Chapter Sixteen
“It’s been a wild few days,” Manny says the moment he steps inside of my kitchen, pulling out one of the stools at the bar. “You missed out on a good party.”
“Yeah, we need to talk.” I pour a cup of shitty coffee for myself. I need to go to bed, but getting Manny here was a chore given his partying habit—one I couldn”t care less about discussing. “We have a problem, Manny.”
“With what? The girl in your basement?” Manny laughs, checking his smartwatch. “You still have thirty-three—well, thirty-two, days. Maybe we should say thirty-one just to be safe?”
To be safe, I should’ve killed her a long time ago.
I push the thought away, getting to the point of the conversation. “She’s Henry’s wife’s best friend.”
“Huh, small world.” Manny shrugs, unbothered. Normally, I would feel the same. I should feel the same. I shouldn’t be torn the way I am. I shouldn’t be feeling like this revelation is some kind of light at the end of the tunnel. “So…” He motions for me to continue as I fall into silence. “What’s going on? Why’s it matter who she is?”
“Henry wants to hire me to take care of whoever killed her. Well, kills her.” She’s not dead… yet.
Manny grins, and then bursts into a fit of laughter. “Wow, so you want me to buy you some rope? I know a good spot. We could do it right off the bridge. All you gotta do is jump. I bet Henry will get a real kick out of that.”
“I’m not fucking around, Manny,” I snap. “I don’t know if this is going to work. We need to figure out why she has to be killed and who made the hire. I can’t—”
He shakes his head at me, his face growing stern. “No, we don’t. We don’t have to figure out shit. The bitch dies, Luca. It’s not some sort of puzzle we have to solve. Henry will get the fuck over it. He’s always been weak, and now he’s pussy-whipped. So, no. You’re going to kill her.”
I can’t argue with him because he’s mostly right. Henry has always had this strange moral compass that makes no sense when it comes to this job—but he’s also one of the few people I can trust. I take a sip of my coffee and grit my teeth as I swallow the bitter liquid. My frustration and indecision are suddenly making me livid…
With myself.
Manny lets out a heavy breath, raking his fingers through his dark hair. “Even if I thought we could bend to whatever Henry wants, I gotta have the money from this. I don’t know what you’ve been up to the last few days, but whatever’s going on, knock it off. You know how pissed Ivan would be if we skipped this hit?”
“I’m not saying we skip,” I growl at the mention of Ivan.“I’m just saying we gotta fucking talk about it. I gotta tread lightly or Henry is going to come after me himself.”
“He’ll never fuckin’ know, Luca,” Manny bites back. “I’m good at my job. I’ll make a solid trail.”
“Jude is a better bloodhound than both of us.” My gaze drifts toward the door of the basement and my eyes hang there, my mind filling with the image of the woman on the other side. I hate that I feel drawn to her. I feel sick that I suddenly fucking care. But also…
Henry.
“We can take them. You act like we’re fucking second class. We’ve been in the business longer than them. Jude might be one of the best, but we can beat this. I have more connections.”
“Because you still have Ivan cleaning up your messes,” I snap, out of patience. “We’re no fucking better than anyone else in this business, and I don’t need any additional excitement right now.”
Manny shoves himself back from the table, his eyes on fire. “So you’re trying to say I’m the weak link? Because last time I checked, you’re the one with a crisis of fucking conscience over some stupid ginger bitch.”
Rage tears at my chest, my vision blurring with crimson. “Shut the fuck up, Manny.” My voice is lower than usual, and I battle to keep my demons at bay, the ones that my mentor worked hard to train me to leash.
“Cage your emotions, Luca. They’re weakness.” I hear his voice reverberating in my head. “If you let the anger out, it’ll make a mess. Choke it down.”
“You’re soft on her,” Manny cackles, drawing me from my thoughts. “Do I need to take care of this for you? Would that be easier?” He takes a step in the direction of the basement, but I block him.
“I’ll figure it out.” I tense my jaw, because if I wasn’t on the verge of snapping his neck, I might actually be willing to pass the baton to him. However, that would still mean that I failed, and I’m not a fucking failure. Not yet.
Manny crowds me, his eyes narrowing as he leans in. “You better figure it out, because I will call Ivan in to fix this if I have to. We’ll dealwith Henry. If he cares about his wife, he’ll rein her in before she winds up in this fucking basement, too. The only thing you need to worry about is taking care of her in thirty-two days. They want proof.”
My lip twitches, not having read into those details. Cleaning up was something that Manny took care of most of the time. “Pictures?”
“No, they want her body found. Concrete way of identifying her. I had figured dismemberment. Enough to get DNA, but not enough to figure out anything else.”
My stomach rolls with nausea, the acidic taste of coffee repeating to the back of my throat. Fuck. “Yeah, okay” is all I can choke out. I want Manny to leave. Why did I call for him to come over? Did I subconsciously think he was going to tell me that we could figure a work-around her death? Is that what I want? I shake my head, needing something a lot stronger than coffee to dull the insanity breaching my senses.
“I’ll be back, but you better fucking have this taken care of.” Manny’s demeanor is cold as he leaves me there in the kitchen, slamming the door behind him. I understand where he’s coming from. I’m being a fucking idiot. I stare down at the cup of coffee, and then take it to the sink, dumping what little remains down the drain.
