She weighs almost nothing. I’ve worn coats with more give to them. It’s almost entirely too easy to carry her up two flights of stairs to the apartments. It’s a bitter sort of irony fit to kick someone in the ass; her weight reflects none of the burden that she brings.
I should have let Arno have his way with her. His men would wet their appetites, and Arno might be able to sleep a little easier. Nothing mended a broken heart like a bit of sweet, twisted revenge.
In theory. But men like Vincent Stacatto didn’t play by the rules of normal men—or even the average asshole who liked to think of himself as a monster. They abided by the laws of their own twisted games, and the technicalities were all a mystery to outsiders. The only opponent with any chance of beating them was usually one of the victims they toyed with for fun.
Though she may have worn his ring, the girl harbored no love for Stacatto. It was all in the way she spoke about him. She came alive, for once. Her hazel eyes seared at the thought of hurting him, even at the cost of her own pain.
Not that I gave a damn. Her pain meant nothing to me. After all, the world was a bitch with plenty of agony and unfairness to dish out in spades. Nothing about it was fair. Though, hell, maybe I just liked the thought of putting her little drunken boast to the test? If I willingly fucked another man...that would make him angry. There were plenty of bastards who would pay to see something like that. Though something tells me that she wasn’t lying. Maybe it was that hard, desperate gleam in her eye. Some might call it insanity.
I know that look well, too. I faced it every day in the mirror. I’d even grown to appreciate it for what it was: a cold reminder to never be weak again. I’d bite and scratch and kill if I had to—no one would ever control me.
The thought shakes a dark memory loose, though I push it back to the recesses of my mind where it belongs. She did this. My fingers throb, trembling beneath the urge to punch something. Someone. Rage paints my vision red, but then a pathetic moan scratches my eardrums, and it fades to the dingy light of the hallway.
Goddamn, she’s drunk. I’ll be lucky if she doesn’t puke down my back. I can hear her moaning, the sound aimless—though, on second thought, she’s trying to form words. They trickle out of her, garbled and meaningless.
“Shut up,” I tell her while palming the door to my apartment with one hand. I’ll be lucky if Arno doesn’t kick me out for daring to interrupt his grand little scheme. A part of me wants to take her back to the basement and leave her there for whichever horny prick happens upon her first. I toy with the thought, prodding it with more conviction than I’d like. I turn...
And then I’m staring into a mirror. The other Dante stands at the mouth of the staircase. He wears a hoodie that barely contains the dark hair spilling out from the hood—the first clue that I drank too much of Arno’s shit, and I’m hallucinating. He has my nose. My eyes. They even reflect the same hatred that I reserve only for myself and a few other choice bastards.
“So, you really are out.” He doesn’t sound like me, at least. His voice is softer with a higher pitch.
Recognition hits me like a punch, and I stagger a step forward. “Es...Espi.” The kid’s all grown up. It’s more jarring seeing him in person than only in a picture. Espisido’s taller now. Give him a few extra inches, and he’d tower over me. It’s a humbling, irritating realization. There used to be a time when I’d tuck him into bed. Fight his bullies on the playground. Kick his ass when he dared to get out of line.
Now he runs around with men like Arno. His picture is in a police file with my name on it. So much has changed in only five damn years, but some shit never does. His eyes narrow when I take another step toward him. Then they flicker over the woman I have slung over my shoulder. The half-naked, drunk, groaning woman who can barely lift her head up.
“You’ve certainly wasted no time,” he says. There’s a backpack hanging off his shoulder, stained with a million splotches of different colored paint. The zipper is partially undone, and I can make out metal cans filling the bag to the brim. He’s been out tagging, but his little hobby takes a backseat to the hostility lurking in his words.
“What is that supposed to mean?” I know what it fucking means. Fuck, I wonder if he knows...if Arno’s told him about his sick little revenge plot. If he knows about Parish. With a grunt, I set the woman upright and let her stumble against the door to my apartment. She flinches, bracing both hands against the wooden surface.
“The walls...” she mumbles, her accent strangling her words. “The walls are bleeding.”
“Quite the charmer, she is,” Espi says snidely, eyeing her bare back as she struggles to keep her balance. At least the theory that he knows is shot—the kid was never malicious enough to mock a dead woman. From the back at least, she looks like the average party girl who had too much to drink. I can only hope that he doesn’t get a good look at her mangled ear, or her face, or the blood that speckles her skin in all the wrong places.
“I’ve been looking for you,” I say, changing the subject while I shift sideways just enough to block the woman from view. I scan the hallway with narrowed eyes. Which door belongs to his apartment? How long has he scuttled in and out of the pub, trying to avoid me?
Espi shrugs, adjusting his backpack. “I know. Apparently, you can’t take a fucking hint.”
“Hey—” I take a step forward and grit my teeth, cutting off a violent remark. Focus. “We need to talk,” I say instead, sounding somewhat calmer.
“Talk?” Espi meets my gaze and scoffs. “It’s about five years too late, Dante. I don’t—”
The sound of retching cuts him off. We both turn to find the girl slumped over on her hands and knees. She gags, but her stomach has nothing left to spit up.
