3. Cass
CASS
Dammit.
The Blue-Eyed Bastard was right. Of all the many things that have not gone my way tonight, that might be the part that stings the most.
It’s tough competition—after all, there’s a meaty hand clamped on my purse strap, Mr. Refrigerator and his two friends (Dr. Dishwasher and Sir Shelving Unit, I’m naming them) looming closer and closer with obvious ill intentions, a dank alley in which all of this is taking place, the looming implication that my life is about to get much worse in a hurry…
But no, it’s admitting I was wrong that’ll truly be the death of me.
Four years with Raymond “Shithead” Snyder and I still haven’t learned when to swallow my ego.
You’d think survival instinct would kick in at some point.
That, sooner or later, the part of my brain responsible for self-preservation would send up a flare and go, Hey, Cass, just STFU for once in your life.
You’d be wrong. Instead, I marched my stupid ass right out the front door, turned right, and headed east toward my car. Exactly the route B.E.B. described. I followed his prediction to the letter—and walked straight into the trap he warned me about.
I am, it must be said, a moron.
But I am not a quiet moron. Nor a meek one. If I’m going to die here, I’m going to do it while kicking and screaming and fighting like my life depends on it.
Judging by the nasty gleam in the eyes of the men crowding me against a leaky dumpster, it most definitely does.
“Get off me!” I shriek as loud as I can. The sound bounces off the alley walls and dies a quick, ugly death somewhere in the dark. I yank back on my purse strap with both hands, digging my heels into the wet pavement.
Mr. Refrigerator doesn’t let go. He jerks the strap hard and I stumble forward, almost crashing into his chest. He smells even more sour than he looks. I wonder if he bathes with the washcloth that the bartender at Khaza was using to wipe down the countertop.
“Shut her up,” one of his friends says. That would be Dr. Dishwasher. He’s shorter than Mr. Refrigerator, but wider, with a flat face and small, beady eyes.
I open my mouth to scream again, but before I can, a hand clamps over it. That’s Sir Shelving Unit, behind me now. I didn’t even notice him move. His palm is damp and unpleasant. I bite down as hard as I can and he rips his hand away with a grunt.
“The bitch fuckin’ bit me!”
I use that half-second of space to twist sideways and kick Mr. Refrigerator in the shin with my Prada heel. It connects. He swears in Russian and his grip on my purse loosens just enough for me to rip free. The momentum sends me stumbling backward, my shoulder slamming into the brick wall.
Then I run.
Correction: I try to. In reality, I get maybe four steps before Dr. Dishwasher snags me by the back of my coat. The cashmere bunches in his fist and he hauls me right back into the mouth of hell. My feet skid on something wet and I go down on one knee. Pain shoots up my leg.
“Help!” I scream toward the street. The entrance of the alley is right there. Ten feet away, maybe fifteen, there are cars, people. Police officers, presumably. Surely someone is feeling like a superhero today?
But nobody comes.
Mr. Refrigerator rises up in front of me again. He’s rubbing his shin and he looks pissed . “I told you to go home,” he growls. “You didn’t listen.”
“So this is, what, a lesson?” I spit back. My knee is throbbing but I’m already trying to get up. Sir Shelving Unit puts a boot on the hem of my coat, pinning me down.
“Nah,” Mr. Refrigerator says. He crouches so he’s closer to my level. His breath is hot on my face. “This is just what happens to girls like you who wander into places they don’t belong.”
Dr. Dishwasher laughs evilly.
“You got money, right?” Mr. Refrigerator says. “That’s what you said at the bar. Let’s see how much is in that little purse of yours.” He tears it away from me and starts rummaging through it.
“Take it,” I pant. “Take the money. I don’t care. Just let me go.”
“Oh, we’re taking it,” he agrees. “But that ain’t all we’re taking.”
He nods at the other two. Sir Shelving Unit grabs my arm and yanks me to my feet. Dr. Dishwasher moves to my other side. They start dragging me deeper into the alley.
Away from the street.
Away from the light.
I dig my heels in. I thrash. I scream again, but Dr. Dishwasher gets his hand over my mouth this time and holds it there, squeezing my cheeks hard enough to hurt in a way that doesn’t let me take another bite out of his palm.
“Keep fighting,” Mr. Refrigerator croons in a sick voice from behind us. “A little wriggle makes it all a lot more fun.”
I wouldn’t call it fun at all. My mind is sort of stuttering on the passage of time, strangely enough. It focuses on tiny little things that are happening, probably as a way to blot out the awful reality of the big picture.
The scrape of my coat buttons on asphalt.
A knee forcing mine apart.
The sound of my own breathing, fast and shallow and panicked through my nose because Dr. Dishwasher’s hand is still clamped over my mouth.
Cold air on my thigh where my dress has ridden up. Wrists pinned over my head. Zippers unzipping. Buckles unbuckling.
I can’t move. Every muscle in my body is trying to, but there are three of them and one of me and I am so fucking small in comparison.
I think of Giana.
I think, Not like this.
“You dumb bitch,” one of them laughs. “I can’t believe you actually?—”
Then he stops.
His eyes go somewhere over my shoulder. His face changes and he starts to say something, but I’ll never find out what that something is, because before the words can emerge, I hear a sound.
