by Ada Scott
“What did you do then?”
“I started looking for them. Back then, if you looked for them, they were easy enough to find. I still didn’t know shit about them, but I soon learned they were huge. They owned the city, they networked with other crime families that owned the rest of the country, there’s this whole world that most people never see. I had this idea of jumping out of an alleyway and surprising the boss, killing him and that would be the end of it, but I learned that somebody just as bad would be waiting to take his place. It was too big for one kid to take down. From the outside, anyway.”
Kendall’s brow furrowed. “But not from… the inside?”
“Yeah. That’s what I thought. I had to at least get on the inside to learn about them. I went up to one of their soldiers and told him to give me a job. He kicked the shit out of me. I came back the next day and asked for a job, he kicked the shit out of me again but I got a good punch in. I thought he was going to shoot me, but then he told me to fuck off. I came back the next day and asked for a job, he called me a stupid little fuck, but he gave me a package and told me where to take it. It became a regular thing.”
“Why didn’t you just leave, Jace?” she asked.
I remembered my time in Wellfort and those kids who wouldn’t, or couldn’t, fight. That hopeless look in their eyes. I knew I was, at most, half a step away from that if I gave up.
“Because the kids that didn’t fight had nothing,” I said, quietly. “I grew out of the little kingdom of Wellfort and found that the earnings of an errand boy didn’t cut it in the wider world, so one day when one of the guys got shot, I asked to be the one to do the payback, in return for a pay rise. They said sure, fuck it, what’s the worst that can happen? Well, I did a good job. That guy never crossed our path again, but he did limp for the rest of his days.”
I turned away from the window and slowly walked back towards Kendall. She didn’t back away, but the closer I got, the more she seemed to shrink.
Although I was close enough to reach out and touch her, it was like there was a force radiating from her body, personal space that I didn’t have permission or the power to enter anymore. The possibility that I might lose this fight hit home, and my face contorted with the grief that idea let loose. It took me a few moments before I could wrestle myself back into some semblance of control to continue.
“I… I took as many of those jobs as I could and built a name for myself, earned some respect. I learned everything I could about their structure, how similar they were to a large corporation. I learned who was in charge of what. I learned who wasn’t happy with the way the Picollis ran things. I learned who could be bought off, if it came to it. It was going to take me years to do what I needed to do, and then I literally won the lottery. It fast-forwarded my plans by a decade, maybe two. In a single day and night of the most brutal shit you can imagine, I seized most of their cash, killed their key men, paid off the rest, assured the police and politicians that the same arrangements they made with the Picollis were still good with me, and I took their place so they could never come back.”
“Jace… you have no idea what this is like, how crazy this is for me. I can’t force myself to stop loving you, I tried to just turn it off but it wouldn’t. I don’t understand how this can work!”
That force around her was weakening. Maybe just being this close, our love was overpowering it. I edged a little closer, just about tearing myself apart from the inside with the need to hold her.
“On my way over here, when I was trying to think of what to say, I tried to remember the first person I killed, to see if I could remember what it felt like, maybe something like what you were going through. I figured out that the first thing I killed was a part of myself. I didn’t have any room in my life for weakness, for sentimentality. All that was left after that was pain and so much fucking anger, but being with you was the first time I felt anything like peace. Can I tell you something, Kendall?”
Her barrier weakened further, and she looked up at me with hope. Those eyes, oh man, those eyes.
“One thing I do remember about that car ride with my parents was when they looked back at me. They had love in their eyes. I didn’t see that look again for over twenty years until you had it. You still have it, Kendall. You’re the love of my life, and I need you.”
I could see the turmoil in her eyes and the quiver in her lip. She held herself all the more tightly, but that barrier came down. Painfully slowly, she shuffled forward and closed the last remaining distance between us, leaning into me and looking even more timid than the day we met.
My own hands were shaking when I brought them up to embrace her, I was half-scared that she might disappear in a puff of smoke when I did. Her body was real, warm, and reassuringly familiar when my palms slid across her back and I held her tight against me.
After a few moments, she held me too and I buried my fingertips in her hair, stroking her cheek with my thumb before kissing the top of her head. Gently rocking from side to side, I almost felt myself melting into her.
“Can we run away?” she asked.
“If I do, then they’ll take over the city again. I won’t let that happen.”
“Will it ever be over?” she asked.
“They’ll never give up until I kill them all.”
“How do you know?”
“I wouldn’t. This is who I am, Kendall. I love you, can you stay with me and make all of this mean something more than revenge?”
“I love you too, Jace. I… I’ll stand by you.”
Never in all my life had more powerful words been spoken to me. With Kendall at my side, I could take on the world, keep stamping on the Picollis until their lights went out completely.
I wished I could have stayed in that moment forever. Instead, I heard engines and wheels on the gravel track and I had to let go of her to rush back to the window.
Black car after black car was pulling up. My security was scrambling to get to defensible positions, but I didn’t have enough men. The Picollis had followed me.
“Boss!” one of my men called from outside.
“What’s happening, Jace?”
I pulled Kendall to the ground, away from the windows, as the first shots started ringing out. Soon there were a lot more bullets coming in than going out.
