CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Age Thirty-Four
As the months went by, my body count grew, and alongside it, so did my bank account.
The more critical the death was, the higher the price.
It was messy work, and I didn't enjoy it.
But somewhere around the fifth or sixth job, as I changed into one of the brand-new suits Gerald kept readily available in a guest bedroom at his mansion in Hollow Cove, it hit me that not only was I good at it, but the act of taking another life had come naturally to me.
Like a baby learning to walk, I had learned to kill with proficiency, and I did it well.
I wasn't proud of myself, and with every new life I took, the weight of their souls sat heavily on my shoulders.
They were bad people—evil by social and moral standards alike—but that didn't give me reason to be happy to serve as their judge.
I was simply following orders and keeping the innocent lives I cared about safe.
But that didn't mean I couldn't be good at it, too, and the better I was, the quicker their execution was over.
So, a little over a year after Leonard’s death, with over a dozen names etched into my soul, I was confident, damn near cocky, and Dean's patience in my ego was growing thinner with every job.
And I was growing fonder of him.
"Sir," he murmured as I walked toward Seint Manor from the hearse.
"Dean,” I replied with a nod.
I peered behind him into the house, trying to appear inconspicuous while hoping to catch a glimpse of the illusive Analise.
Throughout the past year, I had tried to spend as little time here as possible, to avoid both Gerald and his snake of a wife, Virginia, and so the contact I had with Analise was infrequent.
When our paths did eventually cross on those few rare occasions, our interactions were kept cordial in passing at best. But her eyes lingered as she walked by, and although she couldn't tell—with little thanks to the mask I insisted on wearing—mine lingered too.
Watching her, memorizing the effortless flow of her walk, the elegant way she held her hands and lips.
But if she was Beauty, I played every part of the Beast. The phantom of her opera, lurking in every shadow I was permitted to inhabit, wishing I had a way to see her more often without drawing the attention of my weasel of a father or her siren of a mother.
But the foyer was empty of her presence tonight, and where I wished she’d been, descending the stairs, coming right toward me, was Virginia, the vision of elegance and poise.
A wolf in beautiful sheep’s clothing.
Belladonna.
She carried a glass of wine in her hand as she glanced in my direction. Her mouth curved into a salacious smile as she lifted her other hand to waggle her fingers in a wave. I was glad for the mask as I narrowed my eyes with disgust when she stepped into the foyer and approached.
"I'm glad I've finally caught you," she said, taking a place beside Dean and leaning against the doorframe. "Abraham, right?"
It unsettled something in me to hear my real name escape her lips.
"Mrs. Crowley," Dean interjected gently.
“Mrs. Seint-Crowley,” she corrected haughtily, her nose wrinkled, as if to be called anything but disgusted her. “It’s absurd the number of times I’ve had to remind you of that.”
He offered an apologetic nod. "Mrs. Seint-Crowley, I'm not sure Mr. Crowley would be happy with you talking—"
"Oh, I can talk to whoever I want, Dean. You should know this by now. You've been here long enough," she replied, shooing him away with a fluid wave of her hand directly in his face.
Dean's chest puffed with a sigh as he lifted his eyes to my face, his expression apologetic.
"What can I do for you, Mrs. Seint-Crowley?" I asked, my tone tense as I made sure not to make the same mistake Dean had by addressing her with the wrong name.
"Are you heading out on an assignment?" she asked.
"Yes, ma'am," I replied, keeping my responses short, wanting nothing more than for this interaction to be finished.
"Will you be returning here afterward?"
With a nod, I said, "I always do.”
Every line of work I seemed to stumble into brought with it an array of messes involving a variety of biological material, and after every embalming or stabbing alike, I eventually needed to change my clothes.
"Very good," she said, reaching out to lay her slender, manicured fingers against my arm. "I would like to request your company. It’s been a while since we’ve had a chat, and there's something I'd like to discuss."
The threads that managed to keep my soul intact pulled taut as warning bells clanged, echoing through the catacombs of my mind.
Whatever there was to discuss with this woman, I couldn't imagine it being good …
nor could I imagine Gerald being pleased with me having a meeting—unplanned or otherwise—with his wife … alone.
Still, I offered another curt nod and said again, "Yes, ma'am."
