Anika:
Carter waits until I get inside my house, like a gentleman, before pulling away. I lock the door behind me. There’s only a few hours until sunrise, and thankfully I don’t have anywhere to be. I head to the bathroom to peel off my dress. Carter wouldn’t let me put my underwear back on after he iced and put lotion on my backside. I step into the shower, cursing as the hot water meets the angry marks on my body. I wash quickly making sure I get any of the blood that may be lingering anywhere and I use the bleach spray to spray down my shower. I’ll take care of my other clothes later. Too tired to function, I slide into a loose pair of satin pants and a soft long-sleeved shirt that won’t irritate my skin too much. Grabbing a few aspirin and a bottle of water, I pull back my fluffy duvet and slide underneath. Laying on my side, I burrow into my freshly laundered sheets.
When I close my eyes, I don’t see what I typically see. Where there’s usually blood and darkness, there’s only Carter. The way he punished my body and gave me an outlet for the anger was freeing in a sense. I felt like I was free from my past and the monster I’ve become, and when he was done, he took all of that pain that had been lifted from me and erased it as he worshiped my body relentlessly, whispering sweet and filthy things in my ear drawing orgasm after orgasm from me. That was wonderful, but the way he bared his soul to me and held me like I was the most precious gift he had ever been given turned me inside out. He wants me in more ways than he should, and I want him to want me like that. I want that life where we are just two people that fell in love. And I want to love him… I could easily love him, and maybe the part of my heart that still beats does. But he’ll never know because I’m too busy holding onto my past with blood stained hands…
“Carter,” I say, and he smiles up at me as I straddle his hips with his hard length nestled deep within me.
He reaches up to brush the hair out of my face, “You’re so beautiful.”
I lean down to kiss his warm lips at the same time he thrusts, eliciting a moan from me.
“I thought I was supposed to be in control this time.” I bite his lip and his hand winds through my hair, yanking my head back forcefully.
“You’ll never be in control, Anika. I own you, and I know your secrets.” I pull my head free from his firm hold to look at his face, but he’s no longer Carter. I’m staring into the face of Lance Jennings and his mouth is twisted into a menacing smile as he continues to hold me to him.
Somehow, I find a knife in the bed and I don’t waste time as I take it and plunge it into his neck. A satisfying gurgling sound escapes his throat as I drag the blade in place. Blood spills out over my hands, slippery and warm. Proud of my handiwork, I look to his face again so I can finally look into the cold, dead eyes of Lance Jennings. Instead of the cold gray eyes I was expecting, I’m met with Carter’s lifeless green eyes, still widened in shock.
“No!” I cry, pulling the knife from him. “Oh my God, what have I done?” my hands shake as I scream in horror. “Look what you made me do!” I try to wipe the blood away, but there’s no putting it back. I can’t put Carter back together because I killed him. I destroyed him like I promised I would.
“I’m so sorry, baby… I’m so, so sorry,” I sob into his bare, bloodied chest. “I didn’t mean to.”
I wake with a start, my heart pounding in my chest and my eyes slick with tears. My room is still dark, and quiet. The kind of quiet that I remember all too well. That’s when I hear it. A muted footstep, and the soft brush of fabric on fabric – barely audible, but it ricochets inside my head, snapping me out of my nightmare and into reality. As quietly and quickly as possible, I roll off my bed and onto the floor, ignoring the sharp pain in my ass cheeks from last night. I open the drawer on my bedside table and pull out my gun. The magazine is already in place from last night – not having had a chance to clean it and I tuck it into the waistband of my pants. I reach under my bed to the row of tactical blades I keep strapped there, and slide one out. Hand to hand is my specialty because I’m fast, and can think even faster.
I stand quietly, and plant my back against the cool drywall just inside my bedroom door. I open my mouth and take a deep breath to steady my breathing. I’ve done this before multiple times, I have no idea why I’m so shaken. Usually these situations are on my own terms, ones that I have meticulously planned and studied. Closing my mouth, I wait for another sound in the dark, and I hear it again. The same slow brushing of fabric as someone moves slowly, and almost silently through my house. I move just a little closer to the door. In the dark, I’m well hidden in the corner. I wait until I hear the soft footsteps at the doorframe and I hold my breath as the dark shadow crosses my path. It is hard to see clearly in the dark, but I can sense his size and I don’t know how to approach this.
I decide just to go for it, but he stops, and I stop.
“I know you’re in here, little girl,” a thick Russian accent rumbles through my bedroom. “You think you’re tough? Let’s play.” He slowly walks, looking around, but I’m still hidden in the shadows.
Either I’m even more crazy than I think I am, or I realize I just don’t have shit to lose, because I launch myself at the man not knowing what the hell I’m up against. He turns just as I’m about ready to hit him and sends me flying sideways into my dresser with one hit that has my ears ringing so loud that I barely hear his laugh. The force of the impact knocks the gun loose from my waistband and it skids across the floor and somewhere into the darkness that I can’t see.
“Is that all you’ve got?” I ask, going at him again.