“I think she needs you,” Espi says, nodding to her.
But she can wait. “Espi—”
He turns and races down the stairs before I can stop him. I start to follow, but the damn girl tries to gag again, making herself choke.
“Fuck...” I waver between the two of them for all of three seconds. Concern for Arno’s floor wins out. I’ll track down Espisido again, and next time I’ll make him talk. For now, I content myself with kicking open the fucking door to my apartment and dragging the woman inside by her arm.
I let her go the moment her feet are clear of the doorway, and she slumps over the placemat. “Get up,” I tell her once I get the door shut and wrestle the locks into place.
Her body twitches as she attempts to move. The only part of her that succeeds is her left foot, which jerks against the floor. Sighing, I leave her there and take off down the hallway, peeling off my shirt when I enter my room. I toss it onto the floor, and then I fish out another from the pile of my stuff in the corner. With it clenched in a fist, I kick off my shoes and switch on the light. It floods the room, chasing away the shadows and serves as a buffer against the anger raging a silent war at the back of my mind. For now.
The girl’s still where I left her when I return to the hallway. She doesn’t react when I toss the clean shirt at her. She’s still curled up on her side with her back facing me. That mane of dark hair encircles her limbs like ebony netting.
“Get up,” I snap, my voice catching on the edge of a growl. “Get into the bathroom and change.”
The walls have a better chance at obeying me. I nudge her shoulder with my foot, and she whimpers. A string of words trickle from her throat, but they’re impossible to make out. Clenching my jaw, I sink to one knee and wrench on her hip so that she’s facing upright.
Then I stiffen. Her body alone, that’s what I focus on. She’s got nice curves for a stuck-up little princess. Her hips are narrow but flare out from a slender waist. Her breasts aren’t too bad—not too large, but not nonexistent either. The curls between her legs match the same fucking shade of ebony as her hair. She’s shapely, though a little on the scrawny side. She has a mole on her hip. There’s a bruise on her thigh. A scar on her left ankle.
It’s wrong. It’s sick. But I ogle. I stare. I shamelessly eye every part of her body but the section that calls to me the most. I can’t ignore it for long, and true disgust is harder to swallow. The bastard marked her: seven indigo letters are etched into the skin just under her breasts—tattooed there.
V I N C E N T
They’re uneven and sloppy as if hand-carved. Some of them are a deeper shade of ink than the rest. It’s hard not to picture someone holding her down when she struggled and digging the needle in even harder as punishment. She guards her imperfection well, even when drunk out of her mind and half-conscious; one of her hands scuttles across her chest to shield the letters.
“Get up,” I snarl drawing back, though I wind up lifting her anyway. She moans when I drag her into the bathroom and maneuver her into the tub. Her eyes seek mine out, vacant and empty as I flick on the showerhead with one hand and reach for her waist with the other.
Her gaze drifts down toward where my fingers aim. Her lips move. Sound comes out. Da...dum...da...la... She’s fucking humming. It’s a frantic sound like the kind a kid makes when things are in danger of not going their way. I can’t hear you. This isn’t happening.
I snatch my hand away and turn my back on her, leaving her beneath the spray. Hopefully, some of the blood will run off her. Some of that stench along with it. Nothing spoils the mood like the aroma of pain, fear, and desperation—she reeks of all three. The stink floods my nostrils while I enter the hallway on a hunt for a spare towel.
I find one in a small closet, along with a bar of soap and a stack of spare washrags. When I return to the bathroom, she’s still curled at the bottom the tub, drowning beneath the shower spray. Her hair clings to her body, shielding most of it from my sight like a makeshift cape. She barely stirs when I grab her wrist and yank her upright. I can only force her to sit, but somehow, I manage to wrestle the soap into one of her hands and a rag into the other.
Her eyes are glassy, and she mimes the motions, washing more of the air than herself. Either way, I’m satisfied when the last drop of what little suds she manages to work up wash down the drain. Then I cut the water off and turn for the door, aiming to leave her there.
The fuck if I know why I don’t. Maybe it’s the threat of one of Arno’s men potentially taking his boss’s words as an open invitation to get some free ass. She’s safer in the bedroom, where I can keep an eye on her, than here. It’s the only course of action that makes sense. No one is going to invade my space on her account and catch me off guard.
The light paints a harsh picture when I finally carry her down the hall. Her face is a mess—Arno might have held back from causing serious damage, but not by much. Too many of her secrets are bared to me when I let her fall onto the mattress. The letters on her chest stand out in stark contrast against her pale skin. There are other bruises and marks on her legs, too old to have been caused by Arno or myself. The duct tape on her ear glimmers silver. I can still see it even when I flick the light off and take up a position by the door, my back braced against the wall.
Arno gave me a day. A day to come up with a better way to torture Stacatto. A day to avenge Parish’s death. Another day to play nursemaid to the little bitch in the black dress.
I sigh gritting my teeth and close my eyes. I should have stayed in fucking prison.