I shall possess within the veil…
Taking quick action, Chad shoved my head down, forcing me off the seat and to the floor.
“Stay down, baby.” He flipped open the glove compartment, took out a .44 Magnum Desert Eagle and thrust it into my hand.
Shifting over back to his side of the car, he reached under his car seat and came out with another handgun. Setting the gun on his tensed thigh, he jerked the gear into drive just as another bullet slapped into the back window, only to find itself stuck in the impenetrable glass, causing a spider’s web of cracks.
“You bulletproofed your car?” I asked over the rush and race.
“I bulletproof everything.”
Another explosion. But there was no impact on the car. A miss.
“How about your brain and heart? Bulletproof those, too?”
I got a fusillade of shots for an answer.
The car suddenly jerked to a sharp halt as Chad stomped his foot to the break, then made a swift, tire-screaming U-turn.
“Wha-what the hell are you doing?!” I shouted from down below. “This is a one-way street!”
“Yeah,” Chad muttered, foot hard on the pedal. “Makes it easier for me to kill the stupid motherfucker who’s shooting at us in broad fucking daylight.”
I straightened up from the ground and plopped my ass back onto the car seat, readying the Desert Eagle Chad handed me, finger on the trigger.
“What the fuck, Jhay?” he barked at me, his tone a mixture of fury and frustration. “I said stay down.”
I scoffed, cocking my hand with the gun on the dashboard. Oh, so he could U-turn on a one-way street like a freaking madman, yet I was supposed to stay down? “I’m trained to kill. I’m not gonna crouch down and hide in a car like some screamy, witless blonde.”
He speared me an exasperated glare but didn’t ease up on the gas as he sped straight ahead in the opposite direction of the one-way street. Car horns honked loudly, idiotic drivers yelled with angry red faces, and sensible drivers swerved their cars aside to get the hell out of the way.
A tinted, pitch-black Escalade slammed to a screeching halt as Chad raced toward it. And there were our shooters.
The Escalade tried to make a quick U-turn, but with all the other cars trying to escape getting hit by the stark raving R8 tearing up the one-way, the Escalade didn’t have enough space or grace to successfully make the turn.
Moving fast, I powered down my window, aimed at their windshield and fired, then another immediately, then another, never missing.
Unlike Chad’s car, their Escalade wasn’t bulletproofed, so the three successive rounds of shots shattered the windshield to bits and pieces, leaving their heads wide open.
Both the driver and passenger doors on the Escalade flew open, and two men in black jumped out and started running away from us instead of firing at us.
“Fucking amateurs,” Chad muttered.
Hitting the brakes, he maneuvered the gear in park. “You take the driver, I take the passenger,” he ordered, wrenching his door open to get out.
“Why do I get the driver?” I argued. “Because the passenger is bigger?”
Chad frowned at me like I was a galling mental case. “Okay, Tweety Byrd. Take the fucking passenger.”
I grinned. “Spasibo.”
We hopped out and charged forward, but had to do a criss-cross when we got to the front of the car because the driver was on my side, and the passenger was on Chad’s side, so it would have been easier if we’d done what Chad suggested…but, of course, I had to be a stubborn nut.
The driver was a big sonuvabitch, a white-skinned Barnie, which meant he was intimidating, but slow and unwieldy. The fucker had a rifle in his hand, yet he was running like an overused pussy. Who were these clowns, though?
Instead of chasing the dummy, I steadily lowered down to one knee, aimed, then blasted him through the back of his tree trunk thigh. Like a heavy load of lumber, he tumbled to the ground with a great shout. Monumentally pissed at being shot, he turned and aimed his rifle at me, but I was quicker on the trigger as I fired again and blew a bullet through the bicep of his arm holding the rifle. Like a pregnant woman grinding her teeth through contractions, he squeezed his big bug eyes shut and dropped his weapon.
Tucking my gun into the tight waistband of my jeans, I jogged up to him and snatched up his rifle, pulled the clip and stuffed it in my back pocket, then frisked him for additional weapons. I found a .25 Browning strapped to his ankle and stole that, too. I drove the butt of the empty rifle down to his head, knocking him unconscious, then dropped it onto his stomach. Removing the Desert Eagle from my waist, I put the stolen Browning in its place, then ran around to the passenger side to check if Chad needed assistance.
Nope, he didn’t.
