2. Orion
Orion
V ince slammed the door on his way out.
I didn’t flinch. I barely even heard it over the rush of blood in my ears.
Covering my mouth with my hand, I swallowed hard, then hard again, and harder still, making sure I’d managed to corral all of Vince’s spend into my throat.
I didn’t want to lose a drop of it—after waiting so long to taste him—and only once I was sure I’d gotten it all down did I even dare turn my stare toward Ricardo’s body on the other side of the room.
Vince had done a number on him, which was a relief and a headache at the same time.
He was beyond dead, but I still took orders, and I still had orders.
“I fucking hate you for this,” I told his quickly cooling body.
He’d never frown at me again. He’d never spit on me again.
He’d never do a lot of things to me again.
Reaching under my arm, I pulled out my gun and shot him for myself, emptying the magazine right into his dick. I kept pressing the trigger, even after I’d run out of ammo, then reluctantly returned my weapon into the holster. It wasn’t enough, but it would never be enough.
The office was a goddamn mess, blood and brains all over his desk and the floor. I was tired and sore, even reaching to pull my phone out of my pocket hurt. I scrolled through my contacts and made my first call.
“What?” A gruff voice on the other line answered.
“I need a cleaner,” I said.
“Where?”
I gave the address and hung up.
Before I lost all of my energy, I dialed the next number on my list.
“Yes?” It was a woman this time.
I knew I didn’t need to watch my words on either call.
The phones we used were untraceable and so encrypted the world would end before anyone was able to break through their operating systems. It was force of habit more than anything else, the respect that was earned and given when you lived the kind of lives people like us did.
“I’m calling in a contract.” I glanced at Ricardo, then back to the door.
“Mark?”
My cock was so hard it hurt. Reaching down, I palmed myself through my pants, even though the pressure did little to alleviate the ache between my legs. My jaw burned from the way Vince had just fucked my mouth and that familiar depravity nipped at me from just beneath the surface.
“Vincent Angelini,” I said.
“Price?”
“Two mil.”
It was the number Ricardo had given me, and the number I would offer up. I wondered, briefly, if he would have put the demand on me if he’d known his son was going to be the one to kill him.
“Fourteen days,” she said.
I hung up and slid my phone back into my pocket, giving Ricardo one last look.
Carefully, I moved closer to the body. Morbid curiosity driving me to close the space between us.
Vince had shot him clean through the forehead, and when I looked past the blood, most of his face was still intact.
His lips gaping open a little, like he’d been about to say something.
Groaning, I cursed him under my breath, remembering a conversation we’d had so long ago, I couldn’t remember how many years had passed.
“You take ‘em out,” Ricardo had said to me once. Unprompted and out of context.
I was on my back, tied to his bed with his cock so far up my ass I could taste it.
He was on a bender and he’d been fucking me for hours.
I was sweaty and bleeding, and not just from the fine lines he’d etched into my chest with a razor blade.
I was high on him, drunk on the pain, and equal parts angry for how he used my body while also simultaneously grateful.
It was the brutality from Ricardo that quieted the noise long enough for me to find peace.
“Two million on the head of whatever son of a bitch puts a bullet in me,” he said.
“What if it’s a knife?” I asked, the words garbled in my throat.
“Then you better skin him alive.”
To demonstrate what he meant, he slipped the edge of his blade beneath my skin. My vision went black and I saw stars; then I came all over myself with a hoarse cry. Ricardo had smeared my cum into the wounds on my chest, then he’d added his to the mix.
After that, he’d left me tied to the bed for two days.
Forgotten.
Vince was the one who found me. He was barely a teenager back then.
He cut me loose, called a doctor, and we never talked about it again.
His attitude toward me after that had changed, though, shifting from a cool sort of indifference to a calculated judgement.
He would no longer look me in the face or speak my name, and I didn’t blame him.
Who knew what I must have looked like when he walked in on me, covered in dried blood and days-old cum.
I hadn’t eaten or drank anything. I’d pissed on myself more than once.
It was far from my finest hour.
Without thinking, I rubbed my fingertips over the spot on my ribs where Ricardo had long ago peeled my skin back before making me promise to avenge his death. It was a stupid agreement, one I didn’t need to uphold.
He was already getting cold. I should have been pissing in his mouth instead of continuing to do his bidding, but…
For all his cruelty, there was no denying that one time, years ago, he’d been the one to save my life. And even after all the things he’d done to me, the things he’d demanded of me, I was still alive.
And once someone put a matching bullet in Vince’s brain, I’d be free.