19
MEANWHILE, AT THE CARMINE MANSION.
“Get her in here.” Romeo Carmine barked out the order to one of his security grunts, then strolled to his office window and looked down at the illuminated parking lot.
The parking lot where Kay Steffen was just getting out of her black BMW SUV after making a very interesting—and very fucking disappointing—phone call.
That treacherous bitch, Romeo thought savagely as he gulped down his whiskey, wiping his mouth on his jacket sleeve and watching two of his guys meet Kay in the lot to inform her that she’d been summoned to the boss’s office immediately, right fucking now.
“Thank you for making it easier for me, Kay,” Romeo muttered as he watched a streak of uncharacteristic panic flash across Kay’s pale face. She glanced up at his window, and when their gazes met, Romeo knew that Kay knew.
She knew that Romeo had heard every damn word of her betrayal.
Thanks to the unexpected—and somewhat suspicious—help from IMG Corporation.
“That worked out perfectly, Romeo,” came the robotic-sounding AI-generated female voice from his phone on the desk behind him, making him turn and stride over to finish up the call before Kay got dragged in here. “It took some doing to trace that Darkwater phone. We couldn’t get the GPS coordinates on that first call, when Kay was talking to Benson. But when that clueless Jill Hennessy called back, it gave us another chance, and we’ve got their location now.” A pause, then the voice came back on but now as a male voice, the third time the IMG person had switched the AI voice during their long conversation. At first Romeo was thrown off by the changes, but soon he got the sense that it was just one person throughout, and she or he was almost certainly running things at IMG. This wasn’t some underling. It was Mister or Miss IMG themselves. “Interesting,” the voice continued. “It appears Darkwater is constructing their own facility somewhere in Virginia. John Benson appears to be putting down roots, preparing for the long haul.” The IMG voice made a chuckling sound dripping with contempt even the AI couldn’t mask. “That’ll make it all the sweeter. If only I could be there to watch Benson burn in the flesh just like his soul will burn in hell for all eternity. Oh, well. Maybe I’ll be able to watch the fireworks in night-vision if we can hack into a nearby surveillance drone or spy satellite. Let’s see. Here we go. Tracing the route now. Ah, Benson has picked a nice secluded spot, tucked deep in the woods. Excellent. It means you don’t have to worry about being quiet, Romeo. And you’ll have plenty of time before any reinforcements get there—though I suspect Benson will not call the authorities for backup. Getting police and FBI caught in the crossfire just complicates the cover-up, and a CIA snake like Benson is always thinking ahead to the cover-up.”
Romeo frowned at the venom being spewed at this guy John Benson. There was clearly a personal vendetta at play here. Diego had expressed a similar level of hatred for this mysterious former CIA guy, and Romeo almost wanted to meet the old dog Benson, congratulate him for inspiring such strong feelings of bloodthirsty violence.
Of course, none of this was funny in the least, and Romeo gulped down another whiskey in silence, then placed the empty glass on the table and poured himself another from the wide-hipped bottle. He swallowed it in a single gulp, then sat down heavily in his chair and rubbed his eyes as he waited for his guys to drag Kay’s skinny ass up the stairs and into his office.
They were sure as hell taking their time, but Romeo was in no hurry to have that unpleasant conversation with Kay. Yes, he’d been planning to put Kay down anyway, but he hadn’t expected to have to do it so soon.
Because although her betrayal had gutted him, Romeo still had a tender spot in his savagely selfish heart for that tragic butterfly whose wings had been ripped to shreds by the dark violence that had broken her, turned her into this cold creature who lived to visit violence on those kinds of men, maybe even all men.
“You are in agreement that Miss Kay Steffen cannot live to see the morning, yes, Romeo?” The IMG voice switched back to a woman’s again, and now it occurred to Romeo that perhaps the cold robot-like cadence was more about the oddly formal construction of the sentences, like perhaps the IMG person was not a native English speaker.
“Kay’s a dead woman, don’t worry,” Romeo said grimly. “It was bound to happen sooner or later. I just need to work out the logistics and timing. I’d rather not have any more people dropping dead around the Carmine Mansion tonight. I’ve got cops on the take in the local Police Department, but there are limits to what they’re willing to overlook.”