His gun was tucked away and he was bent over the shooter, punching the stupid out of him while barking a whole bunch of shit in his face, the man was so pissed off. “…is not motherfucking Brooklyn! This is San Franfuckingcisco! “ Punch! Crack! “You don’t just go around firing wild shots in broad daylight!” Punch! Crack! “You wanna kill someone here”—Punch! Crack!—”you do it fucking quietly and discreetly!”
By the time Chad was through with the sorry excuse of an assassin, the bastard was unconscious, his face an unidentifiable mess of blood, purple swells, and open gashes.
As Chad rose to his feet, a red sports car sped towards us, tire-burning to a halt next to us in a flurry of unnecessary excitement.
Retrieving his gun, Chad’s eyes met mine. I nodded. Then we both raised our weapons and aimed at the sports car.
Two steroid-gobblers rushed out of the sports car with their hands up to let us know they came in peace.
“Org’s men,” Chad muttered, lowering his weapon.
One of the men, built like a tank with a military haircut, giant-stomped up to us with his hands on his hips. “Fuckin’ A. This ain’t good for tourism.”
Chad got up in Military Haircut’s face. “You were supposed to be protecting her.” His face was a mask of unrestrained rage—which was the opposite of his true character.
Chadrick Niiveux wasn’t the man who got out-of-control angry. He was the man famous for being cool and deadly. Ever calm, ever unreadable, ever unpredictable. This raging, red-faced side of him was new, and I had a strong feeling it had something to do with me…threatening to leave him.
“We were,” Military Haircut defended, “but we got blocked off by another vehicle like this one a couple blocks down. Fools chose to engage a shootout in the middle of traffic on a goddamn one-way street.”
“Rafail’s thinking ahead and doubling his efforts,” said Chad. “You need to triple yours.”
Military Haircut tipped his head from side to side, non-committal to that suggestion. “Maybe not. These are definitely not assassins from The Organization. More like fucking trigger-happy, money-hungry freelancers that Rafail’s tryna save a dime on.”
“Lucky it’s daylight,” Chad ground out. “Or they’d be maggot food.”
“They’ll be,” Military Haircut promised. His beady eyes then shifted over to me, his gaze roving over my body, so slow and deliberate, I couldn’t tell if he was checking me for injuries or checking me out.
He started toward me, a thick, over-muscled arm outstretched. “You okay, Byrd? You hurt?”
Before his hand could touch a hair on my skin, Chad intercepted, his glare like poisonous laser beams. “Put your fucking hands on her and I’ll break your fingers one by one. She’s not yours to touch. What you should do is call your boss and get him to clean this shit up.”
Military Haircut scowled at Chad and puffed up his chest, so obviously to impress me. “Man, fuck you! My boss don’t take orders from you.”
In a flash, Chad whipped his gun up and pressed it against the man’s forehead. The second man hanging behind started to reach for his gun from its holster, but in an agile flow I cocked my gun at him and I drew closer to Chad, choosing sides. “Don’t even fucking think about it,” I warned. “I’m his, and I’ll put a bullet between your eyes faster than you can piss yourself.”
The decision was easy. If I really wanted to get away from Chad, this was the perfect opportunity. Leave with Sambo. But it didn’t matter how I felt back in the car. Now, in this moment, I knew for a fact that I didn’t want to be riding anywhere, with anyone, but right next to my man Chad.
He was it. Girlfriend murderer, betrayer, family slayer, or not. For me, he was it.
Smirking at my proclamation, Chad dipped inside his back pocket and withdrew his cellphone, punched a single digit, then put the phone on speaker. After two rings, a man with a smooth Russian accent answered, butchering Chad’s name, “Shadreek? I do not do well with bad news. Tell me it is not.”
“We’re good. A set of clowns opened fire on us. And now there are two prone bodies on 4th and I’d really fucking appreciate it if you could work your god-like powers and get some bad cops to clean this shit up before news stations and good cops hit the scene.”
The man on the line, or Org as it turned out to be, sighed over the phone. “Okay. I shall get someone on it immediately.” A grave pause. “Where were my men when this happened?”
Eyes still on a scowling Military Haircut, Chad said, “Sucking each other off in the bushes, apparently.”
Military Haircut was fuming now. But what could he do with a gun pressed to his forehead and his partner unable to save him?
Org grunted disapprovingly.
