Chapter 7
Scarlett
What did I walk into? A nightmare or a wet dream? It’s weird that I can’t tell the difference, isn’t it?
There’s Bohnes, blood-dipped white hoodie sleeves covering his hands to the knuckle, a straight razor clutched tightly in bone-etched fingers. He has his tongue out, like he might lick some of the liquid off. I point at him with my phone. I only just ended my very brief call with Burt.
“You lick that, we start using condoms until you get tested. Who knows what’s in that junkie blood?
Don’t you dare.” I press the phone against my lips in thought.
Lying to Burt was the right move. He’s already pissed with us.
Alexei is right. We can’t drag this out.
Chet and Jonas are not ruining my relationship with my in-laws.
“Parking space.” Bohnes grins. “There. I was the first one to use the safe word. Don’t ever joke about condoms again, my never-ending Nightmare.
” He flicks the razor closed with a snap of his wrist, sliding it into the pocket of his hoodie.
The front reads Brimming with Boo-kish Delight and features a ghost reading a novel titled Horror Smut.
That, too, is splattered with droplets of red.
Oh. Wait. No, that blood’s just part of the design. Never mind. Only the sleeves are dirty.
Ash walks casually in the liquid, splashing through it like the puddles are rainwater instead of gore, and picks up a clean white hand towel from the shaving counter.
He wipes the blade of his sword, scrubbing the metal with absent fingers.
His all-black eyes are locked on me. Little demon, got no repentance.
Alexei has three needles tucked between his fingers, the metal thimble recapped.
The two men that he stabbed aren’t fully dead yet, but they’re twitching.
My husband’s suit still looks impeccable from the ankles up.
A shiver runs through him, from his bloodied shoes through his pressed slacks, and into his uneasy expression.
He slips a face mask on and closes his eyes on the unsanitary bloodbath in front of him.
But Widow? Widow. Soaked and dripping with that fucking haircut.
He swipes a hand over his handsome face, catching the plush poor boy pout of his lower lip. He flicks the red onto the floor to rejoin the rest of it and then stares down at the razor in his hand.
“Well?” he growls, moving over to stand in front of me which is…you know…very distracting. Widow widens his eyes, a comical look dressed in all that blood the way he is. “What did Burt say?”
“This is mob related?” Treasure groans from behind me and really, I feel bad for trashing her establishment.
She was going to give me some fierce red-and-black striped nails for the wedding.
Damn it. At least I don’t have to clean up dead goons with a fresh fucking manicure.
Hopefully Treasure can still squeeze me in after we mop the crime scene.
“He said, if the cops show up again, you’re on your own, kiddos.” I whisper this to Widow, looking down at my heels and the spreading red stain across the black-and-white tiled floors. Huh. There are drains embedded in the ground. We could, uh, maybe just hose this down with a little bleach?
My eyes flick to Widow’s hair of their own accord. It’s an impulse I can’t resist.
He pauses and reaches up to touch his hair, an edgy smile on his mouth.
I grab his wrist, trying to stop him from getting more blood in his hair, but he’s drenched enough as it is.
Widow pauses, looking me in the eyes like we’re the only two in this room.
The hair is enough to do it for me, like I’d jump his bones if—
“What the actual fuck?!” This is Nisha, pushing Treasure aside and gaping at the mess while Basti stumbles up behind her, grabbing onto her shoulder and peering past my second-in-command.
“The four of you killed all ten of these guys? Without interrupting our spa time?” Basti squeaks, and then he edges past Nisha and goes completely still on the small landing that leads from Treasure’s half of the place to her fuckboy’s barbershop.
His eyes are on Adrian, not the massacre.
“Oh, Widow.” Bastian puts a hand up over his mouth and then gives me a look.
“You sure he isn’t down for a bi-awakening?
” he teases, and I grin as Widow rolls his eyes. “That haircut…Fuck.”
“That’s what I said,” I tell him as Bohnes rolls one of the bodies over and starts going through the man’s pockets.
“Really, uh…” Shit, what’s the barber guy’s name again?
I end up shrugging. “Thanks, Treasure’s fuckboy.
You do good work.” I nod to the old guy in the corner, too.
People call him Skinny because he always has the, uh, the skinny, right?
Bohnes and that dude, they sell intel back and forth.
“You want me to finish the other boys’ haircuts?
