Blood to Dust

I don’t feel too bad about hurting his soldiers—they didn’t shed a tear when they handed me over to death row—but I hope Seb doesn’t come out of here with an innocent, unsuspecting one-night stand. That would be a complication we don’t need right now.

Beside me, Nate is flicking a Zippo lighter absentmindedly, moving his jaw from side to side while chewing on his peachy gum. The fire engulfed by his huge palms is dancing on his irises, revealing the complete peace behind them.

He doesn’t look like boyfriend-material right now, despite his good looks.

He doesn’t even look like Beat, the scary masked man who takes violently but with consent.

He looks. . .like a killer.

And Godfrey told him about my child. He knows.

“How come you’re not nervous?” I ask, shifting with discomfort that has nothing to do with the small space we’re sharing and eyeing the entrance to the club religiously. We can’t afford to lose Seb. With little means and barely any intel, tonight is our only clear shot.

Nate shrugs, rolling his gum with his tongue. So serene. So sickeningly serene.

“He rapes young men. He took a piece of my girl’s soul. He’s a bad guy and he deserves to die.”

“Are we good people?” I swallow visibly, ignoring his remark about me being his girl. I can’t allow myself to drown in fantasies right now.

“We’re better than good,” he flashes a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “We’re fair.”

Three hours after he walked in, Sebastian leaves the nightclub with his two bodyguards in tow, sans an innocent male companion. My palms are sweaty. I’ve been constantly wiping them over my bare thighs. Who the hell shows up in a dress to kill someone, anyway? I bet there’s a sensible dress code for these kinds of occasions. Well, at least it’s red, so I got the bloodstains part covered.

Seb and his men disappear into a flashy silver Cadillac and head out of the city and into the playground where everything, both bad and good, happens. The East Bay.

We follow them silently, careful to have at least two cars between us at all times. Nate is wearing his hoodie and I’m wearing a Raiders cap. Luckily, it’s Saturday night and the roads are pretty busy, despite the late hour.

The Cadillac stops outside a glitzy apartment building in Dublin, not too different from the one I was living in just a few weeks ago. Seb steps out of the car, and it’s almost too good to be true—I’m literally rubbing my eyes in astonishment—when I see him saluting a curt goodbye to his bodyguards before disappearing through the reception doors.

Jesus Christ, they’re not even guarding his apartment from inside. He’s just leaving them there, on the street, sitting in their car, in the unlikely case we show up. The driver folds his arms over his chest and closes his eyes, while the guy in the passenger seat takes out an iPhone, playing a game, the glowing screen highlighting his broken nose and a jaw the shape of a rock.

My gaze meets Nate’s, and he’s already grinning from ear to ear. A lucky break that fell from the sky and right into our laps.

We wait for a few more minutes, looking up, watching the light on the second floor of the building as it switches on. Nate slides the car past the crosswalk, making sure there’s an easy getaway route in case we need to make a move quickly, and once the engine is off, he turns to me, grabbing my shoulders so that I’m facing him.

“Sure you wanna do this? I won’t hold it against you if you * out. No shame in changing your mind, Baby-Cakes.”

I snort, shaking my head. These men are going down. I appreciate him giving me an opening to back away, but I wanted to kill them before he, and his golden dick, marched into my life.

“I’m good,” I say.

He angles forward, grabbing me by the back of my neck and placing a kiss on top of my head. “You’re not good, you’re the f*cking best.”

Taking out the syringes from the Walgreens bag and the tin with the drugs, I mix a deadly cocktail of cocaine and nail polish remover, shaking it together into something that’ll leave his bodyguards begging for their deaths. I know this powdered crack, and it’s full of the worst ingredients the market has to offer. If the ammonia and rat poison straight to the veins don’t kill them—the nail polish remover will finish the job.

All I need to do is make sure I hit the right spot. But years of dealing with junkies who resorted to sticking needles in their feet and genitals made me somewhat of an expert on human anatomy when it comes to where to stick a needle—even in battlefield situations.

Sliding out of the car first, Nate—clad in his mask and hoodie—walks in the direction of their car, hands shoved in his pockets. When he stops in front of the driver’s window, he taps it with his gloved knuckles. I watch from the Tacoma as the window rolls down and a meaty hand darts in his direction, trying to stab him in the stomach with a sharp object. He dodges the knife elegantly and twists the guy’s arm out of the window, breaking it against the door with a popping sound that makes me swallow back a lump of puke. The arm dangles limply. Nate’s mask lifts and his eyes zero in on me. It’s my cue. I open my door and run in his direction, clutching the syringes in a death grip. He nods toward the broken armed man, and I jam a needle into a nice, blue vein in his neck. Nate is already dealing with the Candy Crush guy, who had time to round the car with a gun at his waist, a gun he is clutching on to but doesn’t pull out. Shooting someone on Main Street is not a stellar idea. Even he knows it.