Mateo had been eyeing her like he was a dog desperate for a bone – even more so than Brutus was – and the thought of him having free access to her while I was gone made my skin all hot and prickly. I had considered just locking him back down in the basement so that I wouldn’t have to worry about that. But then I’d considered the idea of someone finding their way to the house against all odds and trying to hurt her. I knew it was the least likely of scenarios, but I also couldn’t bear the thought of one of my many enemies taking advantage of my pride and hurting her just because I’d believed she was out of harm’s way in that place.
So, all in all, I’d had to accept the risk of Mateo getting his cock near her because that was marginally more bearable than the risk of her being left to protect herself in my absence, no matter how fine of a killer she had the potential to be. Though I was still hoping he kept his fucking dick to himself and I thought a whole lot about castrating him to alleviate the concerns I had over that.
It wasn’t that I wanted her. Because of course I knew now that I did. It was more that I didn’t want him to have her. Him or any other fucker who mighta lain his eyes on her and gotten the kinds of ideas that would cause me to carve said eyes from his face. For reasons. Reasons which I wouldn’t allow myself to think on – at least while I was awake.
Dreaming Niall had a whole lot else to say on the subject, but I refused to listen to him beyond banishing those thoughts with the aid of my right hand as often as necessary. Or my left. Had to change it up sometimes. Couldn’t let righty go thinking I’d been caged and made monogamous or anything. Not that I’d even been able to do that since insanity had struck and I’d gone and gotten a bolt pierced through my cock. Though it did feel better today, and I was thinking it might just be healed enough to allow me that form of relief. Healed and feeling all kinds of interesting I had to add. It had been a long damn time since I’d gotten laid, but since getting that fancy silver Prince Albert, I had to admit I was thinking about relieving those urges in my body more and more than I could ever remember doing so in my life.
Then again, that mighta predated the piercing. And if I was being totally honest with myself, then it may have had a fair bit to do with the object of my desire and all the things I kept fantasising about doing with her. Not that there was a her. Because if there was a her then that meant I really was going to hell. Because I was breaking that one last, sacred promise I’d made to my wife all those years ago.
I knew that her death was supposed to release me from my vows of fidelity, but it hadn’t. Not for me. It had only bound me tighter to her memory, made me want to be a better man and a worse one all at once. Even bathing myself in the blood of all those who had hurt her had never helped with that.
I sighed, exhaling a mouthful of smoke and closing my eyes as I begged for an oblivion which wasn’t coming.
I had a real day of it headed my way. Pa was insisting I sit in on a bunch of meetings with him where the plans he was making with the Russians were going to be talked to death while I fought not to die of boredom and had to force myself to offer up opinions. Not only that, but he wanted updates from me on my hunt for information on the infamous missing man from the Castillo Cartel. The one who I had had to fake all kinds of information about without running the risk of any of it being proven as fabricated bullshit. I needed to lay a trail which had long since gone cold without anyone ever realising it should have led to my own door.
Mateo was my donkey. The money he’d stolen from the man he’d once worked for was destined to buy me a new life, a whole continent away from here or more. I wasn’t going to let my pa and his grubby little Russian buddies get their paws on it or him. He was my One Ring, and I was booked on a one-way trip to the paradise of Mordor regardless of anything they had to say on the matter.
Aside from the tedium of those meetings today, I also had the anticipated hell of an evening in my dear fiancée’s company.
Anastasia.
I sighed, taking another drag on my smoke as I tried to picture the kind of life I was being forced into with her. For all my big talk of running, I still hadn’t managed to drag the location of Mateo’s stolen treasure from him. And without his treasure – which I was firmly imagining to be a big fat chest filled with doubloons and diamonds instead of a hoard of stolen dollars – I was stuck here.
My heart crashed and thundered against my ribs in a riotous act of defiance as I considered the idea of waiting in a church for Anastasia to arrive in her white dress. Virginal certainly wasn’t something she could pull off, but I knew she’d try. She was of the flashy, bullshit variety and she’d want a thousand photographs of her draped in something unbearably expensive while she hung all over me like a possum on a branch.
Worse than that, I pictured our wedding night. Her there in some skimpy scrap of nothing with her fake tits pushed up to her chin while she panted all over me like a rabid chipmunk tryna find its stash of winter nuts while my fancy penis tried to pull a turtle act and retreat all the way away from her.
The dark place was calling my name. It was calling and I was damn tempted to give in, follow the sound of its voice and wait to emerge bloody on the other end, hoping I might find myself absolved of my commitments by my half-cracked self accidentally butchering all of the fuckers who were trying to force this hell upon me.
I rested my head back against the headrest and enjoyed the breeze coming in through my car window as I fought against the temptation to wallow in my internal agony. I only realised I’d closed my eyes when I felt the prickle of a pair of beady little eyes on me, heard the scuff of poorly concealed footsteps on the drive as the fucker tried to sneak up on me.
I parked my cigarette in the corner of my mouth and opened my eyes just as my brother, Connor bent down and pressed a hunting knife to my neck, a smug smile on his face and a new haircut on the top of his head to fix the mess I’d made when I’d severed his ponytail.
“Looks like ‘the greatest hitman in the state’ isn’t so hot after all,” he sneered, looking like he really did want to kill me, and the corner of my lips hooked up as I turned my eyes to him.
“You made a mistake though, Connor,” I pointed out, making his brow dip and scowl sharpen. “Six, actually.”
“What’s that then?” he scoffed.
I fired the gun which I’d pulled, not even bothering to lift it up and just shooting straight through the door of my car so that it hit him in the thigh. He fell back to the ground with a scream of pain, his knife not even managing to scratch me as he went.
“First off, you brought a knife to a gun fight,” I pointed out as I opened the car door and stepped out, holstering my Glock and grinning down at him as he tried to scramble backwards across the drive, blood staining the pale stones beneath him.
“You fucking animal,” he hissed, clutching at his leg. “You shot me. Pa is going to fucking kill you. He-”
“Secondly, you breathe too loud, not to mention the way your fancy loafers sounded on the ground as you approached me,” I went on, ignoring him as I moved to step on his wrist, grinding my heel down until he dropped the blade he’d tried to threaten me with. “Third, you stared at me too hard. Stared and stared until I could feel the unpleasant crawl of your slimy eyeballs rolling all the way down my spine.”
“You can’t feel people staring,” he hissed, trying to take a swing at my leg to stop me from crushing his wrist.
I plucked the cigarette from my mouth and flicked it right into his eyes, making him yell again as he batted it away, sadly managing to put out the sparks before the rest of his hair went up in flames.