Chapter Five. Eshe #5
“Seriously?” I arch an eyebrow. “You’re that much a stickler for the rules that you’re going to honor a contract after she came for your ass?” I snort. “I bet they just loved you down at the playground.”
“I wouldn’t fucking know.”
Silence congregates between us like gossipy bitches, and I just manage to lock down my wince. Shit. If anyone’s aware of his background, it’s me. Hell, I might be the only one. And that shit I just said was callous as a muthafucka. Not that I did it on purpose, but still …
“Malachi…”
“Don’t call me by that fucking name,” he growls, taking another step toward me.
Then another. And another. Until he’s so close that his leather-and-skin scent wraps its gunmetal cold hand around my throat.
His size dwarfs me, but I’m sure if he suspected what he meant as an intimidation tactic only has my nipples beading tight under my bra and my pussy contracting like it’s in the middle of a coronary, he’d back up until his spine hit the opposite wall. “That’s my last time warning you.”
“Or what?”
No, really, I’m curious.
He edges closer, and that wide, rock-hard chest brushes my breasts.
There’s no way he can’t feel the effect he has on me, but kudos to him, he doesn’t even glance down to get himself a look.
That kinda discipline is hot as fuck. How would he use that if we fucked?
Would he be as focused, as controlled? Or with me, would he allow himself to lose it?
I can’t decide which thought entices me more.
“Or I use that knife behind you to cut that little tongue from your mouth and tuck it in my pocket like loose change so you don’t have a choice.”
I close my eyes, and even if I wanted to, I can’t restrain the hum that rumbles from my chest or the shiver that rolls through my body. “I love it when you talk dirty to me,” I whisper, lifting my lashes. “If you want me to drop to my knees and get out my knife again, just say that.”
His jaw does that little flex-and-jump thing again, as if he’s literally chewing on another threat to my life.
“Where’s your aunt?”
He bites off the words as if he would be rather biting off my head.
I chuckle and shift backward. Is it so I can inhale a breath that isn’t infused with his scent and can concentrate on something other than how he sounds when he comes?
Maaaaybe.
“Why? I should let you beat me to the prize? Nah, yo. If anyone’s going to take that bitch’s life, it’s me.
Tell you what, though: I’ll mail you a body part.
Give you a li’l souvenir since you’re obviously into that.
” I wrinkle my nose and contemplate him like getting him here wasn’t part of my plan in the first place.
Well … after the blow job and not shooting him in the face.
The plan that came to me on the way home from the cottage. “Unless…”
I lick my lips because I’m about to play a very dangerous game. Up until now I’ve been toying with the Huntsman—because I can. But what I’m about to do now … It isn’t the Huntsman I’ll be dealing with but Malachi Bowden. And it’s him who may decide to kill me.
It’s him I may have to kill.
A tingle tickles an empty space behind my rib cage, and I almost lift the hand still holding my Glock to rub it.
“What’s the saying, Huntsman?” I ask. “Enemy of my enemy and all that?” He doesn’t reply but continues to stare at me, his body unmoving. “You might not care about my mother being killed by Abena, but do you care about yours?”
Almost every reaction of his up until this moment has been cold, calculated, nearly imperceptible. But not this one. At the mention of his dead mother, it’s damn near volcanic.
In a burst of movement, he lunges at me, his beautiful features twisted in a terrifying mask of fury, skin pulled tight over those sharp cheekbones until they appear to be slashing through his golden flesh.
I jerk up my arm, and only the press of my barrel against his forehead prevents him from colliding into me. From crushing me to the floor or into the wall.
Doesn’t prevent him from wrapping his huge hand around my throat and squeezing. Or jamming his own gun under my chin.
No woman, man, or god puts fear in me. But I’m looking into the nearly black eyes of a demon. Of the monster they call him. So a tiny trickle of alarm worms its way through my belly. But that’s not the dominating emotion.
No.
Pain.
For him.
For me.
For motherless children.
Yet I don’t drop my weapon.
Because Aisha Diallo didn’t raise no fool.
“You pull that trigger, you don’t find out what I know,” I lowly remind him.
“Talk. Now.”
Neither one of us lowers our Glocks, but I have great arm strength, and it won’t be the first time I’ve held a conversation at gunpoint.
“Twenty-four years ago, Abena hired a mercenary by the name of Ghoul for a job. I don’t know if you’ve heard of him; only reason I have is because my mother told me about him when I was thirteen,” I say, not waiting for him to answer.