I kick on the water and rinse the stainless-steel sink, focusing on the swirls of brown coffee circling the drain. It mimics the way I feel right now, like I’m stuck in the same motion, unable to break free.
I just need to kill her.
Or fake her death?
The thought comes intrusively. What good would that do? Faking her death would still leave me with a very much alive Emma, and she’d show her face soon enough. I’m fairly certain I know her hit is wrapped up in her shitstorm divorce—though the mention of the divorce attorney has me wondering if there’s more to the story.
They could both be involved.
I purse my lips and shut off the water. I set the empty mug in the sink and turn back to the basement door. Every ounce of me is drawn to that damn place, and I know it’s not because I love playing pool in the musty basement. It’s just because she is there, and I want to pick her apart more. I wanted to destroy her—and that’s initially all it was—but it’s more than that now. To deny it would be just as idiotic as thinking Manny would condone letting her live.
What a clusterfuck.
But I can’t stop myself. I unlock the door and descend the steps, desperate to talk to her, to see her breathe, to check on the necklace of bruises I left. I hate how fucking dark it is in the basement, but I killed the power so she could free rein instead of being chained to the bed.
Look at me, being a nice guy.
I inwardly grimace at the thought. I’ve never been a nice fucking guy. I’ve always been the guy on the fringes for as long as I can remember—and it’s where I belong.
“You came back fast,” Emma’s voice cuts through the dimly lit basement like a charged bolt of electricity, striking me, and then shocking me to my knees. I have the desire to unload on her, and for some reason, I give into it. Maybe if I let her meet my demons, she’ll convince me to kill her.
“I have no idea who my parents are,” I say, grabbing the chair that I sat in before and straddling it backward. “Rumor has it that I was left at a fire station down by skid row when I was four—some neighbor took pity on me after my parents overdosed.”
Her eyes glimmer under the glow of the light cascading from the stairwell. She’s still only dressed in my T-shirt, her red hair falling messily past her shoulders. “Why are you telling me this?”
I ignore her question. “You’d think that a little kid would be adopted fast, you know? Especially given up at such a young age, and I’d bet, if I hadn’t grown up in a group home, I’d have ended up in some upper crust family in the Bay Area. Maybe I wouldn’t be so fucked in the head. But then again, I don’t think anyone caused me to become obsessed with starting fires, either. So maybe it wouldn’t have mattered.”
Emma sits there in silence, her eyes trained on me.
“I clearly had some problems,” I chuckle, resting my chin against my forearm. “But then came along Victor Lombardi, the greatest hitman who ever lived.” I say the words with sarcasm, but to some they were the truth.
“And he took you in?” Emma’s voice is even, calm, and it’s as if she’s just having an everyday conversation.
“Yeah, he did. He thought I was mean-spirited enough to be his protégé—and I was. Still am,” I say with a shrug. “Maybe a little meaner than he expected. I was incredibly angry, and when I’d get angry, I’d snap, and just murder whatever I could get my hands around.”
Her expression doesn’t falter. She doesn’t even frown. Emma just stares at me, intrigue in her eyes. “I see… I must’ve made you angry in the shower then.”
I blink twice. That is what she has to say? “No, I wasn’t angry at you. I just… I was just trying another method.”
She raises a brow. “Oh, so you were going to screw me, and then kill me. That’s really romantic. Gives off true crime documentary date vibes.”
“Maybe it does.” I smile. This woman confuses the shit out of me. She should be terrified—and maybe she is—but she’s not showing her cards.
“Is that how you kill other women?” Her question causes my humor to fade.
I sit up straight in the chair. “No, it’s not. I’ve never played with my prey in that way. I choose not to defile women at their weakest.”
“But you chose to do it to me,” she shoots back, her voice sharpening. I must’ve hit a nerve somewhere inside of her.
And while my stomach lurches at the accusation, my body thrums with excitement at the chance to rile her up. “You wanted me.”
“I’m locked in a basement,” she cuts back coldly. “There might be some kind of chemistry between us, but let’s be honest, I never… I wouldn’t…” Her voice trails off, and I smirk. She doesn’t have the answer to why she didn’t tell me to stop. No and stop never left her lips when we were in that shower.
“You’d let me do it again, wouldn’t you?” I stand from the chair, my cock rigid now. “You like being a slut for me.”
“I’d like it more if you’d call me something other than slut and whore,” she bites back again, but her breath picks up. “And if you think I’m going to let you touch me after you tried to murder—” She cries out as I grab her ankles, dragging her across the bed. The shirt she has on, bunches up around her waist, exposing her.
“What do you want me to call you? Huh? Princess? Because I don’t find that one very fitting for you…” I release her ankles, half expecting her to kick me, but she doesn’t. She lays still, letting me trace my fingertips down her bare thighs.
She meets my gaze and holds it, daring me. “I want to know how you kill the women you catch.”
She avoided my question, but I let it go, giving her a wicked grin. “Are you asking me to kill you, Little Red? Or do you just want to play?”
Her breath catches as I lean over her, skimming my lips where my fingers just were. “If you kill me, I’ll come back to haunt you every fucking night for the rest of your life.”
I freeze, dread trickling through my body. I know she’s right.