“The Picollis. Here.”
Reaching inside my jacket, I handed Kendall my gun. She held it with a look on her face like it was a live snake.
“I don’t know-” she began.
“Listen to me! The safety is off, all you need to do is point the gun and pull the trigger. I want you to find somewhere to hide. Don’t come out no matter what! You understand? The walls of this cabin are good and thick, you stay away from the windows and you’ll be OK. If somebody gets in and finds you, shoot them in the face.”
“I can’t-”
“You can.”
“If I’ve got your gun, what do you have?”
The nearest window to us shattered, razor-sharp shards of glass falling to the floor a few feet away. I looked over the fireplace at the baseball bat with a lightning symbol burned into it.
“I fucking love baseball. Now go. We’re going to be OK. I love you. Go! Stay down!”
“I love you!”
Kendall crouched and ran through a doorway into another room. I blinked away tears. That was going to be the last time I ever saw the woman I loved.
I prayed that it was, because if I saw her again, it would only be because the Picollis found her and wanted to kill her in front of me. That thought almost seized me up and froze me to the spot.
Selfish as it was, I couldn’t bring myself to wish she had never come into my life, but I did wish I’d never existed so she could have been safe. If the Picollis somehow didn’t know she was here then she had a chance, but I was a fucking dead man.
I crawled over to the kitchen area and shrugged off my jacket, leaving it on the floor. I took off my empty gun holster and put it in a drawer as the one-si
ded battle raged outside. Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out my phone and looked up at the baseball bat ruefully. I was a fucking dead man.
Jace
The gunfire quickly petered out to the occasional crack and pop, and then stopped altogether. I stood beside the door and adjusted my grip on the baseball bat, breathing deep and slow, each breath puffing out my cheeks as I listened to my heart booming in my chest.
I could hear voices out there, swearing, calling out instructions. They were getting closer. Then I could hear faint footsteps, people yelling out “clear!” and getting closer still.
A few minutes later, I heard careful footfalls on the steps I myself had walked up only half an hour ago, harsh whispers. I was gripping the bat so tight that the handle creaked as I held it poised, waiting for my pitch.
Soon, they were gathered on the other side of the door. Two low-level goons were arguing about who would go first until somebody higher up the food chain told one of them to shut the fuck up and get in there.
A split-second after I heard them count to three, the door burst open and I swung for the fences. Some asshole Picolli had his face turned to mush by that first hit, but the bat splintered apart just above my hands.
The first guy, already unconscious, fell backwards and became tangled up with the second soldier, who had been rushing forward to follow him. I jumped in with the broken bat and shoved the sharp end through his throat before he could lift his gun up in my direction again.
Blood spurted everywhere when I pulled my bat-turned-stake out, and he dropped his gun to use both of his hands to try and stem the flow of his life as it gushed out of him. He was even more of a dead man than I was.
A third soldier shouldered his way past the stabbing victim, and over the crumpled heap of the first one. He managed to block my first swing, grabbing my wrist to stop himself getting impaled like his friend, as I did the same with his gun hand.
He managed to push me back a step, before I brought my knee up into his nuts with testicle-popping force. His mouth opened wide as he gasped in air and I sensed a certain limpness in his arms.
Taking a massive risk, I let go of his gun hand and gave him a left hook to his dangling jaw, dislocating or breaking it so it hung off his face at a horrific angle and rocking his head to the side. His grip on my wrist failed, and I shoved the bat into the back of his throat through his open mouth.
As he fell, I had to admit he’d done his job though, because two more Picollis were through the door before I could block that choke point again. I charged forward, lashing out with a kick to one of their knees that resulted in a satisfying wet crack and made his leg bend the wrong way, as I blocked the second’s attempt to pistol-whip me.
It seemed the fucking idiots were under instructions to take me alive, or they would have got a shot off by now. Three more came through the door as I stomped on Mister-Broken-Leg’s head and turned his lights out for the time being.
One of them flew in and tackled me, putting me off balance as I brought the wooden stake down into his kidney area. He sank towards the ground, whimpering, but somebody else punched me just below the eye before I could retrieve my weapon.
I grunted and lashed out blindly in that direction, feeling teeth break and cut my knuckles. While I was blinking to clear my vision, somebody else tackled me, managing to bring me to the ground but also dislodging the splintered bat.
Whoever tackled me ended up falling into my guard, and I used my legs to put him off balance as he tried to rain punches down on me. Twisting to the side, I struck out at somebody else’s knee with the heel of my hand and heard a satisfying, if girly, scream from somewhere above.
On the backswing, I knocked out the person on top of me with a lucky elbow strike and then drove the stake into somebody else’s leg on the other side. Putting my feet on the hips of the unconscious sandbag on top of me, I kicked out, pushing both of us backwards in opposite directions.
As I was getting up, something heavy hit me on the back of the head hard enough to make me see stars, robbing me of the vision I’d only just managed to clear. In a daze, I bunched my fist and lashed out, hitting something. Maybe it was a skull, maybe it was one of the log-walls of the cabin.
