by Liz K. Lorde
I worm myself closer, and get a hold of the killing instrument. Out of the corner of my eye, I see that Blondie’s getting up, and in that brief moment I consider trying to shoot at his legs – but I know that’s not going to cut it. So I hastily move backwards and pop to my feet.
He rushes at me, and just before he crashes into me, I squeeze the trigger and open a hole of red in Blondie’s hip. “Fuck!” He curses. It’s only just a grazing wound.
Blondie then grabs the wrist of my gun hand and points it up into the air. I can feel him shaking slightly, and more importantly I can feel the way that my body is quivering from the mix of adrenaline and fear; still, I’m pushing as hard as I can against him, and we dance momentarily across the room. I manage to fire off another couple of rounds, mostly because of the way we’re struggling. His other hand balls into a fist once he gets me against the wall, and he strikes against my stomach.
The pain threatens to swallow me whole, and instantly I want to drop the gun.
“Stupid bitch,” Blondie huffs, “I’m going to teach you how to die the slow way for what you did. Now drop it.”
“Fuck you,” I croak from the pain, coming up with a better solution than giving him the gun.
I fire off as many bullets as I can, as fast as I can, and when it clicks from being empty, he throws another hay maker straight at me.
Before he gets another word in, feeling the anger and the desperation pounding through me, I slam my head as hard as I can against his nose.
He shoves me hard against the wall before stepping back and stumbling his ass onto the bed, covering his bloody nose.
I bring my hands to the place on my stomach where he hit me, and I’m finally able to catch a real breath – though even that feels like someone coated my lungs with needles. I hadn’t been hit like that since grade school.
When I start to move forward to go for the knife, Blondie, with his nose bleeding and his hand and hip bloody, launches at me. I stand my ground and try to defend myself. He barrels into me, lifting me up off of the ground and forcing me into the bathroom; I feel the cold and hard kiss of the bathtub as we both fall into it – and for a moment I see these blue streaks in my vision, these stars as pain rolls through me.
“You shot me,” he seethes and slaps my face with the back of his hand. “And you broke my fucking nose,” I can barely feel the spit that lands on me my body’s hurting so bad.
The lights turn on, and Blondie turns around and stalks back over to me. He turns on the hot water of the bath, and I try and climb out of the tub as the waters pour from the spicket. When I manage to get my stomach up on the railing of the bath, Blondie grabs a fistful of my hair and yanks me hard towards the spicket, making me shriek from the agony.
“Let go!” I plead, but the man only snickers as he moves my face to the spicket.
“Drink up,” he says, and I feel the scalding hot water blast against my face. I rage against him wildly, and even though I try not to breathe I can feel the burning water going into my nostrils; how sweetly I want to take a breath, but the pain of it wrecks me. Flashes of that terrible, repressed memory, come in waves. “Yeah you like that? You just had to buck, didn’t you,” Blondie whispers as I smack at his body and search for the place where I shot him. “Where’s your meal ticket huh baby?” He says it with evil sincerity, my screams and coughs no doubt pleasing the sick fuck. “Don’t worry your boyfriend’ll be joining you soon.”
Right after he says that, a small spark of hope blooms in my chest when I find the wet bullet hole, and I dig my finger in as deep as I can.
Blondie wails like a demon and lets go of me just long enough, so that I can free myself and throw myself at him like an animal.
Every instinct in my body is to hurt this man.
To live. To see Con again, and to keep Morgana safe.
All that pain doesn’t seem to hurt so much when I drive my fist into Blondie’s face while I’m on top of him. I feel his knee crush into my back, and he kicks me off of him, causing me to bumble forward; I spit on him before I get to my feet, and run over to the bed where the knife rests on top of it. I scoop it off the bed and turn to face Blondie, whose made it a foot before the doorway from the bathroom. My hand and the blade both quiver.
Blondie stops dead in his tracks, and looks at me with his bloody, scrunched up face.
I point the blade at him, and I want to hurt him. But something in the back of my mind pulls me against charging at him, against taking his life.
