was scratchy, hoarse, and my pleas were interrupted by a hacking cough that made me feel like I was going to retch. “You don’t want to have this on your conscience. You’re not a killer.”
“No,” Delfino said. “You’re not like us.”
I hated being lumped in with him. More than I could say. But what I especially resented was the reason why he was doing it. It was a ploy to make Lucy think of me and Delfino as one and the same. A desperate attempt to transfer her affection for me onto him. To make her show mercy.
It almost made me want to take back what I’d said and tell her to do it. But I couldn’t let Lucy bear the burden of that stain on her soul.
“You don’t need to shoot him to save me, Lulu,” I told her instead. “Please. Don’t…”
Her eyes turned toward me, her lips trembling as she glanced between Delfino and me. His hand was still outstretched, reaching for the gun, only inches from pulling it from her hands.
“I’m not saving you,” she whispered, sliding her gaze back to Delfino. I watched the light dim behind her eyes. “I’m saving myself.”
He lunged. “No—”
The muzzle flashed. Point blank this way, Lucy didn’t miss a second time.
Delfino took one, two, three steps backward before collapsing onto his back, his eyes fixed and staring at the ceiling, just the way I’d imagined Lucy lying there in my waking dreams. I watched the light go out in his eyes, too. Watched the man’s soul leave his body.
With a sob, Lucy dropped the gun one final time, onto her bed, before she too sank to the floor.
Twenty-Four
Lucy
The gun slipped from my grasp so unceremoniously I almost felt disappointed. I had expected something more dramatic than the muffled sound of its weight on the duvet and pillows, where it lay still as the fresh corpse that it had made only a moment before. I thought that something so deadly deserved much more pomp and circumstance, especially after witnessing its handiwork… my handiwork. I’d shot Delfino square in his chest, straight through his heart and right back out the other side, the sizable bullet hole in the wall behind him serving as proof of the clean shot I had made.
I’d done it, and there was no turning back.
I stared down at my former guardian’s lifeless body, a pool of blood beginning to accumulate beneath him. Oddly, my first thought was of how all of that blood would seep through the floor and ruin the ceiling beneath it, a strange thing to consider since I’d just committed murder. But then, I’d read that people often chose irrational ways to deal with stress. Maybe this was mine.
I didn’t feel like I was stressed, though. I felt… distant. Numb. Like I was somewhere far away observing everything that was happening, but not actually being involved in it.
You’re dissociating, I told myself. It was a term I’d learned of in one of the countless books I’d read over the years, a term that meant that in order to save myself from the emotional trauma of a situation, my brain had decided to pretend that it wasn’t actually happening to me, and instead was making it seem like I was just some bystander, someone who happened to have flipped through the channels on their TV to watch someone get shot by whoever was holding the camera.
It all felt so surreal, especially knowing, logically, that it really was me who’d shot Delfino, and yet feeling nothing. Nothing except a certain sense of righteousness—of justice—in what I’d done. Delfino had turned my life into a living hell, had held me captive for years, and forced me to live a life of servitude as something only slightly more precious than a pet. This was what he deserved.
But the moment I caught a glimpse of his eyes… that was when my fragile state of calm began to crumble around me. The weight of what I’d done, what I’d taken from another human being, crashed into and through me like the outer bands of a tornado.
I had just killed a man.
My knees hit the floor before my brain even realized that they’d given out from under me. Stinging tears welled in my eyes, then went streaming down my face as my chest seized, lungs paralyzed by the impact of the scene around me. A million thoughts and questions raced through my head, most of them involving how I could have done something like this.
I sat there, hardly noticing as Leo came closer to me, wrapping his arms around me in order to bring me back into some kind of fit state to stand and walk out of the room. The room where both the man Delfino had called Jackal, and Delfino himself, now lay motionless. It all felt so surreal, like so many other nightmares I’d had in this room. Two men dead. In my bedroom. I felt like I was going to throw up.
I focused on the facts, instead.
I knew that, had it really come down to it, Delfino would have made sure I went down with the ship. He would have kept me as his slave forever, or otherwise would have ensured that when his boss came calling, he wasn’t the only one who paid the price Don Carliogne would undoubtedly exact. I had to kill him to protect myself, and no matter what, I would keep that thought close to me as my sole comfort whenever I cast my thoughts back to Delfino’s cold, dead eyes.
