Chapter 40
CHAPTER FORTY
CASPER
Iswiped the bag off Bellatrix’s shoulder and ran up the stairs. She huffed and puffed behind me. By the time she made it to the door, I’d already dropped the bag next to the nightstand, jumped onto the bed, and leaned back with my hands clamped behind my head.
“What the fuck was that?” she hissed.
“Me being a gentleman.” I lifted a shoulder. “Carried your bag up the stairs for you.”
“Gentleman usually ask first.”
“And here I thought women liked surprises.” I grinned.
“Yeah? Well, something tells me you don’t talk to a lot of women.”
“Only the ones I’m fucking,” I said. “But I suppose you’re right. We don’t do much talking then either.”
She rolled her eyes but I could tell she was getting that jealous streak again. She didn’t like me mentioning other women. She really didn’t like the idea of me fucking them. And she really, really didn’t like that she didn’t like that. Which made me like it more.
Instead of asking her about it, ?cause I was sure she would deny it anyway, I threw out an arm and gestured to the room. We were just going to pretend she’d never been here before. “Feel free to make yourself at home, myshka. The place is yours.”
“For how long?” she asked, her nose turned up as her eyes skimmed the walls, the furniture, and everything else that clearly wasn’t to her liking.
“Until I say it isn’t,” I answered.
I didn’t have an end game. I didn’t have a plan either.
I was doing what I usually did and making shit up as I went along.
It was more fun that way. Never knew when you were done playing.
You just woke up one day and suddenly the board was gone.
That’s how it was for me and that’s how it was for Donnie too, shortly after I found him in that basement and gave him a name.
I didn’t care how fucked you were. Everyone deserved a name.
Even the fuckers I killed. Especially them.
They got more than that, though. They got a picture too.
I absentmindedly ran a hand over one of the tattoos on my knuckles, a few rough black lines.
Each one marked a body I’d put in the ground.
Shit got more elaborate over time, more details added as I got better at working the gun.
But that didn’t make any of them less important. All of ?em told a story.
I caught Bellatrix watching me, her gaze hinging on the images that continued up my arms and shoulders and neck like she was seeing them for the first time.
She lifted her head and narrowed her eyes. “What do they mean? Or do you just like looking like a circus freak?”
“Only fitting, seeing as life’s the biggest circus of them all.
” I lifted my arms over my head again and flexed, the clown on my right bicep smiling wider with the movement.
I let her enjoy the view for a few more seconds before tugging my shirt off over my head and tossing it across the room.
“Each one represents a kill, myshka. And this one…” I pointed to the fresh, red, raw sketch of a dead rat on my left pec.
Upside down with a couple of crosses over its eyes.
A few fingers over from where those two bullets had hit my vest. “This one right here is for you.”
Instead of looking afraid, she laughed. I’m sure she thought it was funny but that was because I hadn’t really tried killing her yet. I would as soon as I got bored enough to do it.
She cocked an eyebrow. “Ain’t that a little premature?”
I shrugged a shoulder. “?Bout the only thing about me that is.”
She spun around, plucking a picture frame off one of the shelves like she’d done the first night she snuck up here.
It wasn’t mine. It was just a photo of some random guy and his kid I’d taken out of his pocket after I’d offed him for looking at me funny.
I was a lot less reactionary now. Mostly because I didn’t like ending up tied to that hospital bed more than usual.
“Most hitmen don’t count their kills before they’re actually kills,” she said, like I gave a fuck what most people did.
“Most hitmen aren’t as good as I am, I guess,” I countered.
“Is that why I’m here?” She spun around.
Expecting me to still be on the bed where she left me.
But I was great at doing the opposite of what people expected.
She flinched when she found me standing a few inches in front of her.
She recovered quickly, though. “You need close quarters so you don’t miss. ”
I reached behind her and she stiffened as I placed a hand flat on the wall next to her side, the other one leaning above her head so that my lips brushed hers when I spoke. “I never miss.”
“You did the other night.”
“I wasn’t aiming for you. I was aiming behind you. So like I said, I never miss,” I repeated.
She raised her hands from where she’d had them clenched by her thighs and rested them on my chest. I pulled my head back, and my eyes dipped down to where she was rubbing a finger over the raised outline of the rat. They sprang back up to her face. A smirk curling up one side of my mouth.
“Me either,” she whispered right before her knee shot up and tapped my balls. When I didn’t immediately drop to the floor, she shoved at my chest and I stumbled back a step. More because I didn’t have my feet spread out far enough and not because she had any actual weight behind her.
She ran towards the door, and I caught her by the wrist and flung her back towards the bed. She wasn’t really trying to get away. Not when she came here willingly from the start. She just wanted me to chase her, and a gentleman always gave a lady what she wanted.