by T Gephart
“What did you say to me?” His brows bunched in confusion obviously not expecting the words as much as I hadn’t.
“You were just a baby, the way they treated you—you aren’t what they said, I know you aren’t.”
I had no proof of it, but it was something inside of me I just knew. Gut instinct told me that underneath all of this, he wasn’t rotten.
He wasn’t evil.
He wasn’t broken.
“You think I give a shit about my past?” he sneered, like the words disgusted him. “That it means anything to me now?”
“I think you like to pretend it doesn’t, but I don’t see how anyone could survive all of that and not be changed. I read what they said about you.” I figured I’d come this far, I might as well finish the job and jump off the cliff. “You weren’t just abandoned, you were deserted by everyone who was supposed to care for you. You aren’t the monster they expected you to become.”
“You don’t know me.” His eyes bored into mine, reinforcing the anger that was spilling from his lips.
“No, I don’t.”
Essentially he was right. I didn’t know him. Not in the way I knew my neighbors, friends or family, and yet, I saw him more clearly than he probably saw himself. “But you still have that knife at my throat and haven’t killed me yet. Deep down, there is humanity.”
“I haven’t killed you because you are my pay check.” His words dripped with venom and I knew he’d said them to hurt me. But I refused to believe them. Maybe I was the biggest idiot of all mankind or maybe, I still saw that little boy in those photos.
“The Michael on those pages,” my eyes flicked across to the table where my evidence had been strewn, “would have chosen himself over the money.”
Slowly the knife’s edge moved from my throat, the sting immediate as the air hit the scratch it had left as his hand lowered.
“Careful, Sofia. This isn’t some game you want to play with me.” His face moved closer, his hot breath taunting me while he continued to hold me still.
“I’m not trying to play a game.” My hand rubbed against my neck. “But I know what I know.”
“You know nothing.” His voice barely a whisper, and in some way it was more terrifying than if he had screamed it at me.
He didn’t say anything else but I felt the pressure on my chest ease as his arm lifted. One foot and then the other stepped away from me, my body sagging against the wall as he walked to the table.
Following the timeline I’d compiled of file notes and photos, his eyes moved restlessly over each one. Scrutinizing each piece before he moved on. I could barely breathe, my body paralyzed as I watched his brow crease. His gaze dropped to the floor suddenly, at his feet the holy picture. Saint Michael the Archangel with his sword. He glanced at me, watching me cautiously before kneeling to pick up the tiny card off the floor.
My heartbeat quickened as his legs brought him back to full height, ignoring me while he gave his attention to the picture, almost as if he was studying it before turning it over.
Rose.
That one word.
When his eyes looked back at me, I could tell he knew I’d seen it. It was like the air chilled around him even though I knew that wasn’t possible.
And suddenly I was terrified again.
I hadn’t expected her to sit in a corner and think about the good old days while I was gone.
It wasn’t her style to be compliant.
I had no doubt that she would have gone through the warehouse and examined every doorway and window like it held some radical fucking clue. She would have wanted to be familiar with her surroundings. To know as much as she could about where she was and how to get out if she needed to.
It’s exactly what I would have done.
What I hadn’t counted on was her pulling a fucking Sherlock Holmes and finding that shit. How the hell did she even know where to look? Did she have freaking X-ray vision and a divining rod? That stuff was hidden in a meter box and buried in the wall. Chances of finding it were so remote, Sofia Amaro either had the instincts of a bloodhound or was the luckiest person I knew.
And I didn’t believe in luck.
Seeing it laid out of the table, my past exposed, wound me up so tight I had my knife at her throat before I even knew what I was doing.
I hated that anyone knew anything about me. And that she had the grand motherfucking tour of my childhood pissed me off even more.
Heat jacked up my spine as I looked at the piece of shit card. The fact that I hated it more than anything in that file should have been enough of a tip off I wasn’t sane. And yet there she was, looking at me like I needed a fucking hug.
I hated it.
That fucking look.
The pity.
And everything else that file induced.
I should have torched it years ago instead of holding onto it like a pussy. It was ironic that she found it. Shined a big ass light that at some point when I was compiling that boo-fucking-hoo bedtime story, I’d misplaced my freaking balls.
I tossed it down on the table with the rest of the shit and looked back at her.
She was shaking.
Her one hand was still tight against her throat where I’d held my knife while the other was wrapped around her midsection, like the arm would somehow keep her standing.
And the other thing—she looked terrified.
This whole time we’d dodged bullets, had fuck knows what on our ass, and now she had chosen to fall apart. Part of me was disappointed. That it hadn’t taken more to get her looking like she wanted to run. While the other half of me was glad that even though she talked shit, she still had some self-preservation in her to know when her number was up.
“You still so sure I’m not going to kill you?” I eased back on the heels of my boots as a twisted sense of relief flowed through me. That even through this, I still had managed to maintain the upper hand.
