Chapter 16
Dominic
Lil’ Peach woke the second the scent of food reached her tiny nose, which didn’t surprise me at all. Like me, eating is her favourite pastime, and our place has never smelled this good.
A few hours have passed, and Emily still hasn’t made an appearance. She’s either sound asleep or hiding out in the spare room so she doesn’t have to face us.
“Are you planning to keep Emily with you guys?” Lucia asks as the four of us sit around the dining table. “Or are you going to help her find her own place?”
“I haven’t thought that far ahead,” I admit. “But I guess she’ll have to stay with us until we can work out something more permanent.”
“Do you have room for her? She can stay here if you don’t.”
Romeo side-eyes his wife, giving her a look that tells me he’s absolutely not a fan of that idea, not that it matters. I wouldn’t consider leaving Emily here anyway. I need her with me, at least for the time being.
Even if we make her boyfriend disappear, there’s still the threat of the other Reapers hanging over her head. They’ll have questions when he doesn’t show up, and she’ll be the first person they go sniffing around for answers. I’m not letting her deal with that shit alone.
“Yeah, I have a spare bedroom,” I tell her. “I’m going to need to get it furnished, though.”
“Oh. I can help with that,” Lucia answers, reaching for her phone.
When her fingers start moving over the screen, Romeo says, “What are you doing?”
“I’m online furniture shopping,” she deadpans, like it’s obvious.
A few minutes later, she turns the screen towards me, “What do you think of this?”
“Fucked if I know. I’m not good at that shit.”
She gives me a look. “Language,” she says, eyeing Peach on my lap.
I glance down at my niece, who is watching a Bluey cartoon on my phone. She loves that annoying show and is so engrossed that I doubt any of this conversation registered with her. Although a part of me is worried her first swear word is gonna be ‘fuck’.
I clear my throat. “I trust your judgment.” I reach into my back pocket, pull out my wallet, grab my credit card, and slide it across the table. “Get whatever you think she’ll need.”
I haven’t discussed this with Emily yet, but my mind is made up. Until it’s safe for her to do otherwise, she’ll be staying with us, whether she likes it or not.
“Do you know what her favourite colour is?”
I have no clue, but I find myself saying, “Blue.” It’s my favourite, because it reminds me of her eyes. Besides, I already have enough pink shit in my house.
It’s now eight o’clock in the evening, and Emily is still fast asleep. I wonder how long it’s been since she felt safe enough to sleep so soundly.
Lucia has checked on her a few times and encouraged me to let her rest whenever I became antsy about her not waking up. “She obviously needs this. Her body’s catching up,” she’d said. “Let it.”
Peach has been bathed, fed, and is also sleeping in one of the spare rooms. It looks like we’ll be spending another night.
I always have spare clothes packed in the car because of the nature of my job.
Sometimes it’s impossible to avoid getting soaked in blood.
I also pack extra things for Peach when we go out, because kids can be unpredictable.
She can go through a full outfit change in thirty minutes.
Experience has prepared or overprepared me.
The furniture for Emily has been ordered, and most of it will be delivered to my place tomorrow afternoon. If she decides not to stay with me once it’s safe for her to leave, then she can take it all with her. She left her place with only a suitcase, so she’s going to need to start from scratch.
Part of me hates how familiar that is, starting over with nothing and rebuilding a life piece by piece. It’s not easy, but she’s away from that cocksucker, and that’s the most important thing.
Romeo and I are sitting mindlessly in front of the television. I’m not sure if he’s watching the movie that’s playing, but my thoughts are elsewhere.
It’s just after nine when the message finally comes through from Dante.
“You ready?” Romeo says after turning his phone towards me so I can read the text.
Dante: I have confirmation he’s arrived back at the house and he’s alone.
I place my palms flat on the armrests and push myself up to a stand. “Let’s do this.”
I follow him down the hallway towards the front door, and I’m now grateful that we are here, because I don’t have to worry about Peach or Emily. I couldn’t be leaving at this time of night if we were home.
Romeo pauses at the doorway of the nursery, sticking his head inside.
“We have to go out for a bit,” he says to Lucia, who is rocking her son in a chair beside the cot.
She opens her mouth to say something, but Romeo cuts her off before she can speak.
“I can’t tell you where we’re going, but we shouldn’t be long. Call if you need anything.”
