Chapter 19 - Faith
Seven a.m., Monday morning. The only constant in my week that doesn’t involve blood or surveillance cameras.
I park the Audi three blocks from the community center, tucking it between a rusted van and a sedan missing its rear window.
Nothing screams 'rob me' like Italian engineering in a neighborhood where most cars run on prayer.
My hands shake slightly as I kill the engine, fingers trembling against the leather steering wheel.
The Glock presses against my ribs as I step out, a familiar weight that follows me everywhere. Two exits from this street, three potential escape routes, fourteen spots where a sniper could position. The paranoia is automatic, hardwired into my nervous system like breathing.
The November air cuts through my jacket as I walk toward the dingy brick building.
Fresh paint covers last week's gang tags, but new ones already bleed through, territorial pissings of crews who think they own these streets.
They don't. The real owners are poverty and violence, and they lease space to whoever pays in blood.
My phone screen stays dark. No messages from Faith since last night when I left the dress.
Not that I expected any. Women don't usually text their stalker-turned-lover-turned-whatever-the-fuck-I-am-now.
The exhaustion makes everything feel underwater, sounds distorted, shadows moving where shadows shouldn't be.
When Faith happened, for a few precious hours, my body remembered what rest felt like.
Now it's worse because my brain knows what it's missing.
The community center's metal door groans as I push inside.
Same smell as always: industrial disinfectant fighting a losing battle against mildew, sweat, and that particular sweet-fear scent children emit when traumatized.
Same flickering fluorescent that needs replacing.
Same cracked linoleum that's seen too many feet running from too many tragedies.
Damon arrives first, as usual. Fourteen, already six feet, shoulders starting to fill out with muscle that poverty will try to waste. His father died in a drive-by meant for someone else. Statistical probability he'll be dead or incarcerated within four years: sixty-seven percent.
"Mr. L," he nods, helping me pull mats from the storage closet. The cheap foam sticks to my palms, already damp with humidity. Never asks why I look like death. These kids know exhaustion intimately.
Maria comes next, eleven years old with eyes that have seen too much.
Her mother shot her father, then herself, while Maria hid in the closet.
Probability of developing violent tendencies: fucking inevitable.
Then Jerome, nine, whose mother overdosed after his father was killed by cops who said he matched a description.
Seven children total today. Seven potential outcomes, seven futures I'm shaping with every lesson. The irony would be funny if I had any humor left in me.
"Same partners as last week," I tell them, watching them pair off with the efficiency of soldiers. Two exits visible, four windows, emergency phone in the office. Always mapping, always calculating.
I don't smile at them. Don't offer empty encouragement or false hope. They prefer my honesty to the social workers' rehearsed sympathy. We recognize each other, broken things trying to function in a world that keeps breaking.
My phone buzzes. Marco.
"The Detroit situation escalated. Tonight. Midnight. Final resolution required."
I text back confirmation, then pocket the phone.
It'll have to be after I meet with my Faith at the Ritz-Carlton.
In ten hours, I'll be with my woman. In sixteen hours, I'll be in my basement with tools and someone who thought crossing the Rosettis was survivable.
The urgency that's been building for weeks finally coming to a head. But first, this.
"Today we're working on escape holds," I announce, demonstrating on Damon. His wrist in my grip, showing the angle needed to break free. The same grip I'll use tonight, except I won't be teaching escape. "Remember, you're not trying to win a fight. You're trying to get away."
They practice in pairs, and I correct form with the same precision I use when selecting tools for interrogation.
Both involve understanding how bodies break, where they're weak, how pressure creates compliance or freedom.
I modulate my voice the way I do during interrogations: controlled, calculated, effective.
Then Keisha screams.
Not loud. The broken don't scream loud. But that high, thin sound of someone disappearing into memory. Jerome has her wrist for the demonstration, and suddenly she's not here anymore. She's back there, wherever her trauma lives.
"Let go," I tell Jerome, who releases immediately. The other kids form a circle, recognizing what they've all experienced. My own vision fractures for a second. Blood on marble floors, my father's eyes going empty. But I force it down.
Keisha hyperventilates, trapped between now and then. "His hands, his hands," she whispers, and I know she means her uncle. The one who killed her parents two years ago. The one I killed six months later, made him suffer for six hours while he begged, though she'll never know that.
I kneel, careful not to touch. Touch makes it worse when you're drowning in memory. I know from experience.
"Keisha." My voice drops low. "You're at the center. Monday morning. November. Count the mats with me. One, two, three…"
Her eyes dart, unfocused, but slowly she surfaces. The hyperventilation eases. Tears track down her cheeks, but she doesn't wipe them.
"I'm sorry," she whispers.
"Never apologize for survival," I say, harsher than intended. "Your body remembered danger. That's not wrong."
She nods, understanding in a way most eight-year-olds wouldn't.
"You okay to continue?"
She nods again, fierce despite the tears. "Show me again."
So I do. Patient as I am during an interrogation's delicate phases. These children will grow up hypervigilant, seeing threat in every shadow. I'm not saving them. I'm creating future me's.
"You look sick, Mr. L."
Maria's observation cuts through my focus. She doesn't stop practicing while she interrogates, muscle memory taking over.
"When's the last time you slept?"
"Recently enough."
