28. Epilogue
CRUE
Five Years Later
“ H ow’s it going, big buddy?” Jenson Holly delivers a solid pat on my back, just shy of the exit wound scar that Matteo Baronne’s gun immortalized on my body.
I don’t know how I survived that day. I learned later that the bullet had missed the important bits slushing around inside of me, but I do recall the kiss of death that was placed squarely on my brow. Everything else is a blur.
I’ve deluded myself into believing is that my shadow didn't guide me to death. Instead, it pulled me from the driver’s seat and took control. It willed my expired corpse to make it out of Matteo’s villa and all the way to the hospital where it handed the reins over to the doctors who saved me.
It’s a pretty little fantasy, isn’t it?
It’s the same one I would tell anyone who knew my sordid past. Because when you’re like me, more monster than man, why not have a fantastic story to go with it?
“Where’d you go there, buddy?” Another pat, this time lower.
The gesture makes me itch uncomfortably. It’s not the kind I can scratch. It’s deeper than that. Way down, behind the muscle fibers... or maybe I’m not the one made uncomfortable by his show of fatherly affection. The black spot in the back of my mind is irritated by the itch. It is roused from slumber once more, ravenous and not for the burger meat I’m flipping over the barbecue.
“Grub should be ready in a couple of minutes,” I answer, listening to sizzle of meat juice spraying over the hot coals. My head turns to the children playing in the distance.
“Crazy, isn’t it?” he asks.
“What is?” Me? Playing pretend in a garden full of people? Most of them are parents, some of them are second wives or husbands playing their own roles as devoted affection givers. One of them is a nanny, maybe only ten years’ older than the child she’s meant to be watching. She is not watching it though. Instead, she’s lazing on a sunbed in front of my pool, scrolling through her phone and twirling strands of her blonde hair. There’s probably no need for a nanny with all these parents around. Their ears prick up at every child’s cry, and they check the group of fourteen to see if comes from one of theirs.
No harm will come to them here. Not with eagle-eyed hens on guard duty.
“How quickly time passes,” Jenson sighs. “I remember the day Jeremy was born as if it was yesterday. Now he’s running, talking and...”
“Making a mess of my hydrangeas.” They’re not mine, but Jenson’s stroll into the past isn’t something I want to deal with. I’ve given him the plastered-on, politician smile, and welcomed him over. I’ve offered beer and burgers. What more does he want from me?
“Oh, shoot. Sorry about that Crue. Let me go grab the little troublemaker,” he says and does his best dad power walk over to his son. I must say, he’s rather good at it, too. He makes it look as if he’s storming forward, while in reality he’s trudging at a snail’s pace.
At least my ploy to get him away worked. Now I can focus on making lunch. The children would tear me apart if I served overcooked food. Without societal conditioning battered into them, their innate violence shines through at the smallest of annoyances. I’ve grown to respect tiny humans a lot more, having gotten to know them.
“It happened again,” one of the mothers says at my side. I don’t remember her name, and I won’t bother learning it. She’s whispering, as if to remain inconspicuous, but it comes out so loud she may as well have screamed the words at the top of her lungs.
Three little words that make me sweat in the best way. That make my heart thump and my head spin. Fuck, if I’m not careful, my cock’s going to slither out of the bottom of my shorts.
“You can’t be serious,” another says, clutching invisible pearls around her neck.
I lean closer, eavesdropping eagerly.
I’m sure many men have been in this position, listening to a group of women talking about them. Though, I don’t believe their intentions are the same as mine. I’d rather go without, than pursue a sexual relationship with any of these women. They don’t fit my idea of a fuckable piece of meat. Hell, the juicy burger patties are a more tantalizing offer.
But I’m aching, and throbbing as her lips part.
“He’s killed again.”
Ah, fuck, there it is. Her delivery was poor, and held none of the same sense of whimsy and mysticism that some of the mothers use to convey the message. But it stiffens me like a rock, none-the-less.
“No...” Another waves her hand through the air, appalled.
“Yes. Very much yes. It was Pete Abernathy.” There is another loud whisper. It’s as if she’s trying to tempt me. As if she wants me to hear.
“No, not Pete.” The pearl-clutcher sighs. “That means he—”
“I know what it means, Deloris,” the first snaps back, annoyed at all the interruptions to the very important news she’s trying to share. “The newspaper article says the killer’s note revealed disturbing connections between Pete Abernathy and Lisa Morton’s disappearance. Together with other names from decades ago.”
Wrong. My note gave explicit details of where to find firsthand accounts of the insidious relationship Pete Abernathy forced Lisa Morton into. My question is, can you force a dead woman into anything? And she’d been dead a while, by the time I found him. Pete kept her in a barrel of formaldehyde until he needed a woman’s loving touch. Her skin was hanging loose and on the verge of slipping straight off her bones. It was a truly grizzly sight. Not unlike the one I left for the Albuquerque police department to find.