Blondie picks up on my hesitation, and he starts to creep forward. “You’re no killer.”
I hear the sound of Morgana still crying in that closet, and so I turn around and deftly move to it, opening the closet and turning on the lights. I see her there red faced and tear stained in that same corner, and I hustle over to her, blocking the assassin’s way to her.
Turning my head briefly to the left and to the wall of the closet, I snap back when Blondie opens the door and looks at me, amusement dancing in his eyes that I’m not so eager to pull the trigger on taking his life. No matter how vile he is.
“Stay back,” I warn, holding the knife a little higher.
He steps forward, “Make me.”
With shaking legs I turn the phrase over and over in my head: You must do this.
I pull in a deep breath as Blondie comes forward, as Morgana cries behind me.
And then there’s red.
The bang of a gun, and a hole that I really try not to look at in Blondie’s face. Waves of relief struggle against horrible nerves in my chest and my throat and my stomach; I look away as he collapses lifeless to the floor.
“Viv!” Connifer’s voice rings out like a light in the darkness.
CHAPTER 21
CONNIFER
“CON!” VIVIAN CRIES, dropping the knife and moving over to me, wrapping her lithe arms tightly around my body. She presses her head against my chest, and I hold her as greatly as my strength will permit, trying to catch a look at the piece of shit that broke into my home. Threatened my family.
Yeah.
My family.
“I’m sorry,” she says with her voice breaking up a bit. She looks up at me, and I just search her sad eyes for a moment before kissing her long and deep.
“What are you apologizing for?” I ask her, holding her close to me and running my fingers through her delicate shoulder length black hair. “What happened, Viv.”
She shakes her head and sniffs against a congested nose. “That guy,” she turns her head, then brings it back, “I recognized him from this place. This coffee shop. I saw him this morning and he was a real prick. So when I saw him at the front door I got really suspicious,” her throat moves as she swallows, “really afraid.”
“You were good, Viv,” I tell her, caressing her more, “so good. Just one second,” I tell her before breaking away from her and stepping past the corpse. I holster my weapon.
Morgana’s face is red when I pick her up in my arms and hold her against me, “It’s okay little lass,” I tell her, shushing her and repeating that it’s all okay now.
“We need to move, Viv. Not going to be safe to stay here tonight.”
**
LEO HADN’T MADE IT BACK to HQ yet. Probably still busy fencing all of that loot in the back of the SUV that I rented out.
Can’t believe those Brenaise bastards were actually willing to go as far as they did. Now there’s only one thing on my mind. Revenge. Can’t let that sort of thing stand. Attacking me? That’s one thing. Coming after what’s mine? Not a chance in hell.
Leading Vivian into one of the guest rooms, I open up the door for her and follow in behind her. Had Matthew and Richard go and watch over the baby, and I had to make a couple of phone calls to our cleaners of course. Sometime in the afternoon they’ll be done, and I’ve got to make sure I’ve got a couple of the boys outside at all times now.
The room is simple. Single bed with blue sheets and a darker blue blanket, big enough to fit one pers
on. Nightstand with a digital alarm, small wooden desk with an office chair and an adequately sized dresser along the wall in the center of the place. Floor’s made of concrete, but this whole place was added on about six years ago for times of war anyway – it wasn’t meant exactly for comfort. Vivian sidles over to the bed and sits down, looking like she just wants to collapse, and honestly, I just want to steal that tiredness from her.
I wish I could take away the pain of what she had to endure, but I sure as hell won’t let it go without a response.
Striding over to Vivian, I stand in front of her and left her chin up with two fingers, and have her look at me with those gut-punching sad eyes. “I’ve got you now babe,” I tell her, feeling my jaw tighten at the thought of losing her, “I’m sorry that I let this happen to you. Are you okay?”
Water forms in her eyes, and it looks like they want to escape. She swallows, and I watch her delicate neck move with this effortless beauty, “I know.” It feels like that’s not what she was going to say, that she wanted to be angry at me – hell she knew better than me. “I’ll be alright… my head and my ass are killing me, and my stomach’s sore. But I’ll live.”