A bad sound. A very bad sound. It’s fast and wet, like a baseball bat hitting a watermelon.
Sir Shelving Unit’s grip disappears from my arms. Instantaneously gone. I stumble forward and nearly fall on my face.
When I spin around, B.E.B. is there. “I didn’t think you were stupid enough to touch her,” he sighs to the men surrounding me. “Guess I was wrong.”
He stands in the mouth of the alley like something spat out from the worst rung of the underworld.
Backlit by the sickly orange of the streetlamp, his silhouette is jagged and cruel.
Black clothes and hair with those blue eyes.
He emanates a terrible, glacial calm, like this is his slaughterhouse we’ve stumbled into and he knows exactly how to wield every sharp implement within reach.
Sir Shelving Unit is crumpled at his feet, unmoving.
The gaping sinkhole where half his face once was must explain the gross cracking noise I heard a second ago.
I’m transfixed in horror, but B.E.B. doesn’t even look down at the body.
He’s already past it, moving on to the next thing that needs breaking.
He is what I wanted to be. This is the version of myself I imagined on all those sleepless nights.
The specter of death who’d stand over Raymond with dead-calm eyes and zero hesitation and make him understand, in his final moments, that he was nothing and had never been anything.
That his death was administrative. A task on a checklist. Crossed-off for good and forgotten just as fast.
B.E.B. is violence incarnate. Not the sloppy, sweating, grunting kind that these three animals traffic in, but the kind I’ve spent four years trying to embody for my sister’s sake.
But right now, he’s bringing death for my sake.
Dr. Dishwasher recovers first from his slack-jawed shock. He lets go of me and charges B.E.B. with a wild haymaker that looks like it could take down a concrete pillar.
B.E.B. couldn’t be less concerned. He steps a half-inch to the left, catches Dr. Dishwasher’s wrist mid-swing, and uses the man’s own momentum to slam him face-first into the brick wall.
If the sound of Shelving Unit’s demise was a fruit being cracked open with a baseball bat, then Dr. Dishwasher’s exploding noise is more like an egg dropped on concrete from a rooftop. I see the burst of dark liquid even in the dim light, painting a Rorschach blot on the filthy bricks.
He bounces off the wall and staggers back, hands going to his ruined face as he screams. These guys were about to literally rape me, and yet even I’m inclined to grant him some grace here, based on the nauseating sounds coming out of his mouth-hole.
But B.E.B. is not quite as merciful, I guess. He doesn’t give the man time to regroup. He drives a knee into Dr. Dishwasher’s gut, and when the man doubles over, B.E.B. brings his elbow down on the back of his skull like a hammer on a railroad spike.
At that final injustice, Dr. Dishwasher drops.
To no one’s surprise, he doesn’t get back up.
Even after seeing all that, though, Mr. Refrigerator doesn’t run. He pulls a knife from his waistband. It’s short and ugly, the kind you’d gut a fish with. He brandishes it blade-forward and squares up. “You don’t want this fight, pretty boy.”
B.E.B. says nothing. He doesn’t even look at the knife. He looks at Mr. Refrigerator’s eyes, like the weapon is a non-factor, nothing more threatening than a plastic spork from a deli counter.
Then he moves.
It’s not flashy the way it is in the movies.
There’s no spinning or ducking or anything like that.
No kung-fu to speak of. He simply steps inside Mr. Refrigerator’s reach before the man can slash, traps the knife arm at the wrist and elbow, and wrenches.
The joint goes the wrong way with a sound that will live in my nightmares for years to come.
A crunching, fibrous pop that I feel in my own bones.
Mr. Refrigerator wails. The knife clatters to the ground. B.E.B. still has hold of the arm and he uses it like a leash, yanking the bigger man off-balance and driving his forehead into Mr. Refrigerator’s face. Once. Twice. The second time, something caves in.
Mr. Refrigerator crumples to his knees, then tips sideways into a puddle of trash juice. His arm is bent at an angle that arms are not supposed to bend at. His face is a Jackson Pollock of blood and cartilage.
B.E.B. straightens up. He rolls his neck once, a single, casual crack. Adjusts his cuffs. His knuckles are split and dark with blood that isn’t his, but otherwise, he looks exactly as he did in that corner booth thirty minutes ago. Unbothered. Unruffled. Bored, almost.
The whole fight lasted less than thirty seconds. And he’s not even breathing hard.
He turns to me. Those blue eyes find mine in the dark. I’m on the ground, dress ripped, knee bleeding, mascara running, shaking uncontrollably. He looks me over without expression.
Then he extends a hand.
I don’t take it right away.
Because, as I’m learning here in this school of literal hard knocks, watching brutal violence has a way of clarifying your priorities really fast. Thirty seconds ago, Mr. Refrigerator & Co. were the scariest things in this alley.
Now, they’re unconscious, or possibly dead, I can’t be sure. Which means the scariest thing in this alley is the one still standing.
And he’s looking right at me.
“You can sit there,” B.E.B. says, “or you can come with me.”
I look at his outstretched hand. The split knuckles. The blood drying between his fingers.
I have no idea what happens if I take it.
I’m scared to learn what happens if I don’t.