Twenty-One #2
The men grin as they see me, pure malevolence in their expressions. They’re both stocky, big men, one taller than the other but each capable of overpowering me. In reflex, I take a pace back, finally able to move, my pulse hammering in my throat.
“Grab her,” the tall one says. He has a thick, guttural accent I can’t place.
“Get your ass in here,” the short one snaps, coming for me.
I turn to bolt, but it’s too late. I barely make it into the hallway before his hand closes around my arm, his arm around my waist. I scream as he picks me up, kicking out, grabbing in futility at the walls and door as he drags me back into my apartment.
Oh God, I’m dead!
I fight with everything I have, feral, wild, trying to bite and scratch at his arm, kicking anything I can.
“Shut up,” he growls, slapping the side of my head hard enough to stun me.
He kicks the door closed, keeping the neighbors from being bothered, and drags me into my apartment.
He throws me onto the floor, and it knocks the wind from me.
My ribs hurt, my knee smacks into the ruins of my coffee table.
The taller man steps forward, grabbing my throat, cutting off my air.
“Try that again and see what happens,” he says, pulling out a knife.
I freeze, staring at it. It’s long and straight, not the curved blade Van Wyk uses, and so much more menacing than a gun because it’s quiet. He can do what he wants with that, and no one will hear.
I crouch at his feet, clutching at the hand around my throat, trying to draw breath. I know I’m done for. They’re either going to rape me or kill me—or both.
For a dissociative moment, I flash back to the terrace, and the fear Van Wyk put into me that first night. But this feels so different. This is malice, this is evil.
Van Wyk never felt like this. Dominant, yes. Merciless, maybe. But evil? Born of hate? Out to hurt?
Never.
These men aren’t like him. They’re far worse.
I yearn for my monster to save me with a sudden, violent ache that robs me of breath as effectively as the calloused hand squeezing the life from my throat. Why isn’t Van Wyk here?
Am I never going to see him again?
“What do you want?” I can’t help the tremble in my voice.
“Us?” He grins down at me, one gold tooth catching the light from the bedroom. “We don’t want anything.”
I don’t understand what he means. If not them, then who?
“How’s your gallery?” the short one asks, like it’s a curse. He laughs at his own question.
I stare at him, blood freezing in my veins, a shiver gripping me. They know. Are these the men who did it? Why? Who the hell are they?
“Listen, you skank,” the tall man with the gold tooth says. His hand releases my throat, grabbing a handful of my hair instead, using it to shake me. Pain rips through my scalp, and I can’t help my cry. “You were warned to obey, weren’t you?”
I don’t know what he means. “Obey what?” I gasp out. “Obey who?”
“You were told what would happen if you didn’t turn up with your sister.”
Shit. Serranto.
The gallery—this—it’s all because I fought back. Because I didn’t give him what he wanted.
Both of us, on our knees before him.
“You’re going to get your sister, and you’re both going to be obedient little sluts, aren’t you?”
I can’t find my voice. I don’t know what I’d say anyway. This is it. Live or die. I’d rather meet a horrible, torturous end than subject Lucy to any of these horrors. I will fight tooth and nail. I will—
The front door of my apartment bursts open and slams into the wall. I flinch so hard it hurts, twisting to look behind me. There’s another man, standing in the gloom, tall and filling the doorway.
Three of them?
“Who the fuck are you?” growls the man with the gold tooth.
The third man walks in, and as soon as the light from the bedroom spills onto him, I recognize him.
It’s Van Wyk. My monster.
Relief hits me so hard that my body trembles and tears blur my vision, but it’s mingled with fear that he’s outnumbered.
“They have knives!” I scream.
“Shut up, bitch.” Gold-Tooth leans down and backhands me across the face. I’m knocked to the ground, the sting of it making me cry out. My whole cheek is on fire, my eye feels like it’s going to explode.
There’s a scuffle behind me, brief and violent. Someone gurgles, the metallic scent of blood filling the air, then a body hits the remains of my coffee table, glass and wood smashing. It happens so fast I can barely register it. I push myself up, glancing back.
Van Wyk is on his feet with his karambit hooked over his fingers, dark along the edge. The short man is sprawled across the wreckage. He’s not moving, not breathing.
“You fuck!” shouts Gold-Tooth. He leaps over me, knife raised.
I can’t see what happens, even though I’m watching.
It’s too dark, too fast. What reaches me is sound.
A scuff, a wrenching grunt, a wet pop. Then Gold-Tooth’s on his knees right in front of me, his arm hauled up behind him at an angle an arm shouldn’t reach.
Van Wyk twists until the joint gives, then drives a knee into the elbow, and the arm breaks with a crunch.