“Listen,” Chad began, “Jhay owns me. She’s the bullet to my gun, the finger to my trigger. And I don’t like it one bit that she’s getting shot at. It pisses me off. Really pisses me off. Because if she dies, how’s that gonna work out for me, hmm?” He flexed his finger ever so slightly on the trigger of his gun, and Military Haircut’s eyes bugged out. “What I also don’t like, is when all-muscle and no-dick cocksuckers try to touch what’s mine. Your boy Sambo here says you don’t take orders from me. But I take orders from you. So, Org, go ahead and order me to kill him. Order me to blow his useless brains out.”
Silence on the other end.
Chad’s smirk deepened, nearing a smile.
Sambo panicked. “Boss?”
Silence.
“Boss,” Sambo pleaded in a rush, “we got cut off! We couldn’t get to her in time! Boss, don’t let him do this!”
More silence for a few still seconds, then, “How scared is he looking right now, Shadreek?”
“Pissing,” Chad replied.
“Good. That will wake him the hell up,” Org said grimly. “Now, you all need to get away from that scene. Bad cops are on their way.”
The line went dead and Chad lowered his gun.
Sambo narrowed wary eyes at Chad, and then he broke into a nervous grin. “Chadrick motherfucking Niiveux.” He shook his head, as if meeting some infamous being and couldn’t believe it. “I’ve heard about you…”
“And now someone else’s gonna be hearing about me from you.”
Grabbing my hand, he growled, “Off the scene.”
We all scattered and took off to our respective cars.
Once we were a good deal away from the scene, Chad eased up on driving like a bat out of hell. Setting the car on cruise, he relaxed his shoulders, dropped his head back on the headrest, took off his aviators, then glanced over at me. “You’re okay, babe?”
“What’s with the ‘babe’ tag?”
He frowned, as if thinking about it, then, “I’m in love with you.”
Thud…Thud…Thud…ThudThud…ThudThud…ThudThud….ThudThudThudThudThudThudThudThudThudThudThud…
That was the sound of my heart.
The words pinwheeled, crashed, and exploded into me like a firebomb. Then the sparks from that firebomb turned into colorful daisies, raining down on me. Then the soft petals of those daisies turned into beautiful butterflies, fluttering all around me. Then… everything disappeared as reality slapped me across the face.
“I don’t want you to love me. Everyone you love dies. Hate me, Chad. Hate me so I can feel safe with you. Hate me so I can love you.”
His dark eyes, dark as his soul, watched me for a thousand heartbeats, before he breathed out, “I hate you so fucking much, Jhay. So fucking much.”
I tried to hold back my grin, but it came any way. “As long as you hate me, I’ll never leave you.”
He stretched one hand across and caressed my cheek with his knuckles. “Back there, when you chose me…I’ve never been so achingly hard for anyone in my entire life.” Those eyes stared hard, sucking me into their never-ending blackness. “You own me, Jhay. I’m so fucking owned I don’t even know my identity anymore.”
Just then, the loud zing of a white Lexus LFA overtook us and swung to the side of the road with its hazard lights on.
Chad careened to the side, too, muttering, “That’s our ride.”
I forgot he’d dialed Ronnie and told him to catch up with us with another car. The back windshield of the R8 was all spider-cracked with lodged bullets, and that would only serve to draw unwanted attention from road cops.
“Leave the guns?” I asked, reaching for the glove compartment.
“Yeah. I’ve got metal in the Lex, too.”
Ronnie got out of the Lexus at the same time we ditched the R8. Car keys got exchanged in a simple toss. No words spoken.
We folded into the red and black interior super-car that smelled like new, and life.
New Life.
Gear got shifted, gas pedal got hit, and then we were off.
Fifteen minutes later we were at our destination in Portola Valley, turning into the residence of a pretentiously large and lavish home constructed from log wood and weathered bricks. The wind blew with ease, and the trees swayed blissfully, the grass greener than the greenest green, the birds and the bees singing in perfect harmony. Picturesque, like it was plucked right out of a goddamn happily-ever-after fairy tale.
“This is yours?” I asked when I got out of the car, staring at the estate in awe.
Chad glanced across the top of the sports car at me, and he seemed…nervous? “No. I bought it as a forgiveness gift for a friend.”
My mouth dropped open. “You bought this as a gift for someone?”
He nodded.
I eyed him threateningly. “Is this someone an estranged baby mother or ex-girlfriend?”