Though they’d been cold and dead well before that moment, too.
Leo was dragging me along, murmuring soft pleas into my hair. Urging me to shuffle out of this room, to leave behind this house for good, forever. And really, I wanted nothing more than to obey him. The problem was I felt entirely disconnected from my body. I felt like I had no control over my legs, like my brain had lapsed into stasis with only the basic systems still functioning. I could hear and see what was happening around me, but I couldn’t take my eyes away from what I’d done. All I could do was stare—quietly, desperately horrified—at the life I had taken.
I don’t know what happened, exactly, in the few moments after Leo managed to get me to my feet. One moment I was in my room, my gaze fixed onto Delfino’s corpse, and then the next I was outside, surrounded by voices and people I wasn’t familiar with.
Where once I had been kneeling, I was now sitting on the curb outside of what had been my home for the last few years, men in black leather vests all milling about, motorcycles parked in the middle of the street. Rain was pelting me, just as it was everyone else, only I couldn’t feel it. I didn’t feel anything at all, except the void where Leo was supposed to be.
“Leo?” I called, surprised that I even still had the mental faculties left to speak. I searched the crowd with my eyes, pulse pounding in my ears as I failed to find him. “Leo!”
Shakily I stood, turning back toward the house just in time to witness four men leaving through the front door, two of them hefting a long, lumpy bundle between them as they made their way toward Delfino’s prized car, keys glinting in one of their hands.
Out of instinct I wanted to protest, to demand that they stop before they get near the car, to warn them that Delfino hated people touching his baby. But then it hit me what the bundle they were holding between them was.
My voice caught in my throat, words halting before ever reaching my lips, as I watched the rough-looking men pop the trunk of the old car and dump Delfino’s body inside it. He seemed so heavy now. He’d always been light on his feet before…
It was then that I recognized one of the other two men leaving the house. Limping down the lawn. Smoldering eyes fixed solely on me.
“Lulu,” Leo whispered in my ear, and for the first time that night, I felt some semblance of warmth. After everything that had happened, Leo was still alive. I wrapped my arms tight around the only man I’d ever loved, the corners of my eyes prickling hotly, threatening another spell of tears.
He grunted, and I recalled now his broken ribs. As I loosened my grasp, his chapped, busted lips found the top of my head and kissed there. “Everything’s going to be okay, baby.”
“I thought they’d killed you,” I muttered into his wet, bloodied shirt. “When they took
you away… I thought that would be the last time I’d ever see you.”
“It’s going to take a lot more than that to keep me down,” he said as I rested my head against his shoulder, content to stand there with him until our legs gave out.
The world had been placed on hold for the briefest moment, just long enough for me to bask in the glow of Leo’s embrace. For the first time n years, I felt like I was safe. Really safe. It was over, and I was glad Leo was holding me, because the enormity of that revelation would have been too much to bear had I been standing on my own.
“Hate to bust up the tender moment, cupcakes,” came a gravelly voice from behind Leo, “but I don’t think this is the best spot for a romantic interlude.”
Leo shifted just a little, putting himself beside me, and I blinked up at the man who’d been standing behind him. “Who are you?”
“Name’s Crush,” he said, lips curving like a blade. His hazel eyes sparkled beneath the shadow of his brow, lit by a streak of lightning overhead. “I’m a friend of Leo’s.”
“He’s one of the Hounds of Hell,” Leo added, turning to face Crush fully, an arm still wrapped around my waist. “And he’s probably right. God only knows if Delfino had other friends in town like Rigby.”
“I’m sure he did,” I muttered, looking toward the other houses on the block. No neighbors were coming outside to stare at us—not in this weather. But their lights were coming on. That didn’t bode well.
“Don Carliogne is expecting us,” I told both Leo and Crush. “In New Hampshire. Delfino was going to make me go—he said there was a safehouse, someplace we were supposed to meet him…”
“You’re not going any-damn-place,” Leo told me. “None of us are. Let Don Carliogne come to us.”
I swallowed. “Won’t that make him mad?”
Crush snorted. “I sure as shit hope so. Least the fucker deserves at this point is to be made a little uncomfortable.”