“Boo,” Fiametta giggles behind me. I get a fright and drop the patty on my spatula. It breaks into pieces, many catching alight atop the coals. She steps up to my side, and slides her hand across my back and around my waist, settling it into a loose grip around my now tented swim trunks.
“Steady, old boy,” she says, using her swollen belly as the perfect barrier between me and the other hens nesting under an airy pink canopy. Her touch makes my legs buckle. One stroke is all it would take to push me off the deep end. I want to bend her over this barbecue and drive my meat into her. To slip and slide while my roaring fire matches the one beneath the metal grate that’s cooking our lunch.
“You don’t want to make the old ladies jealous, do you?” she teases and strokes me again. A rumble barrels out of my chest, and echoes off the barbecue’s curved lid.
“That won’t make it any easier.”
“Who says I want it to be easy,” she whispers in the sultry way that turns my mind into mush.
“If you’re not careful, Little Flame—” I growl.
She strokes me again, twice this time, and hard enough to make my shorts ride up my ass in a wedgy. “You’ll what?” She sticks her tongue out at me.
“Take you inside and fucking destroy you.”
“You, my loving husband, are tending the fire.”
She faces the ladies, who are still fake whispering about Pete Abernathy. Then she looks at the dad’s in the distance, drinking beers and laughing aloud. Then the kids, but her eyes don’t stay on them long given her devious intentions toward me.
“We all know that once you’ve started, you won’t stop until you’ve given these people a perfect meal.”
Finally, once Fiametta finishes scanning the lawn and is sure we aren’t being observed, her hand slips down the front of my trunks and grazes my yearning length.
“Jesus, fuck,” I sputter a little too loudly, and the woman look over at us.
“He just heard about Pete,” Fiametta says. My cock flexes and her grip tightens. I bite down on the inside of my cheek to keep from making another unwanted, attention-grabbing utterance.
“It’s a crying shame,” one of the women hollers back.
“You know, I don’t agree,” another says. It’s Deloris, fanning wind onto her face with a tablet computer.
“Me neither,” With Fiametta’s swollen belly blocking the view, she strokes again, and this time without stopping. I flip a burger patty, while sweat forms on the rim of my brow.
“I think whoever’s doing this has to be good,” Deloris adds. “It’s not for sport.”
That’s where you’re wrong, Deloris .
“He’s cleaning up our neighborhood.”
“Have you lost your senses?” the one who brought it up blurts out.
“I think he’s a hero,” Fiametta says. “Cleaning up messes we didn’t know the neighborhood had.”
My cock is in a constant state of flex and release with every word my wife speaks. Fiametta’s rhythmic motions snare each pulse in thrusting pleasure. It’s devilish, disgusting, and so fucking hot.
“Fiametta, stop.” I say. The others will think it’s out of embarrassment for her agreeing that the killer must have some good in him. Fiametta will know it’s because I can’t take any more of this.
Yet, she doesn’t listen, squeezing her fist even tighter as it rides over the head of my cock, which is soaked in precum. She replaces stroking, with a twist and pull motion over the swollen, sensitive tip.
“Well, this settles it. Our neighborhood has officially become crazy town.” The first speaker throws her arms up in surrender.
Can I do the same? Would Fiametta take pity on me if I did, and stop taunting me? I doubt it. She’s become quite the tease in recent years.
“And you, mister, are going to come with me,” she hooks her free hand under my arm closest to her, and pulls me in the opposite direction of the woman under the cloth canopy.
“But the burgers,” I say.
“Jenson, do you mind taking over,” she calls to the man, who just gave his son a quiet reprimand. One that did nothing to stop him from destroying Fiametta’s flowers.
“Sure thing,” Jenson says, jogging over this time instead of doing his dad walk.
Fiametta pulls me through a narrow passage in the garden where no one but her normally ventures. At the end of the stretch of lawn, a small, ornate metal gate leads onto chiseled stone, where the laundry hanger holds a few wet towels.
“What are you doing?” I ask. But she’s a woman on a mission, and she is already undoing the double knotted tie that holds my trunks up.
“You’re going to give it to me.” Her voice is so soft compared to her ravenous actions. She lowers my trunks and my cock bounces free. “Or I’m going to take it. Either way.”
She spins around and bends forward, shoving her round ass out. The soft material of the beach skirt that’s wrapped around her hips brushes against my tip, and I do the same cheek bite as before to still a thunderous roar.