“Take Kay with you to the Darkwater facility and do it there,” came the smooth female AI voice’s response. “Burn the place down with all the bodies in it. That should cover your tracks well enough. Enough to give you plausible deniability, at least. With any luck, the surviving Darkwater men will blame Diego and go after him with renewed vigor. That works out perfectly. We need to cut Diego loose anyway. He is too exposed now, too much of a risk to our future plans.”
Romeo blinked twice and raised an eyebrow. “But without Diego, how will I coordinate with the Zeta Nation on the shipments?”
“I am working on it. For now, understand that Diego is compromised and we have to distance ourselves from him, cut him loose and hope that Darkwater or the CIA take him out quickly and quietly,” came the response. “It is too late to save Diego. Benson has dragged him into this confoundingly powerful Darkwater vortex of energy. I fear it has scrambled Diego’s signals, made him irrational and unpredictable—especially when it comes to that woman Mercy and her daughter Cari. He is drawn to them, will eventually find his way back to them even though he knows Benson has got his Darkwater men watching and waiting for Diego to do exactly that.”
“Diego has a woman and child in the United States?” Romeo frowned. “That’s news to me. Well, all right, that’s a major vulnerability. I can see how it makes Diego a weak link. If he’s got his family somewhere in the States, it’s only a matter of time before Darkwater or the CIA gets him while he’s visiting them.” He thought a moment. “Hell, why haven’t the wife and kid already been picked up as accomplices?”
“Because they are not his wife and child. They have nothing to do with Diego or the Zetas,” came the response. “He only met them a few months ago in Baltimore. The woman did not even know his name until after that mess with the bomb outside the Senator’s home. It is this Darkwater thing that Benson has spun up. Diego cannot play that game, certainly cannot win at it. Sometimes you have to cut a drowning man loose before he pulls you down into the spinning whirlpool.”
Romeo felt a stab of pain behind his left eye, like nothing was making sense. “If they aren’t his wife and kid, why does Diego give a shit about them? He’s wiped out entire families with the Zetas. And what’s all this crap about whirlpools and vortexes and Benson spinning up games with Darkwater?”
Silence deadened the line, then a computerized glitchy sound came as the AI-voice switched again. “It’s complicated. Trust me when I say Diego is now a liability. He might be of some use to my larger plans if he manages to stay alive more than a week, but as far as the Zeta Nation shipments of Fentanyl to the Carmine-controlled docks are concerned, Diego is history. I am already in touch with one of the Zetas down in South America, a gentleman named Ernesto. He knows his way around technology and the modern banking and financial systems, will be a much more reliable partner going forward.”
Romeo furrowed his aching brow. “Does this guy Ernesto know you’re cutting Diego off? Isn’t Diego the leader of this Zeta Nation? They aren’t going to just cut their leader out of the damn loop.”
“They’ll have to if Diego is dead.”
“That’s a big if. The guy has eluded Darkwater, the CIA, and every other agency hunting him in the U.S. for months now. He’s former Mexican Special Forces, knows how to be a ghost, disappear into the shadows, survive on his own.” Romeo snorted. “I hope you aren’t asking me to kill Diego Vargas too. I’m not your damn errand boy.”
“Diego is no longer your problem,” came the cold response. “You cannot understand this the way I do, but believe me when I say Diego has been drawn into Darkwater’s path—a path that will lead to a dead end for him. Especially if Benson dies tonight along with Wagner and Jill and whoever else is at Darkwater HQ. The remaining Darkwater men will blame Diego and redouble their efforts to hunt him down—with the full support of CIA Director Kaiser and possibly every other federal agency. Even if Diego survives in the shadows, he will have so much heat on him that the Zeta Nation will have to cut ties if they want to avoid being bombed back to the stone age.”
Romeo shook his head. “If I kill Benson and a bunch of his guys and gals tonight, won’t the surviving Darkwater guys want to take out my ass too, along with Diego’s? Not sure I want to go to war with some ex-military guys in cahoots with the damn CIA, all of them out for revenge.”