"That's not an answer." She executes the escape perfectly. "My mom stopped sleeping before she…"
Before she snapped, shot Maria's father, then herself.
"I'm handling it."
Maria studies me. "You look empty again."
My body goes rigid. She's observant, this one.
Empty. Yes. Want, take, discard. Except I can't complete the pattern. She won't let me discard her, and I can't stop wanting.
Movement in the doorway. My body recognizes Faith before my eyes do. Elevated cortisol and oxytocin, stress and bonding, my confused chemical response to her proximity. She's standing there, watching me demonstrate a chokehold release to Jerome.
How long has she been watching? Long enough to see me with Keisha? Even exhausted, even here with children nearby, I want to fuck her against the wall, remind her what these hands do when they're not teaching escape holds.
"Good," I tell Jerome, though my attention is entirely on Faith. "Practice with Maria."
I walk toward her, expecting disgust. Instead, her expression shows recognition. Understanding. She sees through this performance too.
"Hallway," I say quietly, and she nods. The kids don't look up. They're used to adults excluding them.
The hallway fluorescents flicker overhead. I close the door, needing the barrier. Already I'm calculating: empty hallway, no cameras, she's wearing a skirt. I could have her against the wall in two seconds.
"You followed me." Not an accusation.
"You look terrible."
"Sleep deprivation makes me unstable. More unstable." The joke falls flat.
"How long have you been coming here?"
"Three years."
"Why?"
"Because creating more monsters makes me feel less alone."
She flinches. "They're not monsters. They're children."
"I was a child once. Now look at me." I spread my hands. "I'm teaching them to be like me. Is that really survival?"
Her hand touches my face. Warm against my cheek, and my body betrays me by leaning into the contact. Her touch makes me want to pin her against the wall, remind her what these hands do when they're not being gentle.
"You're teaching them to protect themselves."
"I'm teaching them violence. Tomorrow I'll still kill anyone who threatens you. This," I gesture toward the center, "is just damage control. Three years of Mondays. Practically a saint, right? If saints had body counts."
But she's looking at me differently now. That specific expression that means someone's seeing salvation where there's only damnation.
"You stayed with that girl. Helped her through her panic attack."
"Pattern recognition. Narcissism disguised as empathy."
"You're lying to yourself about why you're here."
"Careful, Faith." I step closer, close enough that she has to tilt her head back. "The last person who tried to save me ended up with my hands around their throat. And they weren't wearing a red dress at the time."
Her breath catches, and I smell her arousal. That sweet musk that makes my cock throb. Even here, discussing my irredeemable nature, she wants me.
"You're so determined to be evil," she observes.
"Not determined. Just accurate. You're going to try to save me now." The words burn my throat. "Add me to your project list. Trent Neumann's destruction and Luca Rosetti's redemption."
Her silence confirms it. Fuck. She thinks I'm salvageable because I don't let children drown in trauma. She doesn't understand that I'm not pulling them out of the water. I'm teaching them to breathe while drowning.
"The children trust you," she says.
"Children make poor character witnesses."
My phone buzzes. Marco again.
"Warehouse. Thirty minutes. Bring your tools."
I look at Faith, still seeing salvation in my eyes.
"I have to go kill someone now," I tell her. "Still want to save me?"
She doesn't answer with words. Instead, she steps closer, her hand sliding up my chest to rest over my heart. The touch burns through my shirt, and my pulse hammers against her palm. Exhausted, desperate, wanting.
"You're not as lost as you think," she whispers.
Before I can argue, before I can explain why she's wrong, she rises on her toes and presses her mouth to mine.
The kiss destroys me. Not rough like in the coat room, not desperate like last night. This is gentle, accepting, seeing all my darkness and choosing it anyway. Her lips are soft, her tongue sliding against mine with a tenderness that makes my chest crack open.
My hands find her waist, pulling her against me despite where we are, despite the children thirty feet away, despite everything. She tastes like coffee and possibility, like redemption I don't deserve but suddenly crave more than sleep.
When she pulls back, we're both breathing hard. My cock throbs against my zipper, and I know she can feel it pressed against her stomach. Her pupils are blown wide, lips swollen from my mouth.
Her fingers trace the bruises on her hips before finding the matching ones on my own, hidden beneath our clothing—purple-black fingerprints where she gripped me while riding me, taking control, making me beg.
"We're even," she says, pressing on my bruises the same way I press on hers.
She thinks I'm marking her as mine, but she doesn't realize—every scratch she leaves, every bite, every bruise, is her claiming me right back. I've never let anyone mark me before. Never wanted the evidence. But with Faith, I catalog each wound like a love letter written in violence.
"Tonight," I say, the words ripping from my throat without permission. "Use the key card. Wear the dress."
Not a question. A promise. A need.
She nods, fingers still pressed to my chest, feeling my heart race. "Yes."
"Faith…"
"Tonight," she interrupts, backing away. "Don't make me wait too long."
She walks away, and I watch her go, my body screaming to follow. To skip the warehouse, skip the killing, skip everything except burying myself inside her until neither of us can think.
But I have work to do. Blood to spill. Someone to make scream.
And after, when I'm covered in evidence of what I am, I'll go to her. See if she still wants to save me when I smell like someone else's death. See if she kisses me the same way with blood under my fingernails.
The thought makes my cock impossibly harder.
Tonight can't come fast enough.