Can’t have our dear neighbors knowing what’s happening. They would think we’re lunatics. Well, most of them already know I am, without suspecting it’s me. They hold Fiametta in very high regard, however.
“What about Adison?” I’m already hoisting the skirt over her ass, when the question leaves my lips.
“I asked Loretta to watch her.”
Loretta is Jenson’s partner. That’s why he came seeking some manly attention while the woman were talking.
I peel Fiametta’s bikini bottom to the side, and press the hood of my cock against her entrance. I realize her teasing was tactical. A few strokes in my most vulnerable moment, to drive me straight to the edge without finishing.
We’ll be done here in no time.
“Shove it in, Crue,” she snaps her head over her shoulder as she glares at me. “You know how horny I get when I’m pregnant.”
I also know how little time we have to explore each other’s bodies with a now five-year-old daughter running through the house.
“Your wish is my command.” I buck my hips and drive my length into Fiametta. A low moan escapes her lips. Her hands stretch out over the wall, and her fingertips latch onto it, while mine dig into her hips.
I count my thrusts as I plow Fiametta. Seventeen. A shameful display before my knees buckles and my body vibrates at some unknown frequency that forces an eruption out of me. But Fiametta doesn’t care. She continues slamming herself backwards into me, extracting my seed while feral sounds of giddy passion trickle from her.
She doesn’t stop there. Instead, she drops to her knees and grabs my soaked cock by the base. She slips the end between her plump, hungry lips and sucks me dry. Licks me clean.
And readies me for another round.
But we can’t and knowing it makes my balls ache.
“I’ll see you there in a minute,” she says, adjusting her bikini bottoms and the skirt. “We’re going to cut the cake after lunch.”
“Understood.”
“And sing. You too, this time.” She pecks me on the cheek and her delicious scent still clings to her breath.
“I will.”
I head inside through the backdoor to clean off and to change into a nearly identical pair of swim trunks. Had Fiametta not left the others in a soaking mess of precum and spit, they would be impossible to tell apart.
Then I head back outside, noting all the smiling faces around the white painted table we hired for the day. At the head of it sits my daughter, Adison, clapping her hands feverishly at the sight of her party table.
“Hey, Crue, just in time,” Jenson says. I was away longer than I thought, when I notice the discarded paper plates with lunch scraps on them.
“That’s me,” I say, but don’t elaborate. “Perfectly punctual...” Completely content, happy husband, Crue.
Where does the monster fit into the mix?
“Daddy,” Adison launches herself out of her chair and sprints toward me. She’s been so busy with her friends I’ve barely seen her all day. I catch her when she gets to me and hoist her high into the air, spinning around to happy awwws from the other parents.
It’s only then, when I see the joy on my daughter’s face and feel a smile of my own brewing across my face, that Jenson’s words sink in.
Five years. Longer than it took for my mother to pass, and the men who did it to die. It really does feel like yesterday that I could hold Adison’s entire body in the palm of my hand. Now it takes an effort, not much, but enough to realize it, to hold her over my head and fly her around like an airplane.
Soon, she’ll be too big for even this. Not because of my inability to do it, but because she’ll no longer want to be treated like a child.
And then what?
I am feeling the empty nest decades before it happens .
“Okay, Daddy ,” Fiametta says at my side, and it tickles my brain in the best possible way. “It’s time.” She’s holding Adison’s birthday cake — a big, red lady-bug with sparkling bits and sprinkles layered over the top.
“Happy birthday, Addy. I... I love you,” The words have never felt comfortable in my mouth, and it still shows.
I can fake so much these days. A day job selling guns at a hunting store, very similar to the one I had in New York. Friendships the other guys believe are real, which are just set dressing in the life I’ve built for myself. I even go to darts’ nights on Tuesdays with a few of the other guys.
But love eludes me. I know I feel something for both Fiametta and Adison. I have a strange sensation inside my chest that I believe is love. But without anything to compare it to, how can I know? So, I say it as often as I can, and with as much meaning as I can, because I want them to know it.
It’s the only part about myself I want to be real. And my family makes me believe it is. Every day, in every way.
“We love you too, Daddy.” Adison hugs me as I lower her to my hip.
“Love you lots and lots,” Fiametta giggles, and stands on her toes to peck my cheek again.
One of the boys at the table shouts eeuh and pulls a funny face, and the rest of the children — and most of the grownups join in the laughter — me included.
Adison heads to her seat once more, and my wife and I stand behind her. We light the candles, sing her happy birthday song, and bask in the glow and beauty of this new life.
I kiss her when the cheering begins.
Oh, how I’ve changed, my Little Flame.
And it’s all your fault.
We are fire and ruin, madness and mayhem.
Branded by a love that devours, and leaves nothing behind.
THE END.
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