With a scoff, he rounded the car toward me and pulled me up to him, his chest a hard brace of warmth and security. I let him slip his arms around my waist and tip my chin up. I let him meld his lips with mine and sweep me away into his dark world for a while. I let him hate me, because I’ve loved him ever since.
When our lips parted, he touched his forehead to mine and whispered, “I brought you here because I wanted to show you that you can trust me. That I’ll never hurt you. Back at the house, I lost it for a minute, and I don’t deserve your forgiveness. I don’t deserve you. But I’m over the moon you didn’t run. And while I loved Liz, I have always been in lo—I’ve always hated you. I would never do to you what I did to her. Do you believe me?”
“No,” I veraciously answered.
He sighed, defeated. “That’s because you’re smart. But…it’s the truth.”
I gripped his arms, confused as hell, but lost for words. So we remained like that for a year and a day, forehead to forehead, my fingers sinking tightly into his biceps, knowing I should let go of him and his meaningless promises, but still clinging on as if my entire existence depended on it.
Was there another person out there whom I could be my true self with and have them love me regardless? Was there a normal man/woman who would understand and readily accept my story? What were the chances? One in every ten thousand persons?
Chad knew all my dirty little deeds, how black and muddy my feathers were, the blood buried under my fingernails, the foul rotting of my heart, and he still wanted me.
Because we were one and the same. Him one hundred shades darker than me, but still…we weren’t regular people. Our lives had been fucked from the very beginning. And there was no possible way we could commit those vile acts we had in our very short lifetime and then expect to dream and live like normal folks.
This was what we were given. So this was what we had to take, and help each other through.
We were in an extremely nocuous relationship where our ever-after would be either his death by my hands, or my death by his hands. Because we both saw the world in one light, darkness. And the blind couldn’t lead the blind. Someone needed a blip of light within them to lead the way, lest sooner or later we would crash right into each other, explode, and fucking burn.
We were both rolling grenades, our pins pulled, our clock ticking…
“Are you nervous about showing me what’s inside that house?”
Chad chuckled. “Can you tell I’m stalling?”
I mock-pouted. “And here I thought you’re just obsessed with having me crushed against you…”
“That, too.”
Lacing our fingers, he began toward the house. Once we were on the doorstep, he produced a key from his jeans pocket and opened the door.
“Someone actually gave you a key to their house? Is this person right in the head?”
He laughed. “Unlike you, they trust me. I love this person, and they’re still alive.”
An unladylike snort left me. “Yeah. But how long will that last?”
Compressing his lips, he ignored the jab and ushered me into the house. Warmth and ease immediately enveloped me, and I marveled at the deluxe-ness of the house. The large beckoning furniture, the high-polished wooden floors, exposed rafter ceilings, the big plush cushions, the Persian rugs…it was all so perfect. All I wanted to do was curl up on one of those massive couches with a hot cup of cocoa and a thick fantasy book in hand.
This was the life.
The ever after life.
A stunning brunette, slim and petite, materialized in the wide expanse of the living room. Wearing white capris pants and a pink cashmere sweater, her hair in an especially neat up-do. She looked every bit the suburban soccer mom. Especially with the baby bump under that sweater, which looked to be about five months.
Guess I was right about the estranged baby mother. Why else would Chad buy someone a place like this? A house I was damn sure was valued at least four mil.
The woman’s leaf-shaped eyes watched me with a certain leeriness, her smile hesitant. On her tiny feet she graced up to us and held out her hand to me. “Hi, Jhay. I’m Clementine. It’s nice to finally meet you… instead of just hearing about you.”
Eyebrow arched, I took her hand and shook but slid my eyes to Chad.
Escaping my questioning stare, he quickly stepped to the Clementine person and wrapped her in a tight hug. They shared some kind of look when they broke apart, and I decided to stay quiet until one of them chose to tell me what the hell was happening here.
“Mentally preparing himself?” Chad asked Clementine.
With a chesty sigh, she nodded. “Yep.”
Chad tsked in disapproval. “Go get him, Clem. Slap him across the face if you need to and tell him it’s from me.”
Without waiting for the woman’s response, as though it were an order and not a request, Chad got behind me, clapped his hands on my shoulders, and propelled me further into the room. He sat me down on one of the chocolate-brown leather couches. And sweet Lord, the damned things were even more comfortable than they looked.
