28. Sebastian
Patience, as it turns out, isn’t my strongest suit.
For the rest of the week, my poor little darling is restless and scared. She tries to hide it, of course. That’s her default setting: hiding her feelings, because they’ve never been welcomed, nurtured, encouraged. Only ever punished.
Which is one of the many reasons I’m impatient for this weekend.
“You’re sure you want to go there?” my cousin asks over the rim of his glass of scotch.
We’re in his employer’s private jet, as our travels can’t appear on any records.
“I can handle it myself. Once you get your hands dirty, it’s a slippery slope.”
I nod curtly. I’ve thought of nothing but today for the last week, ever since Senator Cole’s goon tried to take Hestia from me. I’m looking forward to it. What does that say about me?
“Some people love getting their hands dirty, Markus,” his girlfriend says with a wink. “You know. Gardeners. Bakers. And us, of course.”
He takes her hand and brings the back of her palm to his mouth for a kiss. “Yes, us, Dez. Aurelius is a nice guy. A normal guy.”
My cousin wrinkles his nose at the very idea of normalcy.
“I’ve thought of nothing else beyond murdering that bitch for the last six days,” I reply. “Maybe I’m not that normal.”
“Well, you guys are related.” Dez chuckles. “As Marcella married into the Goltz family, the Kellers can’t be entirely normal.”
“Where does Tia think you are?” Markus asks, making a point, I suppose.
His girlfriend is right here, not only fully aware of his actions and fully supporting him, but participating. Mine is back in Thorn Falls, studying.
“On a trip, with you,” I am proud to reply.
If he thinks I’d lie, he’s mistaken. Sure, I didn’t tell her what we intended to do, lest she find mercy in her heart and ask me to spare her mother. But I have no intention of hiding anything. I’d just rather tell her after the fact.
“Very well. But you’ll do exactly as I say, at all times. I’ve never so much as left a trace, and I don’t intend to get caught because an amateur tagged along.”
“Hush,” Dez chides him. “He’s in. He won’t change his mind or fuck it up. They hurt his girl. Shall I suck you off to release all that tension?”
Markus pretends to think on it. “Couldn’t hurt.”
* * *
The house is large, quiet, and cold. Not in the way Gold House can be—my aunt and uncle might be posh bastards, but they’re marvelous hosts. If anything, their family tends to be too fiery; when they don’t get along, the boys start to literally fight at sword point and shout insults at each other.
This place is a tomb.
Designed with the general aesthetic of a cartoon villain, the white mansion boasts red curtains with gold trims. Enlarged family portraits hang on the walls. I notice that while they include smiling pictures of Hestia, all of them seem to have been taken when she was younger than ten. If I didn’t know better, I’d assume there was a little girl living in this place rather than the twenty-two-year-old with a laundry list of anxieties, currently halfway across the country.
“Clear,” Markus’s unsavory associate announces. The handsome blond man smirks. “She was seriously fucking stressed, pacing all over the place.”
No wonder. She has every reason to be, with her henchman missing after being deployed to kidnap her heiress of a daughter.
They’ve worked on infiltrating the security this week—awfully simple in the wake of Joseph’s disappearance.
Markus simply had to wait for her to request another bodyguard from the security firm she’s always employed, and pull some strings to have one of his men assigned to the task.
Officially, we’re here as the PI team she hired to look into Joseph’s disappearance, hence why she arranged the meeting well after official hours for someone as respected as Senator Cole, and with very little security—no one, in fact, save for her new bodyguard.
“Anyone else with her, Duke?”
“Her lover, Carmichael—the ex’s father, I think? He seems fully aware of the situation.”
“He’s a mark, too, then,” Markus decides without hesitation. “And it makes cleanup easier in any case. Ready?”
“The cameras are off according to the schedule, prints have been planted. We just need the man.”
“We have him.”
The whole thing lasts less than five minutes overall. I suspect it would have been even faster had I not insisted on being involved.
By the time we walk into the sterile office, Loretta Cole is struggling against the bindings tying her to her desk’s chair.
“What the hell is this?” she screams the moment we enter. “What do you want with us? What have you done with Bobby?”
Bobby, I assume, is currently passed out on ecstasy, his pants down around his ankles.
I think that if I’d completely left it up to Markus, the bitch would have been asleep too, by now, and never open her eyes again, but I wanted her conscious. I want her to know what was happening to her, and why.
“Is that—” she gasps. “Joseph!”
Markus glances back to the large man, currently supported by Duke and Dez. “Ah, yes. You were looking for him, weren’t you? Job done, I supposed. Don’t forget to tip.”
The senator snarls. “Whatever you think you’re doing, you won’t get away with it.”
She would believe that, wouldn’t she? She’s spent a lifetime treating people however she wants and gotten away with it—until now.
“Oh, but we will, Loretta darling. You see, you fucked with the wrong family. This is my favorite cousin, you know,” Markus says, squeezing my shoulder.
“I am?” That’s news to me, and I can’t wait to tell our other cousins.
