Can't Let Her Go

by Georgia Le Carre

  He screams like a stuck pig and drops the knife. He never expected this. I kick him full force in the groin, and he bends over in agony.

  “Not so nice when you’re on the receiving end, is it?” I growl.

  A solid punch to his temple, and he hits the floor. I’m about to kick him in the head when the Goomba roars.

  He must have heard Anakin’s scream. I don’t have much time, but I have enough to jump over the bar. As I land, I feel the Goomba’s big meaty fist miss my head by an inch. I have no doubt what will happen if he hits me. I grab a thick whisky glass and throw it at him as I turn. It misses his neck and strikes him in the chest … and does absolutely nothing.

  But that split-second delay is enough.

  Because Anakin always keeps a pistol under the bar in his town house and I’m guessing he has one here too. He’s a creature of habit and he likes to have his weapons within reach. I know that and I think the Goomba does too, because he’s lunging over the bar to get me before I can reach the gun. He almost does. His fingers grab my collar even as mine get the gun. As he jerks me back, I manage to stick the gun under my arm and pull the trigger.

  The sound fills the room, but the Goomba doesn’t release me. I fire a second time. He grunts. I jerk away and whirl. He faces me, two bloody holes in his chest. He’s not going to live and we both know it. Yet, he won’t give up. A snarl fills his face.

  I fire a third time.

  The Goomba’s head jerks as the bullet passes into his brain. He’s dead before he hits the floor.

  I pant and watch for a moment. I want to make sure he’s dead.

  Anakin groans.

  I climb over the bar.

  On the floor, Anakin tries to move, but the pain in his useless arm is too great. He is whimpering and cowering like the coward he is.

  Katya is sitting on her haunches over him.

  I wonder what is going on until I see the knife in her hand. “Don’t,” I shout.

  She turns to look at me, then she smiles sadly at me. Before I can do anything, she lifts both her hands and plunges the knife straight into Anakin’s chest. He starts to flop and that’s a bad sign. She’s hit something vital. His eyes bulge and blood comes out of his mouth.

  Katya backs away … perhaps awed by her own action.

  I didn’t want her to be the one who did it. I can tell her that this will haunt her for the rest of her life, but I think she probably knows that.

  She looks at me, and her face is already showing the bruises.

  I stand over him. His eyes find mine. I can see he’s dying. “You betrayed me,” he rasps. “You betrayed me.”

  I shake my head in disbelief, then I crouch over him. I lean close to his ear. “Go to hell, Anakin.”

  “I’ll be waiting there for you,” he gasps with his last breath.

  I stand and go to her. I take the knife out of her hand. “I would have done it, Katya.”

  “I wanted to share the burden with you,” she whispers.

  I have seen grown men, hardened criminals who wouldn’t have had the guts to do this to the great Anakin. And deep respect for Katya’s incredible spirit rises in me, but with it comes sadness. There’s blood on her face and I wipe it away gently. “Oh, Katya. I didn’t want that for you.”

  “And I didn’t want it for you.”

  I hang my head. “I’m sorry, I was so pathetic I let him hit you. I wanted to stop him, but I couldn’t move. Please forgive me.”

  “There’s nothing to forgive, my darling. You had your monsters to deal with. And you did. We’re in this together. Sometimes you fall and sometimes I’ll fall. We’ll forgive each other and carry on.”

  My chest hurts. I never thought there was such goodness in the world.

  “What do we do now?” she asks.

  “Now, we find a way to blame a faceless robber. The doc is gone, so we have only our story to tell. I know the rest of the gang and I think I can convince them. They’re not in love with Anakin.”

  “What about these bodies?”

  “I know a service that takes care of stiffs. They’ll handle the cleanup.”

  She frowns. “What will we do?”

  “We’ll walk away. There are lots of people who will want to step into Anakin’s shoes and take over his turf. There will be wars, but we’ll be gone. We’ll be in Florida.”

  Her eyes widen. “We will?”

  “Yeah, we will.”

