Chapter 13 #2
The human body held five liters of blood. Hummer had already lost one. And he was losing more with every tick of the clock. Every beat of his heart.
She could lie, tell him it was okay, that he would be okay. But she’d never pulled her punches with her men. She wasn’t about to start doing so now.
“You’ve seen enough death to know what’s coming.” Her voice sounded hoarse before she swallowed and smoothed it out. “It comes for all of us. It’ll come for me soon enough. It’s nothing to be scared of.”
His nostrils flared wide. A single tear slipped from the corner of his eye. Then, he gave a shallow nod and covered the hand she pressed over his throat.
He didn’t drop her gaze.
He didn’t try to speak again.
He simply accepted, waited, and willed himself to be brave until the last moment.
She didn’t know how long they stayed like that. It could’ve been the span of a heartbeat or the long trudge of an eternity. But, eventually, his pale lips parted on a breathless gasp, and his hand fell away from hers to lie palm-up in the ever-expanding pool of his own blood.
Gently removing her hand from his neck, she watched as the wound pulsed once. Twice. Three times. Then fizzled.
Death rattled his chest.
Muscle spasms rippled through his body as nerves fired for a final time.
His skin blanched before her eyes when the last drops of his life drained from it.
And then…it was done.
Mark “Hummer” Kesslar was dead.
For long moments, she stared down into the rugged face she’d stared up at so recently. The face that had followed her through the last four years of assignments and anarchy.
He’d loved her.
He’d never said as much, but she knew.
She’d loved him, too. In her way. In as much as she was capable of it.
“Sweet dreams, Mark,” she whispered, closing his sightless eyes and leaving behind bloody streaks on his eyelids.
Her chest felt tight. Tears burned the back of her nose. But there wasn’t time for grief. There wasn’t room for grief. Not when she was filled with fiery hot fury.
That fucking cunt!
Rising slowly, rubbing her sticky hands on her utility pants, she felt her heart beat with the terrible rhythm of a war drum. Felt the nuclear blast that blazed through her veins and burned away all reason.
Her nostrils flared, filled with the iron scent of Hummer’s blood, as she turned and pinned her hate-filled eyes on the brunette.
Her holster was clipped to the waistband at the small of her back. She had her gun out before she made the conscious decision to move. A second later, the safety was off, and her finger was curved around the trigger.
She would have fired had Kurt not blurted, “Whoa there, Widow. We need her alive for the next check-in. Just in case the Black Knights ask for another proof of life.”
Blood roared in Vivian’s ears. And yet, there was a part of her that heard Kurt and knew he was right.
Her hand shook as she re-holstered her weapon. And when she blew out a slow, harsh breath, her vision expanded to include more than just the square inch of real estate in the center of Sabrina Greenlee’s forehead.
“When the time comes to do her”—she nodded toward their hostage, her jaw working back and forth—“I get the honors.”
Diesel and Kurt didn’t respond. They didn’t need to.
“Resecure her hands.” Her voice was sharp with the cutting edge of her fury. “And don’t feel like you have to be gentle about it.”
Diesel didn’t hesitate. He yanked a zip tie from his pocket and cinched it tight around their hostage’s wrists. Vivian saw the relish in his expression. But the woman didn’t flinch. Didn’t hiss.
She just stared daggers at Vivian.
In another life, in another situation, Vivian might’ve admired her for her courage, her ingenuity.
But it was this life and this situation, and all Vivian felt for the woman was the need to mete out venomous revenge.
She would get her revenge.
And she promised herself it would be sweet.
When Diesel stepped back, Vivian stepped forward, hand up and open. Her palm cracked across the woman’s cheek, and the sound of the slap was loud enough to echo around the cavernous space. Hard enough to have the chair rocking to the side on two legs before once more righting itself.
“Fuckin’-A,” Kurt muttered.
The woman didn’t make a sound as a red handprint bloomed on her cheek, half Hummer’s blood, half burgeoning bruise. And her eyes? They were still fierce. Still defiant. Still burning with that maddening, unbreakable will.
Vivian grabbed her jaw and bent down until their noses nearly touched.
“I’m keeping you alive until the end,” she hissed. “You’ll watch them all die first. Smell their blood. Hear their screams. See their final, rattling breaths.” She squeezed the woman’s cheeks so hard the tendons in her hand ached. “And then I’ll kill you. Slowly.”
Now fear flickered in Sabrina’s eyes. But Vivian didn’t feel vindicated.
She wouldn’t feel anything until this woman screamed like Hummer had. Until she was broken and bloody and struggling to breathe through a crushed windpipe.
“Black Widow!” The tinny sound of her code name reached her ears. She glanced over her shoulder to where her burner lay on the floor.
Bishop.
Fuck.
Releasing the brunette with a shove, Vivian stalked back to the phone, careful to avoid the puddle of Hummer’s blood as it spread out in an ever-widening circle around his cooling body.
“The bitch we grabbed stabbed one of my guys in the fucking jugular with a piece of broken glass,” she snarled into the receiver. “So we’re down one man.”
Silence. Then, “Can you still get the job done?”
“As long as you tell me the job is to kill every last one of them,” she spat.
“I don’t care about the specifics.” The mechanical voice was as cold and emotionless as ever. “Make enough of a mess that the authorities will investigate. The president has pushed her power too far with this group. It’s time they, and she, are all brought into the light.”
“It’s done,” Vivian promised, her heart a swirling mix of vengeance and violence.