“You are already at war with them, Romeo. This is your best chance to win. Remember, you ordered a hit on Jack Wagner, and now you have to finish the job on him anyway to preserve your standing in your macho mafia world. Wagner is at the Darkwater facility right now, so you need to go through Benson and the others to get to him anyway. Besides, Darkwater is Benson’s own little project, has nothing to do with any U.S. government agency. Yes, CIA Director Martin Kaiser has a long history with Benson, has been covering for Darkwater the past eight years. But even Kaiser is rumored to be on rocky ground. It’s by no means certain he remains in place as Director after the Presidential Elections—even if Robinson wins the White House.” A long pause, followed by a hissing breath that made Romeo wonder if he was talking to some kind of a snake-demon. “Look, Darkwater has only about a dozen men in total, and many of them are long-retired and well past their fighting prime, with wives and kids to think about. Darkwater is not as formidable as it sounds. Benson and Kaiser do not have wide support in either the Intelligence or Military circles of the U.S. government. In fact, it’s entirely possible that some in the U.S. government will be privately relieved that John Benson and Darkwater have been eliminated. You strike tonight, under cover of darkness, with superior manpower . . . you can win this, Romeo. Everything is laid out before you. Your fate is there for the taking. Your destiny shimmering like a prize. But you have to make the choice, Romeo. Fate will respond if you make the choice. That is how the great game is played. And like it or not, you are in the arena now, Romeo Carmine.”
Romeo stayed quiet, his head spinning through the options, circling around the obstacles. It was a twisted mess with no clear path through. Retreat was possible, but it would be more than just retreat—it would be defeat. His standing in the mafia world would erode. He would start to lose his influence with the dockworkers unions and the customs guys.
And without those connections, Romeo was useless to IMG.
Which, Romeo considered with an uncharacteristic shudder, could very well put him on this mysterious Miss IMG’s kill list.
All right, so there was some logic to going forward, to attack and not retreat.
But Romeo had to admit there was something else driving him onward too.
Something inside him that responded to Miss IMG’s cryptic words about fate and free will, choice and destiny, being in the arena and playing the great game.
Romeo exhaled heavily, ran his fingers through his hair, grimacing at the phone as he thought it through, the whiskey not helping his roiling brain. “Shit, I can’t believe I’m actually considering this. I must be out of my fucking mind.” He rubbed his eyes, shook his head. “I don’t even know who you are.”
“I am someone who has been drawn into your path because our destinies have coincided. We have both been pulled into Darkwater’s swirling current, Benson’s trickster game. But, unlike you, I have played this game before, Romeo. I have been down that Darkwater rabbit-hole and lived to tell the tale, emerged from that abyss with new knowledge, new power, new purpose.” The IMG weirdo paused a beat before continuing. “Understand this, Romeo. You have been pulled into this Darkwater game just like many others before you. You chose to order a hit on Jack Wagner, and that impulsive decision pulled you head-first down the Darkwater rabbit hole. You can try to back your way out, I suppose. Certainly, Miss Kay will attempt to convince you to do precisely that when she bargains for her life in a few minutes.” The IMG snake-demon hissed out another breath. “Choices line the path to a man’s destiny, Romeo, and I want you to make your own decision. I could easily threaten you with financial destruction, since IMG can wipe out a substantial portion of your wealth by dumping those bonds. But I choose not to do so. I choose to let you choose, Romeo. A choice made with intention and inspiration is what generates the psychic energy needed to win at this cosmic game. So choose, Romeo. Advance or retreat. Play the game or fold your cards.”
Romeo’s temples throbbed. The room spun. He felt like he was looking over the edge of a cliff, about to make a leap of faith that if he stepped off, he wouldn’t plummet to his death, that the choice would give him wings.
The IMG voice swirled through the ether now, the strange cadence sounding hypnotic and trancelike, like this person really was tapped into something Romeo didn’t fully understand but was perhaps beginning to. “The brain is cowardly compared to the heart, Romeo. It serves as a check to restrain the boldness of the human heart. The brain whispers that you can find another way to smooth over the debacle with your dead nephew. Perhaps you can convince Bobby’s junkie fiancée to change her story and say it was an accident. The brain wants you to negotiate and manipulate, scheme and deceive, dig your way out of this hole with words instead of violence. But that is a woman’s way of fighting, using words and emotions. That has its place in every battle, but the death-blow must be struck in the realm of flesh and blood. To defeat Darkwater, we must attack with both male and female weaponry, harness the fundamental forces that give the universe its spin. The oscillating energy of sex and violence, creation and destruction, up and down, inside and outside, male and female.” A metallic hissing laugh, followed by a change in tone, the voice twisting and turning, taunting and teasing. “Darkwater generates its power from both female and male energy, and so to win against Benson, we need both sides of that cosmic coin. I can only provide one side. I need you to provide the other, Romeo. Do you understand?”