Either way, it didn’t matter, because that heavy thing hit me on the head again and I went down like a sack of shit. Blackness and blurry shouting washed over me and a few stray boots found the time to kick me in the ribs, but I was drifting far enough away that I could barely feel them.
Rough hands picked me up and dragged me to the other side of the room before dumping me on to a small chair, where they held me still and others tied me down. The ropes dug in and burned my wrists, bringing voices back into focus.
“Al, Tony, search this joint. Kill anybody you find. The Kung Fu Fighter over here’s gonna learn a lesson when he wakes up. I’ve been waitin’ to talk to this motherfucker for a long time now.”
That could only be Santino Picolli, the Italian Ninja himself.
Jace
The water felt freezing when it hit me, and I gasped for air, hallucinating for a moment that I’d fallen off a ship somewhere in the Arctic Circle. The reality was much worse.
I didn’t know how long I’d been drifting in and out of consciousness for, but it couldn’t have been more than ten or fifteen minutes because the first thing I heard after “wakey, wakey, motherfucker” was Tony, or Al, telling Santino that there was nobody else in the cabin.
It took every ounce of willpower I had to not let my relief show. I should have been given an honorary entry into the Poker Hall of Fame.
I allowed myself to have one last memory of her, taking those barriers down and letting herself love me. I wore it like an impenetrable fortress around the very core of my being. They would take my life today, but they’d never break me. I’d be in there to the end. With Kendall.
“I said wake up, you little bitch.”
Santino gave me a slap across the face while I tried to muster up as much swagger as a soaking wet man tied to a chair could while regaining consciousness. I twisted my head to each side, making the vertebrae in my neck crack, and looked up at him.
“Santino. How’d you manage to find time around your busy cock-sucking schedule to come here?”
“Oh you always were a funny son of a bitch, Jace. Truth is, I’ve been dreaming of this ever since you bit the hand that fed you. You knew your days were numbered, right? You didn’t really think a piece of shit like you could bring us down forever, did you?”
“Sure did fuck up your day though, didn’t I?”
“A hundred and ten years we’ve owned that fuckin’ city, and we’ll own it for a hundred and ten more with you out of the way.”
“You know, I had a picture of your father painted in my toilet bowl so I can piss on him every morning?” I asked.
Santino’s brow furrowed and I saw his skin move a few shades closer to red. He cocked his fist back and punched me in the stomach, knocking the wind out of me.
It took me a few seconds, but I laughed as soon as I could breathe. If I could get him blind-angry enough, he’d snap and kill me quick, rather than dragging it out over the course of hours or days. That was preferable.
“You punch like a Picolli. Where the fuck have you rats been hiding these last couple years?”
“You’ll be beggin’ soon enough, motherfucker. We had to call in some old favors, and promise some new ones, but we managed to regather in New Ashby.”
“New Ashby? Oh yeah, Gavino Bertolini always did like the special way you had of licking his gooch, Santino. I bet he’s letting you know all the time how much better the Bertolinis are than you, huh? Especially while he’s got your wife and daughter giving him a tag-team rim-”
Santino punched me in the face and I was reacquainted with visions of stars. The pistol-whipping under my eye he followed up with was going to swell it shut soon enough too.
I clenched my teeth, holding in the grunt of pain. On the inside I was climbing the winner
’s podium. This final gloat of his wasn’t going anywhere near as well as he had no doubt imagined it. It was a shame my prize was only going to be a quicker death.
“Shut your worthless fuckin’ mouth. At least we’ve got some fucking allies. You’ve got nothin’, punk, you think any of the other families are gonna shed a tear when we go on tour with your rotting body?”
“Should I give a fuck?” I asked.
“Even your own people would rather see you dead. Lorenzo’s been feeding us information, bet you didn’t know that, huh? Must sting to know that even-”
“I killed that piece of shit this morning. Give me your address and I’ll have my people send you his shiny bald head in a little box with a pink bow.”
Santino faltered for a second, I could see him getting hot under that collar and edging towards the danger zone, but he shrugged and tried to regain his composure.
“Well, we would have ended up killin’ him for runnin’ with you in the first place anyway, no big deal.”
“Yeah, true. Hey, if we’re coming clean, let’s talk some more about your daughter. Did you know I corn-holed that bitch? Man, she cried when she took it, but she was back for more the next day. The last thing I wanted was a worthless slut like that again though, so I told her to fuck off.”
Santino’s eyes went from attempted-smug to murder in a blink. With a shaking hand, he brought his gun up and held the barrel against my forehead. The various Picolli, maybe some Bertolini, soldiers leaned forward, enthralled, waiting. Checkmate, motherfuckers.
“Everybody here knows you’re too big a pussy to do it,” I said.
I could feel all that rage in every quiver of the muzzle against my skull, and time slowed to a crawl. Every blink I took seemed to last for minutes. Every breath, for hours.
My job was done. I let my mind wander and memories of Kendall drifted in front of my eyes, blurring reality. I was lucky to have had that, to have had her, even if it wasn’t for long enough. Forever wouldn’t have been long enough with a girl like her anyway. Fuck sake. Goodbye.