“Apparently, he was legendary in her and my grandmother’s time, but by the time I was a teen, he wasn’t talked about anymore.
For good reason. He’d become a cautionary tale.
And that’s the only reason Ma told me the story. ”
“Eshe,” he snaps.
“Ghoul worked for a shadow organization of assassins. They didn’t have allegiance to any one family, only to money.”
“You mean the organization Creed.”
I nod. Well, as much as I can with a gun jammed under my chin.
“Yeah.” I’ve always wondered if the Huntsman worked for them.
It’s the one thing I could never discover about him.
“Abena contacted Creed for the job, and they assigned the hit to Ghoul. Even among mercenaries, he was revered. He never failed, never missed. But it’s said when he discovered what the job entailed, he refused to do it.
See, Abena wanted the son of a rival family murdered.
But not just him—his pregnant wife, too.
They used to be lovers, but he dumped her when he fell in love with another woman and married her.
Finding out they were having a baby was the last straw for her, and she wanted both of them dead.
Didn’t fucking matter that she could’ve started a gotdamn war over that shit; she wanted revenge over not being chosen.
And she wonders why my grandmother appointed Ma to be her successor. ”
I shake my head, disgusted.
“I thought Abena was the oldest. That could be why she believed she would be queen,” he says, his tone begrudging, as if he hates even voicing it. Hates being invested in my story.
Again, I shake my head.
“We don’t work like that. We are matriarchal, but the Mwuaji isn’t a hereditary monarchy.
The reigning queen chooses her successor from the strongest, most capable leader.
The majority of the time, that’s from her daughters, but not necessarily.
Abena was the oldest daughter, and yeah, she felt entitled to the crown and hated my mother for receiving it.
But when she did something like put a hit on the heir to a family for some petty bullshit, it was crystal clear why to everybody but her. ”
“So your aunt’s a petulant bitch. I still don’t see what this has to do with my mother.”
“Don’t you?” I pause, but when he doesn’t say anything, I sigh. “Ghoul was your father. And—”
“You’re a fucking lie.” The words are barely a murmur, but from the shove of tendons in his neck against his skin, they might as well have been roared.
He drops his arm, the Glock disappearing from under my chin and his hand from around my throat.
Though no sound emanates from him, he stalks across the room like a wild animal let loose from its cage after years of confinement.
His long, powerful legs eat up the space of the room, and when he reaches the opposite wall, he rears back an arm and rams a fist through it.
Drywall and dust coat the air. The blow doesn’t seem to release the storm of rage and pain inside him. No, if anything, he goes harder.
The gun falls to the floor, and he drives his other hand through the wall. Blow by blow, he punishes my den wall until plaster litters the floor at his feet.
I’m already itching to clean that up.
I would almost rather he yelled, howled his agony at the ceiling. Not that I give a flying fuck about my wall. It’s just … hearing it would’ve been less painful than that violent yet utterly silent display.
Finally, he stops, and his shoulders heave up and down, his heavy, labored breaths the only sound in the room. When he whips around, pinning me with his arctic glare, I don’t move, somehow suspecting that one unwise motion would set him off, and neither one of us would survive it.
“You’re a fucking lie,” he repeats on a growl so low, so guttural, it’s nearly indecipherable.
Instead of contradicting him, I tilt my head.
“The Ghoul, also known as Mordechai Bowden, born March 24, 1970, to Denis and Maria Bowden, first-generation Russian immigrants who changed their name from Lebedev to escape persecution. Mordechai married Sharon Bowden, formerly Williams, an Afro-Latina woman from Rosedale, New York. They moved to Boston in the late nineties. Had two children, a son, Malachi, and a daughter, Miriam, born five years apart.”
Nothing in his face softens, but … something glints in his eyes. Something that seems almost vulnerable.
Damaged.
“He became known as Ghoul in 1990 and joined Creed in 1995, but by then he’d racked up forty-six kills to his name.” I cock my head. “Look at you. Following in your father’s footsteps. You don’t kill children either, do you, Huntsman?”
“But you’re not a kid.”
That almost makes me smile. Almost.
“You didn’t know your father was a killer like you.” It’s not a question but a statement. I suspected it, but his reaction affirms that for me. “And like you, Abena had a bounty put on your father’s head when he refused to carry out a hit.”