Romeo frowned, a chill running up his spine, sparking a glimmer of understanding. “You’re a woman,” he said quietly, not sure if it was a question or a statement.
“See, you do know something about me now, Romeo.” The voice was teasing now, a feminine lilt coming through. “Yes, I am a woman, and although women do ride into battle with swords drawn and guns blazing, I am not one of those women. My preferred battlefield is the mind, the psyche, the emotions. But to defeat Benson and Darkwater in the flesh, I need to combine my creative weapons with the destructive power of masculine energy.”
Romeo laughed. “Are you asking me out, Miss IMG?” He chuckled, rubbing his eyes and shaking his head in disbelief.
Disbelief not at the manipulatively melodramatic crap being spewed by some anonymous puppeteer hiding behind an AI voice, but disbelief that it was working.
Because there was something here that resonated deep inside Romeo.
Was it a sense of destiny?
A feeling of fate?
A yearning to enter the arena and fight like a man, give free rein to those savage primal instincts that yearned to conquer and destroy?
Romeo couldn’t quite articulate the answer, but there was no questioning the urge. It was vivid and vigorous, resonant and real. Sure, this IMG bitch was taunting Romeo with that crap about a woman fighting with words and emotions and a man fighting with fists and fire. But the taunts did trigger something in Romeo’s heart, and he damn well knew it wasn’t just because of the testosterone injections.
Damn it, there was some deep, ancient truth in what this IMG woman was saying about choice and circumstance, about decisions having power.
Because although she might be a puppeteer hiding behind the curtain, pulling strings and making the players jerk and twitch, Romeo Carmine didn’t feel like a dumb puppet without free will. He might be tumbling down the Darkwater rabbit hole, but Miss IMG was right about one thing:
It was Romeo’s own damn choices that had sent him down this road.
You ordered Diego to kill Jack Wagner, Romeo reminded himself as that resonant sense of destiny made his head buzz with an exhilarating clarity. And it was an instinctive decision, made with intuition more than intelligence. Yeah, sure, you can tell yourself it was logical, that you needed proof Diego wasn’t setting you up, that Diego and Jack weren’t both part of some DEA or FBI sting operation. Getting Diego to kill Jack would prove Diego wasn’t working with law enforcement.
But it wasn’t just cold calculation, Romeo admitted to himself. There was a scorching hot sense that you needed to go down this path, that it was fated, destined, pre-ordained, paved in anticipation of your arrival, an empty chair waiting for you at the cosmic card table, an open invitation to join the other players placing bets and waiting for the invisible dealer to shuffle the deck of fate, deal the cards of destiny.
Well, those fucking cards have now most certainly been dealt, Romeo thought with a manic grin as he considered all the events following his decision to have Diego take a shot at Jack. Now decide if you want to fold your hand or play it out and see whose fate wins the day, whose destiny takes the jackpot.
Romeo tented his fingers and rocked gently in his swivel chair. He was starting to see the eerie way in which coincidences lined up after pivotal choices were made. He’d seen glimpses of it in his own life, times when the universe seemed to reward boldness—not unlike how the mythical gods often intervened to help clear a hero’s path to his own destiny, to help him create his own personal myth, write the legend of his own life.
“All right.” Romeo spoke quietly, his answer sending a ripple of exhilaration through his body. He poured himself another drink, the last of the bottle. “Fuck it. I’m in it now. I’m not going to sit here and wait for this guy Benson to send some Darkwater killer after me in my own home. I’m going to take the fight to this guy’s nest in the woods. You said Darkwater is no more than a dozen men, right?”
“Yes. And it’ll just be six or seven at the Darkwater facility right now, with the rest too far away to get there in a hurry.”
