My life has turned into a three-ring circus.
I like to think that I’m the ringmaster of it all, but I’m beginning to feel more like a fucking trained lion, one that’s sick of jumping through hoops, seconds away from breaking loose and mauling everyone. The acrobats are all around me, bending over backwards, or hell... maybe they’re more like a carnival freak show. Regardless, I know who the fucking clowns are.
One of them is currently indisposed in my trunk.
The other jumped in a car and sped away after dropping off a kid that was supposedly dead. I haven’t exactly wrapped my mind around all of that yet, but suffice it to say, that particular bozo will get to live to see another day.
How many more days is really the question... the answer dependent upon what he does after tonight.
The one in the trunk, however, won’t be so lucky.
“Christ, it feels like we ought to be halfway to China by now,” Five mutters, sweat rolling off of him. He comes to a stop, leaning on his shovel as he pulls his shirt up to wipe his face. “How come he gets out of digging?”
Five motions toward my car.
“He’s really in no condition to dig his own grave.”
“I meant Bruno, not the Russian,” Five says, pausing as he looks at me, his voice dropping lower. “Wait, shit, this is for Aristov, right? This isn’t, you know... is it?”
I glance over at Seven as he leans against the side of my car, arms crossed over his chest, watching us in the darkness. Instead of humoring that with a response, I continue to dig, throwing shovelfuls of dirt aside. “The reason he’s not doing it because I don’t trust him.”
“You don’t trust him to work a shovel?”
“I don’t trust him to take a piss right now. The jackass in the trunk has been more honest about his intentions, so no, I don’t trust him with a shovel.”
“Why’s he here then?”
“Because I haven’t killed him.”
“Are you going to?”
“Maybe.”
“Do you think he—?”
Sighing exasperatedly, I slam my shovel into the dirt and look at Five, cutting off his last question, because I’m not answering whatever it is. “Is this one of those check yes or no moments? You trying to pass me some notes here? Want to gossip like little fucking busybodies? Braid each other’s hair? Be best friends forever?”
“My fault,” he mutters, going back to digging. “Just trying to get on the same page.”
“All the page I’m on says is ‘they dug a fucking hole to bury the Russian in’ so that’s what I’m doing.”
He nods. “Got it.”
We dig in silence until I’m satisfied the hole is big enough. Takes about an hour. My shoulders ache and my back hurts, not to mention my head is viciously pounding. It has been steadily thumping since I took those hard blows to the face hours ago, when the jackass beat the hell out of me before Aristov put my own gun to my forehead.
Yeah, it has been one fucked up day...
There was a second, a brief second, where I thought I might die tonight before Scarlet got her wits about her and decided to do something. I was counting on that, counting on her tenacity.
She didn’t disappoint, but the pain in my head says it sure took her ass long enough.
Throwing my shovel up over the side, I pull myself out of the hole, brushing the dirt from my clothes. Five follows my lead, but he struggles, crawling over the side, collapsing on the ground beside it.
“You’re starting to whine more than Three,” I tell him.
Five forces himself up. “I haven’t said a word in forty-five minutes!”
“Doesn’t mean I can’t hear you complaining.”
“Whatever,” he mutters, not bothering to brush the dirt from his sweaty clothes. “That’s who ought to be out here digging holes. Declan.”
“He’s got other things to take care of,” I say, popping the trunk on my car and opening it, my gaze meeting Aristov’s as he forces his eyes open. He’s barely clinging to consciousness. He’s lost quite a bit of blood. Not from the bullet that grazed his shoulder, nor from the beating he took. No, it was the rod of metal that Scarlet rammed into his back. I don’t know what she hit, but she must’ve hit something. “You look tired, Aristotle, but don’t worry... we’ve got your bed all made up.”
Grabbing him, I start yanking him out of the trunk. He doesn’t fight, because he doesn’t have much fight left in him, which means it isn’t going to be easy for me, either. Five jumps in, helping me lug him out, dropping him to the ground between us.
Aristov groans, muttering something I don’t pay attention to, because fuck him.
Would you give a shit about his final words after the things he’s done, if he did them to you?
We haul him toward the hole, but the son of a bitch is heavy, bulky, dragging the ground as we pull him along. Seven shoves away from the car, coming toward us. “Here, let me help you, boss.”
“I swear to fuck, Seven, if you call me that one more time, Five and I are going to be digging yet another hole tonight, and trust me when I say none of us want that to happen.”
“I sure don’t,” Five mutters. “I’m tired.”
Seven grows silent, returning to his place beside the car, as Five and I drag Aristov the rest of the way and roll him into the hole.
He lands face-up with a thud.
I grab my shovel, scooping up a pile of dirt, instantly dropping it on him. He opens his eyes, looking up at me, but he otherwise does nothing.
What can he do?
Not a goddamn thing.
I know. I know. I’ve been there.
It might’ve been a world away, but I’ve laid where he’s laying.
The pain... the pain had been intense. I can still feel an echo of it sometimes rattling around in my head. Otherwise, just like my skull, the rest of it became fractured, my memory a pile of puzzle pieces that will never completely fit together. Flashes and moments, like a fucked up flipbook out of sequence. I vividly remember my stepfather standing over me, panting and sweaty, his nose bleeding. I’d put up a fight, but it wasn’t enough. He caught me off guard, swinging the metal shovel, hitting me right in the face the second I turned around.
I laid in the hole he dug behind the house, barely clinging to consciousness as I stared up at him in the darkness. My ears were ringing, and the man was talking, but I could barely make out his words. Something, something, something... you brought this on yourself. Alarms shrieked inside my skull, but I didn’t make a sound. I didn’t beg, or cry, or curse, even as he took the bloody shovel and picked up a pile of dirt, sending it raining down on me.
I closed my eyes as they burned, coated in blood. I waited for death. I knew it was coming. I waited... and waited... and waited... as he piled on the dirt.
Something jarred me eventually as I was yanked and dragged, the pain explosive as I forced my eyes open, looking up, expecting to see my stepfather, but it was another face I found. A guy, not much older than me. People were shouting into the night, fighting going on somewhere, as he knelt down, leaning over me. “Can you hear me?”
I tried to nod.