Chapter 4
chapter
four
CALDER
Hours and one iced cock later, I sat outside a church on the opposite side of town. The sun had long set, and only a single light remained on in the building. The building was like most of them: a large steeple, a big parking lot, a manicured lawn now browned by winter.
I spent the rest of the day trying not to think of that woman, instead studying the information Tish had given me. Bank account. Name. Age. Social Security number. Fucking blood type. She’d given me everything I needed on Terry Parsons.
Terry Parsons was of average height and build, with thinning brown hair and brown eyes. He looked like your typical white Utah dad.
He was also an abusive asshole.
I pulled out my phone, swiping through dating profiles. I wasn’t on the app to date. It was another tool to use against abusers in a divorce, and something told me Terry wasn’t above cheating—
I froze.
Rich, dark-chocolate eyes, thick lashes with the makeup smudged, pupils dilated. Slightly parted lips—kissable, plump, bee-stung. An almost contradictory expression in her chocolate eyes, like she was both begging and bored.
The woman from the restaurant.
I’d started to scan the profile when the last light in the building switched off.
“Fuck.” Still staring at her siren face, I blindly reached across the console for a stack of papers and my black skull mask. Jesus Christ, she looked like she’d just been fucked—
Wet.
Something wet coated my hands. I lifted my black skull mask, now drenched in leftover hot sauce packets.
Moments later, Terry walked out of the building.
Fuck.
Shit fuck.
I looked for something—anything—to cover my face. My car was too goddamn clean. There were expired condoms in the glove compartment. I could probably put one on my head—
No.
Fuck.
I’m not putting a condom on my head. I glanced around, and something red caught my eye from under the passenger seat.
A Santa hat and beard.
I reached for it, mentally thanking the person I’d bought this car from for being so festive. I put the hat and beard on, and slid soundlessly from my car, behind Terry, speaking only when he pulled out his car keys.
“Terry.”
Terry spun around, keys stuck in his hand. He blinked, taking me in.
“Uh…little late for Christmas,” he said.
“Funny,” I said, pulling out my gun. “Get in the fucking car.”
His bravado dissipated, and with shaky hands, he did as he was told. I slid into the passenger seat, pointing the gun across the console.
“You’re going to sign these divorce papers,” I said, brandishing the thick stack of papers. “Then you’re going to request a transfer to Idaho.”
I threw the papers into Terry’s lap.
He glanced at me, then at the papers, then back at me. “What the hell is this? Is Santa giving me a shakedown?”
God. Fucking. Dammit.
This was not how this went. Normally I put on my black mask. I would be suitably terrifying and intimidating. They’d shit their pants and sign the papers.
I didn’t even know the woman, and she’d managed to turn me into a goddamn idiot twice in one day.
I flexed my grip on the gun. “Yes.”
“I’m not signing these,” he stated.
I fought the urge to roll my eyes. This was always the moment self-preservation briefly gave way to ego. Why violence was never good enough. They all followed the same fucking script.
“Yeah, you will,” I said. “How much did you skim from the church again, Terry?”
His eyes widened, and he sputtered. “I—I didn’t—it wasn’t like that—”
“You sign the fucking papers,” I said, irritation starting to replace the boredom, “and you get the fuck out of Utah, or the church gets an anonymous email containing various dates and transactions.”
I couldn’t use the same tactics on these men as they did their wives.
Violence was effective—to a point. When the bruises faded, so did the persuasion.
But everyone had something to hide. Some kind of skeleton.
My job put me in a unique position to unearth those skeletons.
I’d discovered Terry’s secret with just a few hours of digging through bank accounts and transactions.
Terry took the pen with a shaking hand to paper, pausing when he got to the bit about the assets, the house.
Tish didn’t want alimony or assets. All she’d asked for was for me to get Terry to sign the papers and leave. Still, I’d added the house and a clause where she’d get a nice lump sum equal to the full amount of what he’d embezzled.
Terry’s eyes grew. “I can’t.”
I pulled up my phone, showing him an email. “It’s scheduled to send in five minutes. Your choice.”
He glanced at the gun I had pointed, eyes narrowing. “You’re bluffing. What kind of thug dresses like Santa?”
I got out of the car, keeping the passenger door open so Terry couldn’t drive off, and walked to his side. As I opened his door, Terry grabbed the edge, trying to wrest control.
Fucking mistake.
I slammed the door shut against his fingers.
He screamed. And screamed. Fucking loud. I exhaled and mentally went through my to-do list. I still needed to get groceries. Tried to remember the last time I’d spoken with my brother or sister. Did I water my plants today?
The screaming stopped, and I opened the door. Terry crumpled into himself, holding his hand in a pathetic whimper.
I nodded toward the stacks.
With a trembling hand, Terry signed.
“Good boy,” I said, grabbing the finished paperwork. “Try to get out of this”—I leaned inside the car until he shrank further away—“and I’ll find you.”
The best way to manipulate wasn’t through violence, but sometimes it was a great punctuation mark.
I let go of the door and Terry quickly shut it, driving off with the passenger door still open, leaving the smell of rubber behind. I stared at the empty road.
My father’s favorite golf club dripping red with blood. My father with a matching hole in his head, blood leaking to the shiny linoleum.
I shook my head. Being back in Utah was unearthing a lot of memories I’d tried to bury. I was born and raised here, but up until a month ago, I hadn’t set foot in the state in ten years.
My father was of the same breed of man as Terry.
And also the reason I’m stuck talking to people like Butcher.
My father had delivered a specific service for the Mafia. He made people—mostly women—disappear when they started getting too chatty.
I slid into my car, setting the gun to the side.
Terry and men like him were not my job. This was my…hobby, you could say. My illegal, bloody hobby, of which the Mafia knew nothing about.
I had decided years ago that if I couldn’t leave this world, I would be the opposite of my dad. Rather than making women disappear, I made the men who bothered them vanish.
I ripped off the beard and hat and pulled out my phone to navigate home—or, rather, my home for the next month.
I paused.
“Do not open the app,” I said to myself. “Don’t be a fucking idiot.”
Bibliomaniac.
That was her handle.
“I’m an idiot,” I muttered, reading down to her bio. It was short and to the point.
Casual and no strings attached only. I love romance, but everything I’ve read is fantasy. Looking for someone who wants to turn those fantasies into reality. Some of what I want:
Submissive dynamics
Primal/Prey
Exhibitionism
Free use
CNC
And more
I shifted in my seat, blood rushing to my cock. It was hard to reconcile the woman I’d seen at the restaurant with yolk on her hands with this.
Free use? CNC? Jesus fucking Christ. Her profile was straightforward and to the point, like she was making a grocery list.
Milk.
Cereal.
Getting fucked without restraint.
I paused, my discarded mask catching my attention. The gun. I couldn’t send her a message. Even if I didn’t have a very specific rule about dating, those were her fantasies. I was the reality.
My visit from Butcher just solidified it.
I wasn’t supposed to entertain these thoughts, let alone act on them. I would be in the Mafia until I died. There was no getting out of this life.
If I fell for someone, really fell for them, they would just be used as leverage.
Like my brother.
But that profile would attract the wrong kind of man—a man like Terry. So before I knew it, I’d reverse image searched her photo.
She was too easily discovered. Her profile photo sent me to a public social media account of what appeared to be her friend’s profile. She was tagged with two other people. From there I found her full name, which led me to a profile at the local university and—Jesus Christ.
Her home address was on many white pages knockoff sites.
“Shit,” I said aloud. “Fuck.”
I opened up the app and sent her a ping.
Make that three times today she’d made me an idiot.