Romeo exhaled heavily, ran his fingers through his hair as he went through a mental checklist. “I can bring eighteen men, armed with AR-15s. We’ll bring a few gallons of flame-accelerant with portable power-hoses to spray it on the building, flare-guns to ignite the accelerant. Just like the old days when we were burning down warehouses to take out the competition.” He chuckled as a ripple of excitement went through his muscles. “We’ll turn that building into a crackling-hot oven, pick off Benson and his guys when they come staggering out through the smoke. Or maybe we’ll barricade the exits, pin them inside, let them fucking burn, just like you said. Depends on the building layout. I don’t suppose you have any images of the Darkwater facility?”
“I am sending them through now.”
Romeo sat up straight as a stream of images started to pop up on his phone. He frowned, a chill rising up his back when he saw that the images were most certainly not from Google Maps. “How the hell do you have access to this stuff? Who the fuck are you? CIA or military? Some foreign Intelligence agency?”
“Would it make any difference if I were?” came the smooth response followed by a hollow laugh. “Oh, relax. You are not being set up as a patsy in some off-the-books CIA-sanctioned assassination of John Benson. In today’s world, so much military-grade surveillance tech is built by private companies all over the world. Almost anything can be acquired for the right price, Romeo. And so much of it is just software, computer programs that can be sent anywhere within seconds.” She sighed. “Did you know there are over a million satellites and drones in the skies, monitoring everything from weather in New York to traffic in London to terrorist camps in Sudan to militia training grounds in Michigan? Which means there are dozens, sometimes hundreds, of eyes in the sky watching every spot on the planet at any given time. You combine all that with new AI-enabled decryption and hacking software, and you can put together a pretty impressive set of real-time surveillance capabilities.” Miss IMG laughed again, the sound less hollow this time. “Speaking of surveillance, Miss Kay appears to be on her way to your office finally. I will give you two some privacy.” A short pause, as if Miss IMG was considering her next words carefully. “Romeo, Romeo, Romeo . . .” she said, repeating his name like a chant. “You know, this Darkwater thing has shown a remarkable affinity for names lining up. And you have quite the name for this sort of game.” Another pause, this one pregnant with insinuation. “Romeo, oh, Romeo. Do you have a tragic Juliet in your life, Romeo?”
With those parting words, the line clicked dead, leaving Romeo staring at the silent phone, wondering if he’d imagined the whole thing. He blinked away the hypnotic hangover of that surreal conversation, pushed himself to his feet and stepped away from the desk. He paced the large office like a beast in a cage, stomping his feet to shake himself back to the real world which felt damn far away, like the events of the day had shoved Romeo into a different dimension. He wondered if it was the chemical cocktail of whiskey, caffeine, adrenaline, and high-dose synthetic testosterone that was creating the altered sense of space and time he was experiencing.
Whatever it was felt damn good, though.
Really fucking good.
Romeo took a deep breath, his expanding chest igniting something raw and primal in his testosterone-jacked body, his whiskey-fueled brain. Triceps bulging, Romeo flexed beneath his tailored silk shirt that had been sweated into beneath his jacket and was stuck to his muscle-ridged torso like a wrapper. He stripped off his jacket, yanked off his tie, unbuttoned the front of his shirt almost down to his belt. Outside the window the parking lot was a snow-covered winter wonderland, but inside the office it felt hotter than the tropics. Rivulets of sweat trickled down past Romeo’s heavy pectorals, down the center-line of his ridged abdomen, beneath his belt and into his silk Italian underwear.
Romeo gazed down at himself as his chest expanded and contracted with each heavy breath. He admired his sculpted body, then let his gaze flick down to the heavy bulge at the front of his trousers. He realized he was monstrously erect, like maybe there was something to Miss IMG’s speech about sex and violence being part of the same primal energy.
“Oh, fuck,” Romeo groaned, fisting his cock through his trousers, closing his eyes and seeing himself in violent action later tonight, storming the gates, taking down the enemy. “Oh, yes.”
It didn’t matter to Romeo that Darkwater were former military. In his opinion—and perhaps the rest of the world’s too—America’s military no longer glowed with the halo of righteousness they’d earned after winning World War II. And today’s warriors were video-game heroes more than anything—soft-bellied nerds operating joysticks and squinting at satellite images on screens a thousand miles away from the action. Yeah, the American Special Forces guys were still elite, still worthy of admiration and respect. But Jack Wagner and the rest of those guys were civilians now. They were no longer special.