  She throws her arms around me with joy. For the first time, I hold her as I’ve wanted to hold her since Sutgot. Now I have the right to do it. To tell her I love her. To offer her something: a life together, a family.

  “I know you don’t love me, but I love you,” she whispers.

  Tears run down my face. “Fuck, Katya. How many ways do I have to show you that I love you? You are everything to me. I love you with my body, my tongue, my hands, my dick. I might even have always loved you. From the moment I saw you, I wanted to make you mine, but I was a lost soul and I didn’t believe I was worthy of you.”

  She touches my wet cheek. “You are worthy, Hunter. You are very worthy. I knew you were always meant for me. Always. But you kept pushing me away.”

  “I was an asshole. I know.” I kiss her then, a desperate, happy, sad, lost kiss. “I couldn’t see how we could make it, but I know now, we are meant to be.”

  She smiles, her face already swollen. “Do I look terrible?”

  “No worse than me.”

  She laughs. “That’s horrible.”

  Sergei, one of Anakin’s security men runs into the room. He’s carrying a gun. I block Katya’s body and face him. “Put the gun away, Sergei. No need for loyalty to a dead man.”

  For a moment, he hesitates. “Are you sure?”

  I nod.

  He holsters his gun and walks over to Anakin’s still body. He shakes his head in disbelief. The man he had feared for so long was dead. For a long while, he did nothing, then he kicked the corpse. “Good. It’s about time someone stood up to the sick, twisted fuck.” He walks over to me. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”

  As we watch, he touches a level in a shelf of books and it slides back to reveal a door. He opens it and switches on a light. White fluorescent light fills the space.

  Katya and I follow him inside.

  I hear Katya gasp in astonishment.

  It is a torture room full of all kinds of elements of torment. Some I’m familiar with as they’ve been used on me, but others are a shock even to me. A tiny metal cage, bars on the ceiling with leather fasteners, the type of metal table you find in a coroner’s office, surgical utensils, whips, electric saws, a sort of rocking horse with a huge wooden dildo that comes out of it every time it rocks. It would have torn the insides of a rider. My God, what he did to those poor girls. What a racket he was running. Bringing in innocent virgins from backward little villages of Russia and paying off their dirt-poor uneducated parents. No wonder he got away with it for so long. No one here even knew they existed.

  Even knowing what a sadistic brute Anakin was, it’s still a shock to learn he was a serial killer.

  “This would have been my fate,” Katya whispers.

  I pull her towards me and hold her tightly. “Not any more, my darling. Not anymore.”

  Hunter

  (One week later)

  I wake up suddenly in our little apartment in Florida. The dream is still fresh in my mind.

  I got lost. My parents didn’t sell me. I got lost in a funfair.

  I was standing at the edge of the Ghost Ride crying when a man with shiny shoes approached me. He said he would help me find my parents. He took me by the hand and led me away.

  “What is it darling?” Katya asks next to me.

  I turn towards her. “My parents didn’t sell me, Katya. Anakin stole me from a funfair.”

  She sits up. “What?”

  “Somehow, I got separated from my parents. I was crying and he found me.”

  “Oh my God. That means t
hey’re out there somewhere, probably still hurting, still waiting and hoping you’ll come back. You have to look for them.”

  I nod slowly. I remember a woman with the laughing blue eyes and I know I have to find her again. They must both be still alive. They have to be. I jump out of bed. I’m too excited to sleep.

  “What are you doing?” Katya asks.

  “I’m going to call someone I know. He’s a brilliant investigator.”

  “At this time of the night?”

  “Yeah. He never sleeps.” I go into the living room and dial Tom.

  “Hunter,” he rasps. I can hear him lighting a cigarette. “What can I do for you?”

  “I need you to find some parents who lost their son at a funfair twenty-one years ago.”

  “I need a bit more than that go on. America is a big place, son.”

  And suddenly it comes to me. A blue-eyed woman saying, ‘ … and where do we live? We live in Milwaukee, Wis-con-sin.’ “Wisconsin,” I say triumphantly. “In Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They lost their boy in Milwaukee. They’re both Irish. The woman has blue eyes and curly dark-brown hair and the man is tall and broad. He has dark hair and brown eyes.”