“You were right, Viv. I was wrong,” I admit, moving my head from left to right, “I was wrong, Viv. And I’m sorry, but I’m telling you now,” I bring my voice to sotto, “I will never let you be put in that kind of situation again.” My chest tightens at even thinking about saying those words I never thought that I’d say. Have I forgotten how to say them? The way that my throat tightens makes me think so, and I can see it in her eyes that she’s waiting for me to spit it out. “I love you, Viv,” I finally say. “I’m in love with you,” I close my eyes and take a breath, “and if I never had the chance to tell you that. If I lost you tonight? I’d have ended up like my father. Boozing and whoring and gambling to an early grave; lose my will and become a spinless fucking coward.” Anger runs up my spine at the thought of him, and when I open my eyes, Vivian’s standing there with me, her hands on my hips. “I just know it, Viv. You saved me,” I confess from the deepest parts of my soul. She holds me tighter, and my heart pulls with warmth. “If it weren’t for you, Vivian Blackwoode, I’d never be a better man.”
I press my head against hers, so that our noses are touching, and I let out the heaviest breath of my life – the one that I’ve been carrying with me since birth. After a moment, she kisses my lips and moves her hands to my back, “I love you too, Connifer Morgenstern, but you’re wrong.” I narrow my eyes at her. “You wouldn’t end up like you dad,” she says it with such certainty my heart skips a beat, “you’re already a good man. Start owning it.”
My lips curl into a grin and I crush my lips against her, taking in all of the warmth and passion of her beauty – hoping to steal it forever, to nurture and care for it; to house it within me ‘till my bones are old and gone and there’s nothing left of me. I press her down against the bed and bite against her lip, my cock getting harder and harder by the second as it presses firmly against my black jeans. And in that instant, I know that I’ll carry her love with me from this life into the next. She moans our my name, and in turn, I growl out her own, hurriedly stripping of her clothes: Fuck I need to rip them off of her at this point. When she’s down to just her panties and her beautiful tits are there for me to drink in, I kiss down her neck, sucking and biting and marking her as mine. “You’re mine,” I whisper between the kisses, running my lips along her shoulder bones that frame her perfect body.
“Your’s,” she husks, pushing her head back against the pillow and letting me eat her out to my hearts content after such a stressful night. Damn right I’m going to make my baby girl cum.
“THIS IS THE PART WHERE I say that was the best orgasm of my life, right?” Vivian jests, turning in bed so that she’s resting on her side, her chin sitting in the palm of her hand.
“Just wait,” I tell her, “cause that gold medal is going to get taken away pretty fast,” I smile at her and move to my side as well.
Viv laughs, “Looking forward to it.” She works her lips in a subtle tic, “so.”
“Oh no,” I reply, “nothing good has ever started with so.”
She looks at me for a moment, completely quiet, “You remember that session you did on me?” I nod my head. “Yesterday when I was pissed? Which, you know, I’m sorry about, by the way. I was just… being emotional and stupid. I went down to that chapel you showed me, and I can’t say why for sure, but something clicked in my mind.”
“Interesting,” I muse aloud, “that does happen from time to time. What clicked?”
“I remembered something about my mother, back when I was just a kid,” she pauses for a while, and I can tell this is deeply personal, whatever it was she experienced. “I’ve had these dreams, these nightmares, for a long, long time. And I could never understand why.” Vivian brushes back some of her hair, “my mom drowned me in a bathtub. I guess it was repressed memories or some shit, like you said, because I never… never once thought about that.”
“Christ. I’m sorry, Viv.” I sling an arm over her back and pull her in closer to me, so that she can bury her face against my chest. “At least you’ve some peace.”
“Not yet,” she admits softly, “I think there’s something that I have to do first.”
“Cryptic.”
She looks up at me and smiles, “You’ll be coming with me.”
“Oh will I?”
Viv nods very sure of herself.
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” I whisper.