Her unnaturally plump lips pulled into a smile as she bowed her head. "Now, get to work," she said, letting her fingers linger on my arm for a few moments longer before dragging them away.
Before she could leave, she glanced at Dean and said, "And there's no need to bring this conversation to Mr. Crowley's attention. He's already aware."
Dean's throat shifted with a swallow before he replied, "Understood."
She hung around long enough to give his shoulder an appraising pat, then turned to walk away, disappearing into the huge estate and once again leaving Dean and me alone.
He looked up at me and sighed as he shook his head.
"Should I be worried?" I asked him.
With a glance behind him to make sure Mrs. Seint-Crowley was out of earshot, he turned back to me and murmured, "Well, let's just say, what we're about to do is way more pleasant than whatever she might have planned for you."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" I asked.
"No sense in worrying about it now," he said, nudging his chin toward the outside world. "Come on. Let's make this fast."
***
The house was dark and quiet when we arrived. But I quickly disturbed the peace when I kicked down the door, splintering the rickety framework into a hundred pieces.
The room was barren of light, save for the glow of a television on the far side of the room, opposite a busted-looking couch, where a woman lay naked.
I froze at the sight of her, focusing my sights on the slope of her chest. She appeared to be sleeping, but expressed no concern as Dean and I stepped into the living room, guns at the ready.
Dean was already moving toward the next room as I knelt beside the sofa and lifted her limp wrist. A syringe tumbled from her loosely clenched fist, but her muscles were well into the state of rigor mortis.
I thought of my mother then. The faintest, briefest of memories flashed before my eyes—a cold night in a crowded alley, when I’d woken up to find her beside me no longer breathing.
She looked just like this, I recalled, the thought somber. Soft but rigid. An expertly carved statue of what had once been.
"She's dead," I announced quietly, gingerly laying her arm across her chest before grabbing a raggedy throw blanket from the floor to conceal her nudity.
I wished I’d brought Leonard’s rosary, but even without it, I made the sign of the cross, knowing that’s what Leonard would’ve done, and prayed her journey into whatever came after this was a lot kinder on her soul than her life on this planet had been—assuming it had been at all like its conclusion.
Dean nodded solemnly as I came to stand beside him.
"Marco's wife," he said, his eyes still on her face, as peaceful as if she were deep in slumber.
The most endless sleep.
"Do they have children?" I asked.
"Two little girls," he answered, turning to head farther into the house. "I'm going to check down the hallway over here. You check downstairs. Basement door's over there."
I didn’t know Marco or his wife. I didn’t know any of Gerald’s associates until it was time for the plague doctor to come calling.
I tried to keep my nose out of that shit.
As little involvement I had in Gerald's endeavors, the better.
But from what Dean had told me, Marco was one of the dealers Gerald had out on the street, pushing whatever the fuck drugs he was selling.
Dean said Marco had been reliable. A good salesman, so to speak.
He brought in a consistent stream of money, always sold the product he had on hand.
But word got back to Gerald that Marco had been talking to a competitor—some dude who went by the name of Constantine, based out of Boston.
It started to look like Marco might switch sides and maybe pull a fast one on Gerald, so Gerald decided to get even before he found himself in a ditch.
"If he wanted to stop dealing, he could've just said that," Dean had said. "Gerald isn't a good man, but he's fair. He would've let him go."
"He didn't let me go," I had pointed out.
"No," he'd agreed, his tone solemn. "But you're different."
I hadn’t needed him to elaborate on that.
I knew exactly what he meant. Gerald wanted to keep me close.
He wanted to control me; he always had. But Marco wasn't different.
He was just a guy. A guy who did some work for my father and decided he wanted to betray the hand that had kept him and his family fed.
And now, he was supposed to die for that betrayal, and I was conflicted.
He has kids, I thought, walking the opposite end of the dark hallway, heading for the open basement door.
Their mother was already gone. If their father was killed, too, what would happen to his children? Who would take care of them?
The first step groaned beneath my foot. The stairwell was canopied in deep darkness.
A dim bulb from the hallway behind me did little to light my way.
The mask was a hindrance, providing zero peripheral vision, and what little it did for me straight ahead wasn’t doing any favors on this rickety staircase.