24. Blair
TWENTY-FOUR
blair
Including me meant more than I’d originally thought.
Sean had us standing beneath the lifted trunk door in front of a warehouse. He handed me a long sleeved black coverall with a hood.
“Hold that,” he said, removing his jacket and tie before sitting. “Come here.”
I stepped between his legs and searched his eyes, not really finding answers but mesmerized all the same.
“I’m not understanding yet,” I murmured, fingers still clutching the tough coverall fabric. “What’s happening?”
“You’ll understand in a minute…” he leaned his face close to mine. “Let’s talk for a second.”
I released the coveralls and wrapped my arms around his neck, the urge too strong to ignore.
“Okay. About what?”
He gripped my waist with just the right amount of pressure and dropped his forehead to mine, like whatever he needed to get off his chest was too hard to do.
“You noticed Gianna was pregnant, right?” he asked gently.
Oh.
I noticed immediately and as quickly as that little ache from the past crept up, I locked it away. For my sake and Sean’s but he figured it out anyway.
Had he felt something too when learning of it?
“It felt like a shock to the system at first,” I admitted, doing the one thing we’d always done best. “Not the pregnancy but the feeling of loss I thought I buried. Caught me off guard but I’m okay, Oisin. It’s not like before or anything.”
Four years ago I was a wreck, hiding out in his Philadelphia apartment until he got too busy to be there every waking moment.
“Are you okay?”
He’d taken it just as hard as me, going so far to try and hide it so I wouldn’t feel his pain and mine.
“I’m happy for my brother,” he said softly, kissing my jaw from one side to the other. “They’re having a little girl. First thing I thought was, I want one.”
My lips spread at the thought of it.
“Me too,” I whispered, holding him tighter. “Now can I know why we’re here?”
He chuckled into my ear.
“What’s the one thing we haven’t done together yet?” he asked, caressing my back.
Had we not been standing outside a warehouse in what felt like the middle of nowhere, with coveralls I only wore to keep blood off my clothes and body between us, I couldn’t have said much.
Sean and I experienced a lot of life together already. Anything new came with time and age.
“You got me something?” I asked, stepping into the coveralls after bunching my dress inside of it.
He stood and turned us until I was able to sit.
“Someone,” he mused, removing the sneakers I’d changed into and covering my stocking clad feet with thick socks and boots. “Two someone’s actually.”
I bit my lip.
Why was my clit throbbing?
Down girl.
“They do something to me?”
He started to remove his shirt before speaking, and I couldn’t focus on anything but the outline of my lips inked in the middle of his chest, right over his heart.
It was the only other tattoo besides the unfinished deer on his back.
He was about the mob and me.
“I killed the man your father paid to drop your ma at the estate…” his eyes met mine after he zipped himself into the coveralls. “The two in there helped him.”
Sean stepped back and held his hand out for me.
“Happy valentine’s day, Amoy.”
I went to him, he closed the trunk and led us to the half open garage-like door.
“What I hate most is seeing you cry,” he said, securing the door in his palm and pushing it up. “Ain’t a soul I’ll let live about that.”
He stepped to the side and I fixed my gaze on his present. The two someone’s were suspended, back to back, by their limbs. I stepped forward, my heart racing at the sight.
“You…” I took a breath when his hands touched my waist in tandem with his soft lips to my neck. “You want me to watch?”
“No, baby,” he whispered into my skin, igniting the fire I kept on ice inside of me. “I want you to kill them and I’ll watch.”
I went taut against him.
All the ways this could go wrong filled my mind in a rush.
Was this really okay?
And why did I feel the urge to ask for reassurance?
He’d never made me feel like I had to or maybe I forced those feelings down because he was the best thing to happen to my life.
Losing him would literally break me.
“Baby, I—”
“I know,” he whispered, snaking his arms around my waist. “You don’t have to say it. I realize now where we’ve gone wrong and this is how I’m fixing it…” he released me and crossed the room, his strides long and sure and so goddamn sexy. “I want you to be who you’ve become, don’t hide from me anymore. Whatever line you’re standing behind, the one that’s keeping you rooted in place, cross that muthafucka right now, Amoy.”
My heart raced but I couldn’t move, not until he beckoned me with a little more bass in his voice.
“Don’t make me ask again.”
I walked toward him this time, leaving my fear of disappointing him behind the line he spoke of.