“You won’t.” Her head moved from side to side like she was trying to convince herself as well as me. “You said to me once when I was thinking of running. If I was going to do it, I would have done it by now.” She took a breath before meeting my eyes. “I think the same could be said for you.”
Even with her back against the wall—both literally and figuratively, she was still trying.
“The difference is you have a conscience, and I don’t.”
“That’s their words, not yours.” Her finger shook as she pointed to the table. The they she was referring to not needing to be clarified.
“So, what do you want to do now?” I laughed tossing my knife on the table. “You want me to lay down and tell you about my feelings? Cry a little?”
Newsflash, neither of those things were fucking happening.
“Who or what is Rose?” Her back found its spine as she straightened, prepared for whatever shit storm she opened up with the mention of that word.
Rose.
It was barely legible anymore; I was surprised she’d even seen it. Of course given her fucking track record of uncovering shit I didn’t think could be found, I really shouldn’t be surprised.
I had seen it in her eyes when I’d walked in. And worse still that she understood it was significant.
“None of your business.” I waved my hand casually, ignoring the blood in my veins simmering out of control.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Maybe it’s the name of the whore I stuck my dick in last or maybe it’s the name of the bitch I killed three weeks ago. Take your pick, because I don’t give a shit what you believe.”
“No, that stuff has been hidden back there for at least twelve months, maybe even years. And you wouldn’t keep something like that if it was just the name of some whore.”
I didn’t know whether to clap or fucking shoot her. Did she really think I was playing? Because last time I checked, if you found yourself inside a room with a venomous snake you didn’t fucking poke a stick at it.
“Do you want to die,
Sofia?” I leveled her with my stare. “Because right now you are speaking like a woman who doesn’t value her life.”
“Who was she?” she asked again, completely disregarding anything I just said.
“Enough!” I screamed, my fingers grasping the top of the table and flipping it onto its side so that everything spilled onto the floor. “Get the fuck out of my sight.”
She didn’t need to be asked a second time, running to where the bedroom was, the loud slam of the door confirming that’s where she’d gone.
“FUCK,” I yelled, kicking the table with the front of my boot.
Inside I was raging, pissed off and wanting to put someone’s head through a wall. Her fucking father would be my first choice given it was his doing I was even dealing with this shit.
I was so fucking mad, my skin feeling too tight against my bones as I paced around the room looking for something to destroy. And what pissed me off the most? That she had gotten under my skin.
Not Sofia, it was a different her.
And I couldn’t believe that any of it still affected me like it did.
It was too late now; I’d tipped my hand. And it was fucking obvious that even I had something to hide.
Motherfucking Rose.
That one word—a name—is what undid me.
Not the years of being tossed from family to family. Not being beaten within an inch of my life on the street. Not the fucktards who had tried to ease themselves by concocting lies about who or what I was.
No, none of that mattered.
What threw me into a tailspin was the fucking whore who brought me into this world when I hadn’t fucking asked.
My mother.
Oh yeah, Jimmy had tried to play that card when I first met him. But if he thought I hadn’t already looked her up, then he was even dumber than I thought. I’d done some digging when I was in my early twenties. The nuns at the church where I’d been dumped all had wild cases of amnesia. Some not even remembering the night at all, others not having been there. They took that vow of silence shit to heart and gave me absolutely nothing.
Of course, me being me, figured there were other people who knew things who didn’t suffer from the same devotion to keeping their mouth shut. It was on one of my visits that I met Walter, a groundskeeper for the church and surrounding convent. Old Walter had been there for over forty years and would probably die tending to those fucking topiary rose bushes that lined the front path.
It took some convincing on my part. Walter didn’t have a wife or kids I could use as leverage. Poor old dude didn’t even have a dog, so going in hard with a gun against his head wasn’t going to get me anything other than his brains on my shoes. And I really fucking hated cleaning my shoes.
Nope, Walter needed persuading of a different kind. And I was more than happy to give him enough of the poor orphan routine; it played right into his bleeding heart. I think I even cried. Whatever it took to get that man to open up his trap and tell me what I needed.
And what do you know, a nun by the name of Rose showed up one day about seven months before my arrival. She was quiet and surprisingly beautiful—his words—and rarely spoke. She liked to spend most of her day in the privacy of the back courtyard in the garden, which is where he first saw her.
While the other nuns would chat with Walter, Rose would hide in the shadows. But even under that ridiculous black muumuu she and the other indoctrinated religious freaks wore, there was no hiding that there was one vow she hadn’t taken entirely to heart.
Guess she had some serious explaining to do when she said her confession. “Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. I forgot my Bible, sung out of tune during evening mass annnnnnd fucked some dude and got myself knocked up. A few Hail Mary’s ought to cover it, right? Awesome. Thanks.”
Even as the months passed and she got more obviously in the family way, the pregnancy was ignored. And no one said shit according to Walter. Until one night when there been a bad storm. He’d been convinced that when he’d get to work the next day there’d be no yard to even tend. He showed up bright and early, ready to see the worst. And along with the destroyed azaleas, he’d found a fresh and poorly dug grave out the back.