Clementine left the room to do Chad’s bidding, and Chad moved with an easy flow in a home that wasn’t his. Over to a wet bar, he poured two fingers of Scotch from a decanter in a whiskey glass, then moved quietly back across the room and handed it to me.
I took it without argument, because his pouring Scotch for me could only mean one thing: I’d be needing it.
We waited.
Chad paced while I sipped my hard liquor.
Donkey?s years later, Clementine came floating back into the room with a fit, dark-haired man tailing her; his gaze fixed on me over the small woman’s head. And as he got closer, I frowned, thinking he looked distinctly familiar, a face from a distant memory.
Tall, muscular, olive-skinned, with hair as black as mine, and eyes like the Pacific Ocean. No denying his handsomeness, but I felt like I knew him. It was too weird how much he resembled my—
I shot up from the couch like there were giant needles in the cushions, the whiskey glass sliding from my fingers and greeting the ground in shards.
Oh.
My.
God.
“Ricardo?” My voice was near-inaudible, nothing but a tiny catch of breath. No volume, no conviction.
“Hey, sis.” His smile was tentative, uncertain.
He took a step toward me, reaching out as if to touch me, but I jerked back and dodged behind Chad, using him as shield from…from my own brother.
A brother who was supposed to be dead. But was here in flesh and blood, alive and well. Healthier and happier than I would ever live to be.
Ricardo’s shoulders sagged, crestfallen, sadness creeping in his eyes.
I pushed hard at Chad’s back, and when he spun around, watching me with anxious eyes, I demanded, “What the fuck is this?”
Chad scrubbed his hands down his face, and with a throaty noise, moved to the couch and sat his ass down on the handle. “Ricardo was my fraternal brother, Jhay. And you…you were everything. I couldn’t save your parents any more than I could pull a trigger and kill either of you. I couldn’t…I couldn’t run with both of you. So like I told you, I threw you in on the ‘freedom for legacy’ deal with my father: you get exempted from the assassination and he would take you in, ensure you receive your family’s inheritance, then send you back to the US when you’re old enough…” He expelled a loud breath, no doubt mentally beating himself for being stupid enough to believe Rafail would’ve kept his end of the bargain. “For Ricardo… I’d had to find another way to save him.”
I got it. He couldn’t run with me, because Liz was already taking my place…I was a little unripe girl, not half as important as her. I couldn’t have brought him pleasure on his joyride to the States. So he chose to run with her, his uncle’s mistress, and left me behind with his monster of a father.
“How?” My voice was so empty, a whisper into an airless world.
“Kill-Ring,” he said with a simple shrug. “Not the one with the powder poison like you tried to use on me. The one with—”
“The microscopic needle,” I finished. “You swapped the poison with a heavy sedative and injected him with it by stealth before you shot him so the others would think he’s dead.”
A nod from Chad confirmed my calculations. “Verdin, he was the man I made lock you in your room, because he didn’t know of my plans; he was the report man, the one who my father sent along to bear witness that I did the job. The second man, Havil, he knew because I’d paid him off—he was an in-training recruit who wanted to run with me. And that was his opportunity.
“My father wanted the bodies removed from the house, dumped, and burned. So when we got to the location to dump the bodies, while Havil was pouring the gasoline, I told Verdin to just go ahead and check in with my father to let him know the job was complete. Once he did, I shot him in the head, before decapitating him. Then I pulled two of Ricardo’s wisdom teeth, tossed them next to Verdin’s body, and lit them all on fire.”
“Holy shit,” I whispered. “This means Verdin’s headless body was passed off as Ricardo when they ran dental DNA for identification.”
Another nod of confirmation. “I disposed Verdin’s head far out into the ocean. Don’t think it has ever been found.”
“And Havil?”
“He was with us for a while, eager to please me.”
“It was never just you and Liz at your aunt’s place, was it?”
He shook his head. “She had a pool house that she begrudgingly allowed Ricardo and Havil to hide out in.” His lips twisted ruefully. “But your brother had morphed into a paranoid fuck since that night, and he believed Havil was a liability. You know, he knew our secret, easy for him to turn on us and run back to my father if we ever pissed him off. So your brother lost it one night and slit the guy’s throat from ear to ear while he was sleeping.”
A loud gasp echoed in the room and we all shifted our gazes to a gaping Clementine.
“Shit,” Chad swore.
Ricardo winced, and Clementine widened judgmental eyes at him. “You killed someone? You never told me that part!”