ONCE VIV FALLS ASLEEP and I get a little more time with her, I quietly slip out of bed and creep over to the door so that I don’t wake her. Later, when Leo’s back from doing his part of the job, I’m waiting for him just outside HQ at the front door, leaning up against the old and red brick wall. The compound itself has been around for nearly eighty years, and it’s tucked away between several packing facilities and residential buildings. The surrounding perimeter is gated with barbed wire, and a number of cars are scattered in the parking lot, some within the painted white lines, others stupidly parked wherever.
The two men watching the front gate entrance wheel it open for Leonardo, and he struts his way to me in his white three piece suit. “Ah,” he vocalizes loudly. “You got that look in your face, Con.”
I step over to him, my arms folded over one another, “I do.”
Leo smirks to show me his pearly white teeth, his head of dark green colored hair a royal mess, “Well if you care at all, our bait and switch was a wild success. But please,” he cocks his head, “by all means. Ruin my night with bad news. It’s on the rise I hear, for us.”
“Some cheap, back-alley stain that made it into the world came by while I was out,” I start to explain—
“Shit,” Leo’s face loses all glimmer of fun.
“Yeah. The Brenaise moved against us. Against me, and they roughed up Vivian pretty bad… they were going to kill her, Leo. They didn’t give a shit.” Leo’s hands find his pockets, and his line of sight dips to the ground’s pavement. “Thank my quite frankly way-bigger-than-yours sack that I got there in time, and that the lass was foxy enough to keep cool,” I clench my teeth and feel my jaw set, “look. I need your permission for this. We can’t just let them get away with that.”
“No,” his answer comes so fast it physically hurts in my chest.
Lurching my jaw forward, my mouth makes a small o, “What?”
Leo brings his gaze to level with me, “I said no, Con.”
My nostrils flare and pins dance across the length of my spine; in my head I’m saying something calm and cool and measured, “Why the fuck not,” is what comes out instead.
“The bloodshed has to be calculated,” he says with deadly, no argument permitted calm. “This isn’t something you decide with your dick.”
“I’m deciding with my heart,” I say far more loudly than I know I should have. But I don’t stop there, I close the last distance between us and I get in L
eo’s face so that our noses nearly touch. “Tell me no,” I encourage, the malice dripping from my tone and the rage pumping thick and hot in my heart. “Tell me no, and pretend for two seconds of your life that you give a shit. Pretend that it was Tabitha, go on. What wouldn’t you do for that girl?”
“You’re on a Hotstreak, Con,” he roars, not backing down an inch. “You know what happens to a man when he hits it big like that? You got a girl going for you – a girl that I know you care about—“
“That I love.” The word resonates throughout my whole body, and for once in my life I’m not afraid to say it out loud.
“That may be,” Leonardo growls, “but you’ve got a girl, and you’ve got a kid, and you just helped me pull off a score that’s going to bring us a lot of good. That’s goin’ to do the people a lot of good.”
“What are you fucking getting at, why can’t you just work with me on this?”
“Because it all matters. Because that’s what a Hotstreak is, didn’t you ever hear pops talk about that? You get hot hands in basketball, you keep shooting and you keep scoring – but it doesn’t last forever.” Leo pushes out a hard breath through his nose. “You think that it does, you think that, that nothing can stop you. But things don’t last forever. Every shot that you make you hold the chance to miss, and when you do? That blowback is going to get everyone in danger. When the time is right? That’s when I’ll say yes, brother. That’s when we’ll make them pay. Now find your fucking zen.” Leo walks forward and bumps my shoulder with his own, walking right past me and into the compound.
God dammit. The anger seethes just beneath my skin, and I close my eyes tight wanting nothing more than to make those bastards pay for what they put her through.
I have to accept this. I have to.
Fuck.
CHAPTER 22
CONNIFER
IT’S NEARING THREE PM when I hear a loud series of knocks on the door of my apartment. Vivian’s face down and ass bare having passed out for another nap; good thing our guys work quick or I’d be having a real bad time explaining why I had a dead man in my closet.