I bet you can guess who was missing from the morning prayer meeting that day.
Yep.
Rose.
Same night I was born too. Quite a coincidence I’d say? Yeah, so the mystery of my maternity wasn’t so mysterious after all. My father? Well who the fuck knew? Could have been a traveling Bible salesman.
Not that it mattered, because he either left the whore and I to face the music on our own, or the bastard didn’t even know.
I hadn’t asked to be born, fuck knows I’d had more than my share of misery. But to know this bitch had cared more about her reputation and her precious fucking church pissed me off beyond measure.
Of course, the story Jimmy probably had in his folder was that mother dearest was a wayward teen from Wisconsin, which was the lie I had believed initially. Apparently that little fabrication was planted by one of the nuns, she even went so far to leave little trail of bread crumbs as evidence so if anyone looked, there was enough there for it to be plausible.
Unless you took a really serious look.
Which is exactly what I did.
Those nuns sure don’t take the Ten Commandments seriously if they are fucking and lying. Here, have a side of hypocrisy with your holy wine.
That shit had gotten enough of my mental space. So I left the upturned table, and the Reader’s Digest version of my childhood history on the floor, and stalked out of the room.
It had taken me two hours longer than I wanted to get back, needing to make sure I wasn’t tailed after my visit with Brendon’s drugged-up ex-wife. The last thing I needed was to draw the asshole who was looking for Sofia a map and lead them to my doorstep. Not to mention I hated entertaining.
So, with my mood fluctuating somewhere between gonna-kick-someone’s-ass and punch-my-fist-through-a-wall, I sat my ass down at my computer and looked to see if my band of hacker brothers had turned up anything new.
The minute I logged on, my screen lit up like a Christmas tree. Ten or so messages pinged, urgently vying for my attention worse than a hooker in Streeterville.
Fuck.
Me.
Bounty had gone up.
Sofia’s head on a platter was worth a cool one point five million dollars. And an extra five hundred thousand would be kicked in for any evidence recovered that tied anyone to anything.
The instructions were clear. No capture. Shoot to kill and get it done ASAP. Any other subtext wasn’t necessary; she was a dead woman walking.
And in addition to that wonderful piece of information, there was a message in my inbox, which in itself was a surprise.
The people who usually employed my services didn’t like trails, especially one that could be tracked by the FBI. But there it was, sitting in my inbox just the same.
No name identifying the sender.
My firewall and three virus scans protected me against most garden-variety hackers, so it was either a professional or government. My finger hovered over the enter key, wondering if reading it was going to open up the apocalypse on my CPU. Curiosity was what made my finger actually hit the key.
The message had one line.
Meet me on the steps of Alder Planetarium. Five p.m.
There were very few men who had the resources—and the money—to encrypt a message like that and guts to meet at a public place. One of them was Sofia’s father, and the other was Franco Santini.
And while it was it was still unclear as to who was bankrolling the bounty, he was most likely.
Franco was Jimmy’s biggest rival, with an ego the size of Canada and balls to match. He loved baseball, sex and violence. Not necessarily in that order, but none of them held a candle to how much he loved money.
He was old school, a numbers man—extortion, embezzlement, bearer bonds—you know, the classics. And I was almo
st positive there were things on Sofia’s little USB drive that would see the IRS so far up that dipshit’s ass he would start shitting out suits. And those kinds of consecutive sentences—on federal offenses—would make a murder charge seem like a holiday.
So he’d either heard whispers about what I’d been doing to pass the time the last few days, or he was going to hire me to track her down. Sure, I could ignore the email, pretend I didn’t get it. I mean, there was no way to know exactly which cocksucker had sent it, so pleading ignorance was also on the table. But that wasn’t going to happen. For the same reason I’d gone to see that piece of shit Brendon and delivered his alimony.
Appearances.
And assuming I was correct and it was Franco, refusing to meet him would send up a red flag. Men like him didn’t like the word no, so I guess I had a date at five.
“Sofia,” I called out, hoping like hell she hadn’t locked herself in the bathroom. “Get out here now.”
Nothing.
Silence.
I swear if she’d slit her wrists in the fucking shower or something, I was going to save her life just so I could kill her again myself.
My ass flew out of my seat as I moved to the door where the bedroom was. My hand twisted the handle and threw open the door.
She didn’t move, her eyes stayed shut as she sat on the floor completely still, with her legs crossed and her back against the wall.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I watched as she slowly opened her eyes. They hadn’t been red like I’d expected but her chest was moving fast like she was trying to rein it in.
“Does it matter?” Her feet moved from under her as she stood, her hands brushing the dust from her ass. “I still have free will over my body and mind, and what I do with it.”
On second thought, I didn’t want to know. Because if she mentioned fucking meditation or praying there was a strong possibility of me doing to the bed what I’d done before to the table.