“You got some fire in you. I like that.” He lands a punch to my cheek that causes my head to rattle around like a ball in a basket. He moves to hit me again, but this time I block his hit with my forearm. Ignoring the bruising pain, I switch the knife to my other hand, twirl it in my fingers and manage to stab him somewhere in his side, but it doesn’t seem to faze him. I pull it out seeing the blade coated in his blood and something inside me clicks. Just like it always does.
The sound of our exertion fills the room as we trade hits back and forth, neither of us able to land any of significance.
“You can’t do any better than this? Timur and Yury must’ve been bigger pussies than I thought.” He’s baiting me, waiting for me to lose my cool and slip up, but I don’t change. I keep fighting even though my eye is nearly swollen shut. But I’ve learned something as we dance around each other destroying my bedroom. This man is slow, and he has a pattern to his hits, whether he realizes it or not. He’s just big and solid muscle, so my hits don’t have the impact they need.
I take my knife and drop to my knees underneath him in a fluid motion, my satin pajama bottoms allowing me to slide on the smooth hardwood, and I use all my weight to ram the knife in his groin around where I know there’s a major artery. He lets out a guttural cry that is higher pitched than I expected.
I pop up off the floor, and land a combination of hits to him and finally with my foot, nail a driving kick to the blade he’s still struggling with and lodge it in his skin up to the hilt.
“You bitch!!!” he roars.
“I hear that a lot,” I pop back, trying to keep my mind on anything other than my aching, fatigued body. He must catch his second wind as he throws his body at mine, forcing me backwards like a ragdoll. The back of my head cracks against the edge of the dresser, sending a nauseating pain through my skull. I must black out for a few seconds, and I come to with him on top of me and his hands around my neck. I try to fight and claw at his hands, but it’s no use. He’s bigger and stronger, and my hand hurts so bad that I can’t hardly move it. He shifts slightly and I feel something hard lodged beneath my shoulder.
I somehow find it in me to reach behind me with one hand and grab the handle of my gun that I happened to land on. In one fluid motion, I bring it forward and disengage the safety with my thumb. Even in the dark, I can see his shocked expression. I act, and shove the barrel in his face and pull the trigger. His body drops heavily onto mine, his face on mine and I feel the warmth of his blood as it spills out over my face and neck. I can smell it and taste it as it coats my lips and face, and I panic as his heavy body lays on top of mine. His face flops lifelessly to the side as I shove it away and I roll myself out from under him.
I limp to the door and flip on the light switch. My eyes squint to adjust to the light, but I almost wish both of my eyes were swollen shut as I take in the sight in front of me.
“Son of a motherfucker,” I curse. Pretty much everything is busted, knocked over, or covered in blood in some way. In the light, I realize that two of the fingers on my left hand are completely dislocated and sticking out at odd angles, explaining the pain and lack of motion moments ago. I grit my teeth and pull to reset them, and my stomach rolls with the pain as it radiates up my arm.
Ignoring the body on the floor, I make a list of items to replace in my bedroom and hop into the shower to rinse the sticky blood from my body before setting to work on the other cleanup.
It takes me hours to clean the blood from myself and my bedroom, and by the time I go out to the garage to grab the big black tarp from the garage, the sun has been up for a while and the birds are chirping.
It takes me a lot longer than it should to wrap the body up in the tarp considering one of my hands is injured and my body and mind are exhausted. Typically, I have a plan for this, but since I have no idea who this guy is or who may be looking for him, I have to think. The only solution I can think of is a contact I made on the Dark Web, and I cringe at what I’m about to do because I know that this guy makes me look like I’m completely sane. The only other time I’ve worked with him is when I hired the hit for Sergei Mirsky in prison. I pull out my phone and send a coded text to the number I have saved, and I wait. Twenty minutes pass as I stare at the wrapped body on my bedroom floor, when the phone finally rings with a blocked call.
“Yes?” I answer, because hello seems a little too friendly in this situation.
“So, we meet again. What can I do for you, Anika?” his deep, smooth voice responds.
“I need your help. I have something that needs disposed of.”
“I can be there Monday.”
“But it’s Saturday!” I protest. “What the hell am I going to do with him until Monday?”
“Do you have a deep freezer?” he questions.
“Yes…” I respond slowly. I know where he’s going with this.
“There you go. Look, I’ll discount it for the delay, but I have another obligation. If you cut the trash in half for me, I’ll do it for ten. Take it or leave it.”
“Fine,” I huff, already gagging at the thought.
“Wrapped tight. Two bags. Ten thousand, cash. Seven AM. I’ll send you the location.” He hangs up abruptly. Wilder James doesn’t give a shit about phone etiquette apparently. I growl in frustration as I plant my hands on my hips and kick the unmoving roll of plastic. “You ruined my weekend, asshole.”
“I’m so glad I have a privacy fence,” I mutter nonsense to myself as I use my legs as leverage and drag the world’s heaviest dead body through my house and out my back door, and set to work on Mr. James’s requests.
I unwrap the tarp and grab my saw as I take in his graying face. “Well pal, if you didn’t have a split personality before, you will now.” I laugh at my own joke, and try to ignore how bizarre things are becoming.