Gold-Tooth cries out, back arching in pain.
I scrabble away, splinters of broken plaster under my hands. The ceiling light is above me, the cable dangling down, and I shrink beneath it in reflex. Is it live?
There’s too much going on. I’m too scared. I can’t think, or process, or breathe. I just want to curl into myself and disappear.
“Who sent you?” Van Wyk asks again, snapping my attention back to him. His voice is cold and flat, completely devoid of any emotion, and Gold-Tooth’s chin is tipped up on the edge of the karambit.
“Fuck… you…” he grunts, cradling his broken arm to his chest.
Van Wyk sinks his blade into the man’s shoulder and twists. The man screams. “Last chance. Who sent you?”
“Serranto!” he chokes out.
I could’ve told him that.
“Bullshit,” Van Wyk says. “Serranto’s dead.” He does something with his knife, and Gold-Tooth jerks with a whimper. “Try again.”
His response stuns me. Serranto’s dead?
Then why the hell are these men here?
“They’ll kill me!”
Van Wyk’s voice is as low and as menacing as I’ve ever heard. “Worry. About. Me.” Whatever he does next tears a scream out of the man.
“Sovietnik… Dmitri… Koval…” he sobs out.
“Thank you. And this is for touching what isn’t yours.” Van Wyk takes a fistful of his hair, pulls his head back, and draws the karambit across his throat.
Blood flows down, all over his shirt. So much of it.
He chokes like he’s drowning, his good hand clutching at his throat.
His eyes meet mine, and I know I’m the last thing he’s going to see.
Then Van Wyk shoves him forward, to flop face-down on my carpet.
I heave, covering my mouth as I turn away, barely swallowing in time.
“I’m sorry I was late,” he says, crouching to wipe his knife on the man’s shirt with efficient movements.
“Late?” I echo. I’m shivering violently, staring stunned at the corpse of the man he’s just killed before me.
Two dead men in my apartment.
“Yes, late,” he says as he straightens, treading shattered glass into my carpet on his way to shut what’s left of my door. The lock has been smashed in, and it doesn’t really close. “I wasn’t planning on coming, but…” He trails off with a shrug.
I’m just glad he did. If he hadn’t, what would’ve happened to me? To Lucy?
Wait… if he wasn’t planning on coming, why is he here?
Van Wyk has his phone out. “Haynes? I need clean up at Amelia’s apartment. Two bodies.”
What the hell?
Haynes. I’ve heard that name before. And how does Van Wyk have those kind of cleaning services on speed-dial?
I’m not sure I want to know. This night… it’s been too much. Too intense. I feel feverish, like it’s a nightmare I can’t wake up from.
“Yes, all of it,” he says in response to something. “And the front door doesn’t shut anymore.” A pause. “Ten minutes.”
It’s only after he’s hung up and slid his phone back into his pocket that I realize he never told them my address.
I crawl to my armchair. It’s the only piece of furniture that’s survived this evening, but I’m too weak to drag myself into it. I flop against its base, touch my bruised cheek and wince. The pain helps ground me.
Van Wyk strides to my side, stepping over Gold-Tooth’s body without looking. He drops to a knee beside me, and I catch a hint of his usual cologne. “Let me see that.” His voice is soft, completely different than when he was… interrogating Gold-Tooth. Or talking to whoever the hell Haynes is.
He reaches for my cheek, his touch gentle as he probes where I got slapped.
I’ve just watched Van Wyk torture a man for information. Right in front of me.
And then kill him.
After he killed someone else. The short man is lying unmoving across my smashed coffee table, and I know he’s dead even though I can’t see his face.
And now Van Wyk’s examining me, like he knows what he’s doing.
And fuck… Serranto.
“You said Serranto is dead.”
“Yes,” he replies, focused on my cheek. He’s playing his fingers carefully across the bone. It stings, but I barely register it.
“Did you kill him?”
“Yes.” There’s no hesitation.
Christ.
“Did you… kill him because of me?” I know he did. How can I live with that? I didn’t want him dead, I wanted him gone.
“No.”
That’s a lie. “What do you mean ‘no’?”
“I killed him because he disobeyed me,” Van Wyk replies, and his voice has gone cold again.
Yeah, like that’s a reasonable excuse.
“I’ve disobeyed you,” I murmur. “Am I next?”
He leans back, hand dropping away, looking down at me.
“No, Little Stray, of course not. I’d never harm you.”
And then he smiles.
It’s soul-chilling, realizing that this is his element. In the darkness, surrounded by corpses, a bleeding and traumatized woman on her knees before him. Now is when he smiles.
What the hell have I gotten myself into?