” Treasure’s fuckboy asks, lighting up his ten-thousandth cigarette as Ash bends down to help Bohnes.
Alexei carefully puts his thimble and needles away as he edges over to me and Widow.
He looks a bit faint. I take a step back, knocking the heel of my shoe into the old shitty vending machine.
If you get the right spot… Out comes a free room-temperature soda that I offer to Alexei.
He politely declines. “I mean, after you clean up the bodies. The samurai guy, he wants a fuckin’ K-pop haircut. ”
I lift my brows. Huh. Didn’t see that coming. Ash doesn’t know what he likes though. He’s never really been allowed to be Ash at all. Everything is new to him. If he wants a K-pop haircut, well, he’s too hot to look bad in literally anything. I don’t give a shit.
“It’s his hair,” I reply and then, with a laugh, I feel compelled to add: “sort of.”
“Seriously?” Nisha asks as Treasure shoos her gawking nail techs back through the doorway and carefully closes the rest of us away.
While I was getting my brows done, I extended an offer to Treasure: join my crew officially.
Come with me. Be my nail artist and gossipmonger—permanently.
She accepted. “You’re discussing haircuts when we need to be discussing mass burials? ”
I am not fooled by her no-nonsense bullshit.
“Like you weren’t going to ask him to fix up your fade?
” I shrug as Widow puts his hands on his hips and Alexei forces a rod of steel into his spine through sheer force of will.
Touching a corpse is pretty close to the top of the list for most disgusting, diseased, bacteria-ridden shit ever.
He’ll get it done though. “But how do we want to deal with these bodies? These are nothing but cannon fodder goons. Not even hired muscle, but cheap junkies.”
Ash stands back up, the knees of his borrowed jeans wet with red. He pauses beside a twitching goon and then stabs him through the front of the throat with the tip of the sword, silencing him permanently. His eyes are fucking cold rock. So hot.
“No cameras or mics,” Bohnes mutters, stalking across the floor on his hands and knees through the swamp of hot blood like it means nothing to him.
The old guy—Skinny—politely excuses himself to the back of the shop, sucking on his vape pen.
“Burt makes a good point though. Cops could easily be en route as we speak.”
Bohnes goes through the pockets of the other dead men with Ash as his little dark-haired assistant.
Dispatching the police here next would be the perfect move. Send a bunch of junkies you know we’ll kill anyway, and then get us with the long arm of the law. I really need to stop staring at Widow’s new haircut. It’s distracting.
“Should we be planning a car chase to throw ‘em off?” I ask, thinking aloud as I tap a please-let-Treasure-fix-it-soon nail against my chin. “Send some of our best girls out, draw the cops away from here.” I glance over my shoulder at Nisha and Basti.
The former is waiting with her phone in hand, ready to make calls to our crew, and the other is getting a bit squicky about the smell in here. Poor Bastian. He hates blood almost as much as I do. My most hated shade of the color red, all over my shoes, all over my boys.
Nisha narrows her eyes, tugging at one of her gold hoops with a finger.
“That the order then, Queen?” she queries, already in the process of calling someone (probably Jennifer) as I wait for Bohnes to stand up and join us.
Ash, too. They’re both fucking soaked in red.
Alexei scoots back, putting space between him and them.
Widow is watching me with a gaze I can feel. It’s palpable.
Not yet, honey, but soon. Our hips’ll be locked together soon.
“No cameras or mics,” Bohnes repeats, frowning as he looks over at Ash. “Why?”
“Because there’s no intention of actually prosecuting us. That would ruin their entire game. Chet and Jonas want political power and money. Us in jail doesn’t serve their purposes whatsoever. They want us dead.” Ash picks up Widow’s discarded straight razor, examining it.
“Good Japanese steel,” Treasure’s fuckboy says, leaning against one wall with his arms crossed, nodding his chin in the direction of the razor.
“I can see that,” Ash murmurs, flicking it shut and then putting it in his pocket. It is a murder weapon, so we’ll have to confiscate it. I’ll make it up to Treasure and…whatever her fuckboy’s name is.
“No cops then?” I ask but Ash only shakes his head.
“Maybe.” He meets Widow’s eyes, and I know they’re thinking about the officer they pushed into the McKenzie River.
“Or maybe they just want to use the police to put us in handcuffs and then kill us later. That’s far more likely.
Who would care one way or another if a few inmates ended up dead at the hands of the rest? ”