But Romeo . . . yes, Romeo was special, he thought as he massaged his cock and manhandled his balls, the sexual energy surging through his body like he was being pulled into that vortex Miss IMG had spoken about, a place where the urges to fuck and to fight swirled around each other in cosmic coitus, feeding off the same fuel, mixing with each other to create something potent and primal, dark and deadly.
Now Romeo heard Kay’s voice outside his office door. She was protesting at being pushed around by one of Romeo’s guys. Romeo smiled, tightening his grip on his cock when he heard Kay take a swing at one of his thugs before yelping in pain when she was slammed up against the wall. Kay’s slim body was wiry-strong, and Romeo knew she worked out obsessively. But she also drank obsessively, and although he’d always marveled at how a woman with so little meat on her bones could handle her liquor so well, Kay didn’t have the strength to take on two of Romeo’s thugs.
Romeo felt that surging energy of dark-cold violence and scorching-hot sex whip through his body like an electric current. His jaw tightened, his neck thickening as he wondered if that mysterious IMG woman had done something to him with her choice of words, the cadence of her sentences, that hypnotic lilt to her tone. Neuro-linguistic programming was a well-studied weapon in the CIA’s arsenal of mind-control techniques. Despite Miss IMG’s assurances to the contrary, Romeo couldn’t rule out the troubling possibility that he was about to join the ranks of infamous patsies like Lee Harvey Oswald but without the trademark middle name.
“I know all your names,” came Kay’s snarling threat as the door swung open and one of Romeo’s thugs dragged her into the room. “Don’t think I won’t get you all arrested for assault, you fucking assholes.” Kay wrenched her arm away from Romeo’s thug, turned her angry attention to Romeo. Her cheek was bruised from where she’d been slammed against the wall outside, but otherwise Kay looked all right.
More than all right, Romeo thought as he dragged his gaze down along Kay’s slender body, down past her pencil-skirt to those knee-high black boots, then back up along the buttons of her black silk blouse visible beneath her jacket, his cock throbbing in his trousers when he recalled those darkly alluring tattoos carved into Kay’s torso, circling her pointy little tits.
Romeo almost blacked out from the surge of raw desire, just barely stopping himself from leaping across the room and taking Kay like he’d fantasized about so many times over the past few years. Swallowing thickly, Romeo blinked himself back into focus, saw that Kay had noticed the obscene peak at the front of his trousers, the sight making her eyes narrow with a dangerous mix of fear and rage.
“Romeo, whatever you heard on that phone call . . .” Kay started to say before Romeo swiped at the air to shut her up, shaking his head violently.
“Don’t bother. It’s over, Kay. You’d already be dead if not for simple considerations of logistics and body disposal.” Romeo nodded to his thugs. “Gag her and bag her. We’re going on a trip.”
Kay screamed, lunging at Romeo, who sidestepped her claws just in time. His thugs grappled her to the ground, one of them ramming his knee into her back and holding her face-down while the other guy proceeded to bind her wrists with heavy-duty plastic-ties and place a thick strip of black duct-tape over her mouth.
“Stand her up,” Romeo ordered. “Up against the wall.” He waited until Kay was upright, her back to the side wall, her eyes now wide with more fear than rage.
The kind of fear that Romeo knew came from that broken place inside her.
That place which would never heal.
“Oh, Kay,” he whispered as he came close, leaning in and sniffing the air around her panicked body. “If only you were capable of giving yourself to me. What a team we could have made, you and I.” Romeo dragged his fingertips along her sunken cheek, then stroked her long slender neck. She recoiled in disgust, shivered with something uncontrollable, like maybe this was the first time a man had touched her since she’d been attacked all those years ago, violated in unspeakable ways. That event had destroyed anything soft and feminine in this butterfly, Romeo thought with a sad smile. She was just an empty shell, incapable of love, a twisted creature whose body reacted violently to a man’s touch.
Any man.
Every man.
For a long dark moment Romeo considered ripping off that duct-tape to see if she’d bargain for her life, offer herself to him willingly. But Romeo already knew she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Not just in principle, but physically. Her body simply wouldn’t go along with it, even if her brain decided it was the logical choice. Romeo had seen it in how she’d flinched involuntarily at his touch, her body recoiling with visceral disgust, the rejection of a man’s touch now indistinguishable from instinct.
She’d rather die than be fucked by a man ever again.