“No,” he deadpans, turning back to the woman. “But the point is, he is blood and he’s quite fond of that daughter of yours. Hestia. A lovely woman. Great tits. Pretty cunt, too. It’s a miracle someone as boring and uptight tight as you managed to make that hot piece of ass.”
“Hey, that’s my future wife you’re talking about.”
Markus shrugs. “Still hot.”
He has a point. And as he’s helping me get away with murder, I’ll let it pass.
“You’re with Hestia?” Genuine fear colors those eyes now. I can tell she never expected this. She never thought anything she did to her child would have consequences. She didn’t even think that Hestia could obtain some support.
How wrong she was.
“That’s right, Loretta. I’m marrying your daughter. I’d ask for your blessing, but sadly, I don’t give a flying fuck.”
“You’ll never get her to agree. She’ll see right through you!”
“Because people have been after her money her entire life, huh? I get that her trust is going to be hard to win, but I’m a stubborn bastard. And do you know who all those billion dollars are going to belong to?” I lean in. “Her. Too bad you won’t be here to see it.”
I extend my gloved hand toward my cousin to take the gun he hands me.
A kinder man would ask for last words, but I quite like saying the last piece, and there’s nothing this bottom feeder could say that I want to hear. So I just shoot.
* * *
“So, how do we feel about it all now?” My cousin leans into the private jet’s cream armchair, smiling in a way I’ve rarely seen.
He got to shoot Cole’s lover and the bodyguard. Apparently, Markus is never as relaxed as after murdering someone.
“Really? You want to discuss my feelings?”
He shrugs. “I let you come. I have to take responsibility for the backlash. It’s one thing to order a job, but you do it yourself, there’s no going back. Especially if you enjoy it.”
I think it through for a moment.
I said it myself to Hestia: I’m a normal guy, raised in a loving home, without drama. And sure, half of my family is borderline insane, not to mention tied to the bratva, but that hasn’t really touched my life. Markus is right; this isn’t something I would have seen myself doing.
But that was before Hestia. There’s a clear threat to her continued wellbeing and I quite simply had to remove it, for good. I was driven to see it done, to do it myself.
“A bit numb, to be honest? Like, detached. I’m not particularly bothered one way or another.”
That’s wrong, right? I should be bothered about shooting someone. Especially a woman. But she deserved every bit of it. In fact, she deserved worse; she only got away with a quick, clean death because that was the best way to handle it while pinning the blame on Joseph.
“That’s pretty normal,” Dez assures me. “Did you like it, though?”
“Not particularly. It was just necessary.”
My cousin nods. “I figured you wouldn’t. Just one and done for you, then.”
My thoughts drift to the one loose end still breathing: the boy who thought he had every right to turn up to Hestia’s dorm and demand to be let in.
“Unless it becomes necessary again.”
There may be another way to handle him, and anyone like him. But there’s no doubt in my mind that if another threat presents itself, I won’t hesitate.
“What do I owe you?” I ask, wrinkling my nose. “For your help.”
Whatever it is, it’s gonna be an arm and a leg.
“You know that’s not how he works. Dimitri would never make one of us pay. He’ll cash in the favor when he’s good and ready. But don’t worry. He’s fair to family.”
“You’re his cousin, not me.”
I barely even know Dimitri Volkov, the man whom this jet belongs to, and the team that helped, and well, Markus.
“I’m his favorite cousin, though.”
“Do you ever mean that when you say it?”
“No. But it gets me what I want. That and the cheekbones.”
He flashes me his best smile, the one that makes Auntie M let him get away with literal murder, and I roll my eyes. “You know, you could ask for things instead of manipulating your way into it.”
Markus rolls his eyes. “But then people might say no.” The humor vanishes when he says, “It only goes two ways, once someone gets a taste of blood, cousin. I think you’re right—you’re done. You’re not the type to want more. But if you do, come to me, yeah? At least let me handle the cleanup.”
Some days, I genuinely believe I’m a normal guy. Other times, my cousin helps me murder three people and offers to assist me if I ever feel like offing a few more.
Which I might. The idea of taking care of Robert permanently has its appeal.
Although there’s a far more pleasurable way to ensure he can never touch Hestia’s legacy.
* * *
That night, when I go home at close to one in the morning and watch the girl sleeping in my bed, I smile, before waking her with my mouth.
The story’s simple, and incredibly easy to set up. The newspapers eat it up like hotcakes.
A disgruntled bodyguard, fired after twenty years of loyal service, kills his former employer before shooting himself. Said employer was in the middle of a drug-infused tryst with her long-term secret lover, a married man to boot.
Too bad, so sad.
Given the nature of the crime of passion, the press can’t help but wonder if Joseph Layton actually used to be Senator Cole’s lover too, and proof would soon be fed to them.
No one will bother to look further, especially after finding the confession from the very dead murderer, in the form of a letter of apology sent to his mother.
That’s not the story I’ll tell Hestia over breakfast, though.