  “Okay. I can start my search with that. If you think of anything else, give me a call.”

  I end the call. I walk over to the window and stare out into the night. The city lights never go off. I feel Katya’s arms come around my chest and her body presses against my back. She’s naked and instantly I feel my dick become stiff as a rod. She kisses my back. My heart feels as if it is being squeezed. “I need to fuck you. Are you wet?” I ask.

  “Soaking,” she admits. “You know how my pussy is always begging for your cock to fill her up.”

  I turn around and grab her by her delicious ass cheeks. I carry her to the dining table and lay her on it. Opening her sweet thighs, I roll her hips right off the table surface. Her wet pussy quivers as I sink inside her to the hilt. She stills, as she always does, when I don’t prime her first. She feels as hot and tight as a damp fist around me. I wait to let her muscles get used to the stretch.

  When she’s ready for more, she arches her back and rocks her hips restlessly. Begging. She needs this as much as I do.

  I withdraw and slam back in so brutally, she almost shoots off the table.

  Bending forward, I capture her mouth and slip my tongue into it. She likes that. Likes sucking my tongue while I fuck her. While she sucks my tongue greedily I ram into her. It’s a hard, frenzied fuck. My hardness filling her over and over again while those mewling noises she makes that I love so much are echoing around us. We come together. So hard — I see stars.

  “Hunter …”

  “Yes, my love.”

  “We will find them. No matter what.”

  I smile at her. “I hope so, my love. It’s a hole in my soul.”

  Tom

  I cross off the next name on my list. I’m half-way through and I already feel like a prick. The hope I rustle up when I first call and the disappointment they feel when it is not their son isn’t for the faint-hearted. I pick up the phone and dial the next number.

  A woman answers, “Hello.”

  “Hello. Is this Mrs. Quinn?”

  “Yes.”

  “My name is Tom Watson and I’m a private investigator. I’m working for a man who wants to find his parents. I’m calling you because I believe you lost your son twenty-one years ago and I’m just trying to ascertain if he is your son. Would you mind answering a few questions? Nothing intrusive …”

  For a couple of seconds there is no sound, just her soft breathing. “Yes, of course,” she croaks.

  “Did you lose your son twenty-one years ago?”

  “Yes, we lost our boy twenty-one years ago.” Her voice is shaky, but there’s already a stirring of hope in it.

  “Are you Irish?”

  “Yes, yes, we are.”

  “Was he three years old when you lost him?”

  “Yes.” Her voice has dropped to a frightened whisper as if she’s afraid she won’t be able to answer the next question correctly.

  “Did you lose your boy in a funfair?”

  “Yes, we lost Sean in a funfair.” The hope is in her voice is at the full-blown stage.

  Unfortunately, I got this far once with a woman before we hit a blank. “Do you have curly dark brown hair and blue eyes?”

  “I do,” she says in a rush.

  “Do you use the expression, ‘stop acting the maggot’?”

  At that moment, she starts sobbing.

  I lean back. I found Hunter’s parents. Actually, I found Sean’s parents.

  Epilogue

  Katya

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoHnffhBwqs&

  (this one’s for you)

  Our hotel room faces a secluded beach, trickier to find, but once you find it, you have lots of privacy. The sand is littered with driftwood and skipping stones, and the ocean looks sparkling blue where the sun dances over the waves. It stretches farther than I can see. Russia is on the other side someplace. We sent money back home for my parents and I’ve offered to educate my sister here in America. My father has agreed to send her when she’s a bit older.

  I miss my family so much, but Sean says he will take me to Russia again. He tells me to hurry up and get pregnant fast, so we can take a grandchild to my parents.

  The sun comes in through the window and warms my skin. I’m thankful, very thankful for being here. It’s sunny and it looks like no place I’ve ever been before. This is our little holiday. Sean, yeah, we found out his name isn’t Hunter. His real name is Sean.

