“What do you want?” I ask again. I fold my arms over my chest, careful to avoid the stain on my shirt.
“I picked the kids up from school. I can do that. I’m their father.”
“You get one weekend a month, and this isn’t it.”
“For now,” he says. “I’ll be in touch, Rose. I don’t think this is a good living environment for my children. I understand you have them unsupervised for long periods of time.”
“I’ve got nothing to say to you, Russel. Leave.”
“Well, alright, then. Come on, honey.”
Skyler flounces out of the kitchen and glues herself to his side. He makes sure to grope her in front of me, never mind that it’s in full view of my daughters. They head out the door and I slam it shut behind them, turn the deadbolt, and sink to the floor.
Silence reigns in the house, except for the sound of chewing. Kelly finished her sandwich and is now eating Karen’s for her.
“She has fake boobs,” Karen announces.
“Karen,” I drawl, trying to sound mad at her for saying that, but I can’t muster the energy to pull it off.
Kelly giggles through a mouthful of peanut butter and jelly.
“What did he say while he was driving you here?”
Karen shrugs. “He just asked us about our day, and wanted to know how your job was going and about your classes. I didn’t tell him anything. He wants to take us away and make us live with that bitch Skyler.”
“Karen!”
“She is a bitch,” Kelly agrees.
I sigh. “Stop saying that.”
“It’s true.”
“I know it’s true, just don’t say it.”
Karen gets up, walks over to the door, and plops down next to me. A minute later Kelly joins us, carrying a bowl of cheese doodles.
How does she eat all that?
The hell with it. I take one, crunch it between my teeth, and sigh.
“Block party tomorrow,” Karen says, a hint of hope in her voice.
Oh, lovely.
11
Quentin
I pace around my basement, trying not to rip the shelves off the walls and kick toolboxes across the room. I want to tear it all down with my bare hands.
Never in my life have I cared about things like this. To me a woman was a lay; no girl ever held my attention after I came. I’m used to being gone the next morning, anyway. There’s always another job, another contract, someplace to go, something to do.
Now I’m staring down the barrel of a life—if I even have a chance to live it—without purpose. It’s been that way ever since the last contract but now it’s in sharp focus. What am I? What am I doing?
“What did you think you were going to do, Quentin? Play house?”
Pacing around the room, I have to think, yeah, exactly that. I never thought about kids before—if you’d asked me a few weeks ago I’d have considered the entire idea absurd. How could I even think about having children? The longest stretch I’ve ever spent in one place can’t have been more than a month or two.
Yet here I am, thinking about the future.
“You have no future,” I tell myself.
No man hunted by Santiago de la Rosa has a future. The Knight of Tears never misses his mark, never fails his mission. He will make my end torturous and brutal.
The worst part?
I deserve it.
I don’t belong here, in this place. Stranger in a strange land, that’s me. I feel dirty, tainted, for the first time ever. It’s Rose, and her family, and this life I see around me. Worrying about where cars are parked, what’s for dinner, when to mow the grass. It’s like an entirely different planet.
I didn’t know how dirty I was until Rose showed me what it was like to be clean.
When I look at my hands all I can see is the blood. How many people died at my hand? How much suffering have I inflicted? It’s easy to shift the blame. If I didn’t take those contracts, someone else would have.
Santiago taught me that death is an art, killing is a vocation. Poisons, sniping, hand-to-hand, knife play, I learned it all at the hands of an expert sadist. I made it quick whenever I could, but when you owe the wrong people money or snitch or do something that justifies suffering in the eyes of the criminal fraternity, the contract calls for more than death.
How many times did I deliver that? Is that all I am? An instrument of misery? An extension of evil people, to be used for evil ends?
It’s not like it matters. You bathe in blood for years, it soaks down to your bones. You’re not getting out of it. There is no cleaning it off, or cleaning it out. It doesn’t matter what I do with my body, my soul is dirty, soiled to the core.
Up until a few days ago I didn’t care.
You never forget your first. I was sixteen years old. Santiago raised me from when I was twelve. My parents died. I don’t know the details, only that they were murdered. That information was kept from me.
I know there’s a reason and the knowing gnaws at me, like a bird pecking my liver.