Lucia purses her lips. “I wasn’t going to ask,” she grumbles. Romeo smiles. I swear this guy loves pissing her off. “All I was going to say was, give him a left, a right, an uppercut, and a throat punch from me.”
A laugh rumbles in my chest. These Mafia women are next level.
The soldier is parked a few houses down and across the road when we arrive. He’s very close to where I usually sit when I’m here, casing things out. Or being stalkerish is maybe a better description, but casing sounds less … unhinged.
“As far as I can tell, he hasn’t gone into the house yet. The lights are still off. When he arrived, he took what looked to be some kind of package out of the leather bag on the side of his bike before disappearing around back,” the soldier tells us.
A cold, heavy knot forms at the base of my spine, and my fingers twitch by my sides as I itch to cross the street and finally get my hands on that cunt.
It will be the last time he touches Emily, or touches anyone for that matter.
The soldier’s eyes flicker to me, reading the shift in my posture. The monster inside is about to be unleashed. My breathing slows as my shoulders lock into that familiar place between restraint and violence.
I step off the kerb, eager to get this started. “Wait here,” Romeo says to the soldier as he falls in step beside me.
“Can’t I watch?” he retorts, but the look Romeo gives him in return is enough of an answer.
“You can go and get those potted plants off the veranda and put them in the back of my car.” I shove my hand into my pocket, grab my keys, and toss them to him. “And be careful with the paintwork.”
“I never picked you as a green thumb,” Romeo snickers as we continue moving.
“They’re Emily’s,” I growl. “She loves those fucking plants.”
“Fair enough,” he says with a chuckle. “I know how Lucia is with her garden. She wanted to kneecap the guy who ran over her rose bush when they were setting up the marquee in the backyard.”
My hand disappears into my pocket as I roll Emily’s Chapstick between my fingers.
“So how’s this going to play out?” Romeo asks as we approach the shithole where Emily used to live.
“Messy,” I answer.
We stick close to the fence line when we reach the yard, using the darkness to cover us while we circle around to the back of the house. The night air is still, and a faint glow leaks from the small garage at the rear of the property.
I signal for Romeo to stay put as I inch closer, using the shadows and the overgrown hedges for cover.
I flatten my body against the siding of the garage and peek through the small window, seeing him as soon as I do.
He’s sitting in a fold-out chair, legs spread, in a lazy posture.
A brick-shaped object sits in front of him on an upside-down milk crate, wrapped tightly in black plastic, but there’s a small cut on one corner.
Smoke curls lazily from the small glass crack pipe in his hand. Dante was right; he’s sampling his own product. And the fact that he’s here and alone, instead of at the clubhouse, tells me his bikie brothers don’t know he’s doing it.
If they did, he wouldn’t be sitting in this garage getting high. He’d be in a shallow hole somewhere, or stripped of his patch and tossed out like garbage.
I know the Steal Reapers are the only distributors dealing in methamphetamines in town, which makes this moment even more personal for me.
They may not sell to my sister directly, but they’re the reason she can keep feeding her habit. Every hit she takes, every spiral she falls into, traces back to them. They didn’t just enable her; they paved the path that ruined her life.
It makes my blood boil. I can’t forget the wreckage Violet’s life has become or the choices she’s made, but I can see the Reapers’ fingerprints all over it. They’ve turned her into this version of herself. The person I no longer recognise.
What makes me all the more livid is the fact that he’s out here getting high and hasn’t bothered to go inside and check on the woman he beat this morning, which only fuels my rage.
My eyes move around the inside of the garage, assessing, looking for anything he may be able to pick up and use as a weapon. I know how unpredictable a person high on ice can be. There’s nothing that can save this motherfucker, but it doesn’t hurt to be prepared.
I reach the door off to the side, which is slightly cracked open. The faint hiss of his pipe and the quiet crackle tell me he’s having another hit. I give him a moment to enjoy the last rush of high he’s ever going to get before I calmly step inside.
His head snaps up so fast it makes the smoke coming out of his mouth curl sideways. His eyes widen, and his blown pupils flick from my boots to my face, like he’s just spotted a predator.
The pipe trembles in his fingers as he jerks back in the chair, rocking it against the concrete. “Shit,” he hisses as his chest heaves, and every muscle in him tenses, coiled tight, like he’s deciding whether to bolt or strike.
There’s only one way out, through the door I just entered, and he has zero chance of getting past me.