Romeo gazed into Kay’s panic-stricken eyes now, running his fingertips down past her throat and teasing the top button of her blouse. He tugged gently at the neckline, pulling the blouse away from her chest just enough to give him a glimpse of her petite cleavage and the edges of those mysterious black tattoos.
Kay lurched her body to the side away from him, panting heavily into the duct-tape, her sunken cheeks puffing out as she hyperventilated. Romeo gritted his teeth and clenched his fists, fighting back a surge of dangerous desire, like those twin snakes of sex and violence wanted to strike at Kay together. Suddenly he understood what drove bad men to do bad things, how that darkness lived in every man’s heart, how that evil was part of the very core of mankind, a savage urge bred into man’s psyche from millions of years where survival depended on giving free rein to those two primal drives:
Fighting and fucking.
Romeo drew back slowly, using every ounce of willpower to tear himself away from the terrible temptation of those urges. Releasing all that energy now would be a mistake, he understood. There would be time for this later, when the fight was done and the battle was won.
Then Romeo would take his prize.
Release those demon-dark urges before putting this broken butterfly out of her misery, send her to hell to torment the souls of men she’d sent there. She could spend eternity reliving the darkly addictive power of revenge.
“You’ll get your revenge on me too, eventually.” Romeo smiled. “We’ll meet in hell someday. You’ll keep it warm for me, won’t you, Kay?” Romeo’s smile expanded to a grin when he saw the rage burn in Kay’s eyes again, chasing away some of the fear, perhaps replacing it with relief that death was near, that it was finally the end of the line, that it was time to go.
Romeo glanced at his watch now, then flicked his gaze towards his thugs as his mind snapped to the fight ahead. He barked out his orders, instructing his guys to gather the troops, load up the SUVs with fire-starting supplies just like the old days.
“We’ll either smoke them out and gun them down, or barricade them inside and let them burn,” he told his guys as they glanced at each other and grinned. “Maybe a bit of both. Now get the SUVs ready to go. We leave as soon as we’re loaded up.”
Romeo’s guys nodded. They turned to go, but stopped when Romeo called them back.
“What’s up, boss?” one of them asked.
Romeo gazed past his guys as an idea popped into his head like a suggestion from the subconscious, a backup plan in case everything else went to shit. “My nephew’s airheaded junkie fiancée . . . bring her along for the ride. Gagged and bagged, just like Kay. She might come in handy if we need a hostage.”
One of his thugs glanced at Kay, then frowned at Romeo. “Isn’t one hostage enough, boss?”
Romeo snorted. “Somehow I don’t think a snake like Benson is going to give a rat’s ass about Kay. He probably thinks she led us to the Darkwater hideout by making that phone call in the first place. Hell, if Benson and his guys manage to get any shots off, the first bullet will be for Kay.” He shrugged at Kay, then gestured with his head towards his guys. “Bring Nina. Go on. And take Kay down with you.”
Romeo watched his guys drag Kay out of the room. He closed the door behind them, strolled back to his desk, pulled open the third drawer, took out the gun-safe with his German-made HK machine-pistol.
As he unlocked the gun-safe and checked his weapon, Romeo wondered about bringing Nina along. It would mean he’d have to kill her too. He couldn’t have a witness to the night’s attack running around blabbing to anyone who cared to listen. Especially Nina, who’d already proven she couldn’t keep her mouth shut. Yeah, he’d have to put her down tonight along with Kay.
But Nina was a dead woman either way, Romeo thought with a shrug. She was a junkie who’d just lost her fiancé. That was an overdose waiting to happen anyway. All Romeo was doing was speeding it up to tonight. He would arrange for the inevitable OD to happen once they got back to the mansion after finishing off Benson and Darkwater. The morning maids would find Nina cold in her bed, foaming at the mouth, system full of alcohol and a dozen other intoxicants.
Too bad, Romeo thought with a sigh. She seemed like a good enough kid. Still, she chose to hook up with a loser like Bobby. She deserved what was coming, Romeo figured. She was just collateral damage, a casualty of war. Besides, Nina was a hysterical, unstable junkie that nobody would miss. The girl didn’t have any family, didn’t invite any relatives to the wedding, didn’t seem to have anyone in the world. Yeah, nobody would miss her.
Except maybe her stupid best friend.