  Hunter is just what Anakin decided to call him. We came here to meet his parents. It was the most beautiful touching thing I have ever seen. The way his mother held herself so stiffly until she laid eyes on him and then she just fell apart. Her boy. It was her baby boy all grown up. She cried and cried. I cried too. His father cried. Sean cried. All of us were crying for her. For her terrible, terrible pain.

  For nearly an hour, she simply held Sean’s hand while tears poured out of her eyes. No one said a word. She’d prepared a mountain of food for us. Every time I looked at her, I felt more and more sorry for her. What a poor thing. Her whole life had been ruined by Anakin. She had missed out on so much.

  After lunch, I told Sean I didn’t want to live in Florida anymore. I had hyped the alligators up in my mind. They weren’t all that, after all. What I really wanted was to live in Milwaukee. I said I thought we could make a nice life here. He wants to start a pub. An Irish pub and Milwaukee would be perfect for that. He hugged me and told me I was a gift to him. A gift from the Gods for all the suffering he had endured. Without me, he was sure, he would have had an early grave in some dank lake.

  “Like it?” Sean asks as his arms wrap around me. He automatically kneads my breast, the way I crave it.

  “It’s beautiful,” I answer. “Thank you for bringing me here.”

  I can feel his erection slide along my thigh and I shiver. He wants me and despite our many couplings, I always want him. I want him in ways I never knew one could want a man.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he says as he nuzzles my neck.

  I moan.

  “Wanna screw?” he asks.

  I shiver with laughter. “You know, I always want to screw.”

  His hand slides up my skirt to my bare pussy, and he finds me wet. I keep it bare for him as much as I can because I know he likes to reach for it whenever he wants it.

  “I can tell you want it,” he says as he pulls me away from the window and back to the bed. Sean doesn’t always want sex in the same way. He surprises me, and that is a wonderful thing. He bends me over the bed, my behind high in the air. He spanks me and I giggle. Spreading my legs wide, he swipes his tongue along my sensitive seam. I wriggle suggestively and he sucks my folds and clit into his mouth. His grip is so tight I can’t move. He sucks until I climax, my juices pouring into his mouth and running down his chin.

  He
stands, wipes his chin, then takes his cock and rubs it along my pussy. I begin to quake inside. I almost never have just one orgasm. It’s always two or three for me.

  “Want it?” he asks.

  “Yessssssss, please.”

  He pushes his huge cock into me, and I gasp. Every time he does this, he makes me gasp. It always hurts a tiny bit, but I’ve never wanted anything half so much. He spanks me again and it burns. It makes me feel like a bad little girl, a very bad little girl. We have this game. Sometimes I call him Daddy and I talk dirty to him. It turns him wild with lust when I play the dirty girl.

  He starts to stroke, as I feel him slam deeper and deeper into me. He grabs my bottom and squeezes as he slides in and out. Then, he reaches around and presses on my clit.

  “Oh, God,” I groan, and press back onto his thrusts. I want more and more. I want him to never stop.

  “If I hurt you,” he begins.

  “You will never hurt me. I can take it,” I say. “Give it to me deep and hard. Fill my pussy with your cum.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  His best is more than good enough. He rams all the way in. I start to pant. Little screams escape me. He grabs my hair, pulls, and twists my head back. I found out last week that I actually like it when he’s rough with me. It adds another dimension to our mating. I want all I can get from him.

  “Make me cum. I’m sooo close.”

  He laughs and drives deep.

  “Yesssss,” I hiss. “Don’t stop.”

  He kisses me even as he thrusts faster. I start to suck on his tongue. I love doing that. Once I came from just sucking his tongue.

  I close my eyes, savoring the sensation of his tongue filling my mouth and his cock so deep inside me. Almost instantly, I start to climax. I can think of nothing after that. The waves of heat start to arrive. I can feel him letting go as well. We will come together.

  Later tonight, I have a surprise for him. I can’t wait to see his face when I show him the tiny little shoes. They’re so tiny … they will make him cry.