“Clem—” Ricardo pleaded, reaching out to her, but she backed away from him like he was some hideous creature.
“Don’t touch me!” she yelled. “I can’t believe…I can’t believe I’m going to be having a baby for a…for a murderer.” She drew in a few rapid breaths. “Chad I managed to come to terms with. Your sister, I’ve hardly even accepted it yet. But now you, too? Why, Rick?”
Clementine tumbled back into one of the sofa chairs, as though her feet could no longer hold her up. She dropped her head in her hands and began sobbing, while Ricardo watched her helplessly.
“You,” I directed at Ricardo. He eyed me charily, like he was afraid of me or something. “Have you ever tried to find me? Ever sought to find out if your little sister was dead or alive?”
His gaze shot to Chad, seeking his rescue.
“Jhay—” Chad jumped in, but I was having none of it.
“I’m talking to my brother, Chadrick!” I screamed with a shitload of asperity. “You know, the biggest, tallest, healthiest man in the room. The one smelling like motherfucking sunshine and daisies, walking around so damn easily without having to look over his shoulder.” Eyes still glowering at Ricardo, I asked again, “Have you ever done anything at all to find me?”
“I’m not supposed to be alive, sis,” he said, timorous. “I’ve been hiding out behind God’s back since Chad saved me that night. The places I can go and the things I can do are limited. If Rafail finds out—”
“That’s all your problem is? Do you have any idea what my life has been like?” There was too much anger boiling within me, and I needed something to take it out on before I exploded, so I spun and chucked Chad off the sofa handle, knocking him sideward into the sofa. “Why the fuck didn’t you kill me? Why did you let me live?! You say I was ‘everything’, when in fact I was nothing. You chose this piece of shit and your precious Liz over me. You ran with them and left me behind. You.Left.Me.Behind. I was nothing to you. Nothing, you soulless liar!”
I was flat-out bawling now. Because all this was unfair. So unfair that my brother was living this rich and free fucking life, and I’d been doled twelve years of cruelty, pain, and suffocation.
To my brother: “You call this imprisonment? This is what you call ‘behind God’s back’, you ungrateful shit?” I kicked over the coffee table in front of me. “I’m the only family you have left, and, even though Chad risked his life to save yours, his non-blood brother, you couldn’t lift even a fucking finger to try and save mine? No, you decided to kick back in big ole America and fuck your pretty wife’s tiny pussy, have babies and start a new family with a nice, lavish life. Because Jhay Byrd’s a lost cause, right?”
Face a mask of distress and compunction, Ricardo just stared over my head, avoiding my eyes.
Nothing. He had absolutely nothing to say to me. Nothing at all! No apologies, no trying to calm me down, no nothing, because he really didn’t give a shit. What a selfish fuck!
Using the back of my hand to wipe the snot and tears from my nose, I sniffed. “Well, there sure as shit aren’t gonna be any more new Byrds.”
Moving fast, I bent and picked up a pointy shard of the broken whiskey glass and charged toward a wide-eyed Clementine, the shard in my hand poised to puncture her precious baby bump.
Mere inches from her, I was attacked, my body diverting sideward through the air as I was tackled to the ground. I landed with a teeth-shattering thud on the wooden floors, pain shooting through my spine.
A raging Chad was on top of me, roaring, “Have you lost your fucking mind?!!”
I tried to throw him off me, but I would’ve had more luck charming my way out of a beer attack. “Get off me, you stupid sonuvabitch!”
“Jhay, calm do—”
Reinforcing my grip on the shard of glass, I drove my hand up and aimed for the bulging blue vein in his neck, but Chad caught on to the move just in the nick of time and shifted. Not fast enough, though, because the shard got jammed into his shoulder instead, and blood began squirting.
Like a big, tough badass, he merely grunted at the pain, and I took advantage of his disposition and shoved him off me. Giving up the fight, he rolled easily onto his back, his hand reaching up to his shoulder to pull out the piece of glass.
I jumped to my feet and kicked his hand away, then stomped my heel down on the glass so it sank deeper into his flesh. This time he shouted from the pain.
Ah, that was more like it. Keeping my heel pressed on the broken glass, I leaned down and stuck my hand into his front pocket where I knew his car keys were.
Once I had them, I lifted my heel from the glass, but just as quickly stomped it back down again, and hissed, “Go fuck yourself, Blood” before beating feet out of the house.