“You can’t be afraid to kill in my presence and be my second…” he pointed to the spot in front of him and I took it without hesitation, wrapping my fingers around the gun he pushed into my palm next. “Shoot him in the head.”
The command was hard to ignore but I did it anyway, still raising the gun as killing wasn’t the issue here. I stared at the man spread limb from limb in front of me, his eyes wide with fear as they moved back and forth between me and Sean but nothing else.
No movement otherwise, to be exact.
“You gave them paralytics?” I asked, tipping my head in awe.
It was the first time I’d seen anything like it in real time.
“Mmhm,” Sean hummed from behind me.
I lowered my arm and glanced back at him.
“Can I have a blade instead? Or anything sharp.”
He was smiling with his eyes as he turned to oblige after taking the gun, almost as if he hoped I would ask. This felt like a setup but I couldn’t help myself and somehow my husband knew it.
“What’s your preference, Amoy?” he asked. “Straight edge, serrated, gut hook…” the smile was in his voice now and even though I couldn’t see it I knew his lips were spread. “Mmm, no. This one.”
The thud of his boots as he turned and approached had a slight echo. I found myself looking down to watch his strides until his bowlegs stopped in front of me.
“Give me your right hand…” I lifted it for him and he pushed a knuckle knife on my fingers, leaving the thumb free. “You’ve always like to fight.”
“Not true,” I mumbled, admiring the custom made contraption.
Each knuckle had a four inch blade that curved a little for maximum damage.
“I never liked to be violent. Everyone around me forced it.”
He turned me slowly by the shoulders to face the man I’d been tasked to kill.
“You’re tricking me,” I whispered, licking my lips. “But…”
I couldn’t resist.
Everything was on fire in the best kind of way when those curved blades met and pierced flesh. The scream in his eyes mixed with dead silence was so… serene.
How or when I’d become this way evaded me.
Maybe it was all the bodies I caught with Esi, or maybe I’d always been this way and life forced it out of me.
“What do you get out of this?” I asked, pulling my fist back and admiring the blood dripping between my gloved fingers. “More control over me?”
Becoming this person in front of him after so many years of hiding it scared and made me a little excited.
“And what about it?” he asked, the tingle of his closeness spreading throughout me—even as I continued to poke tiny holes in the chest and abdomen of my gift. “You telling me I can’t have what I want from you, Amoy?”
He pressed his body to mine, and an intake of breath mine refused to release threatened to take me out, before I got to play with the next man.
“You know you can.”
He hummed and kissed just below my ear.
“Don’t mind me…” I whimpered as he stepped away. “Finish the job and I’ll give you what you need.”
My entire body had submitted to his command, hands moved off instinct alone, the blades attached to my fingers piercing flesh completely.
Blood soaking the gloves, my sleeves, leaked all over the floor. The smell hit me and I inhaled, loving that first initial hit more than anything.
“I needed this,” I said, looking over my shoulder to be sure he heard. “Thank you for my gift, but I expect flowers afterward.”
“Whatever you want.” The low rumble of his voice gave me chills. “Now cross the room and do it again.”
I traded my knuckle knives for a gun and approached the other man, arm lifted.
First, I aimed for his head then shook mine. Wasn’t right.
Then, I lowered it to his chest. Two shots in the center would be enough to end him.
I could feel Sean’s eyes as he waited silently for me to choose.
Something about it made me pull the trigger.
The first shot went to the stomach, then the thigh and the shoulder. His face contorted but the paralytic kept him from moving or letting out a scream, even though I wanted to hear it so badly.
I tugged the trigger again, hitting him in the stomach then knee. I lowered the gun and admired my handy work, every one of those shots meant to make him bleed out.
“Don’t regret this later,” I said, turning to my husband who had a smirk lifting the corner of his mouth.
This was more than him wanting me to kill with him as my audience. He was setting the tone for later and his words as he approached proved it.
“What I get from you being your absolute self isn’t control, Amoy,” he said, stopping directly in front of me. “It’s the right to be irrational about everything concerning you. No questions from my wife. No demands from my second-in-command. You feel me?”
I nodded, knowing I couldn’t argue with him about it even if I wanted to.
“I feel you.”
“Good. Remember this conversation…” he took a step back, pulling me with him by my hand after I removed and dropped the gloves. “Let me clean you up, so I can buy those flowers and feed you.”
I looked back at the bodies and smiled.
It was a far cry from our first valentine’s day, and it was all because of him… always him.