“You’re wearing that same charcoal suit, with the black turtleneck and gold chain. Your lines have faded, your hair just as dark as it was that first night, and when you smile at me, it’s a smile full of promise. You ask me my name and I tell you, waiting for you to repeat it back because this is a familiar dance we’re taking,” I continue, stopping a moment to clear my throat.
“I ask you who you are and butterflies take flight inside me as I await your answer. You grin at me and I learn you’re cocky, you're confident, and more than that you believe wholeheartedly the words you’re about to utter.” My voice trails off as I watch his lips part.
“Me? I’m the man you’re going to spend all of eternity with,” he whispers as his eyes flutter open, applying the final touches to the picture I was painting, reminding me this was our picture. Our life. Our love.
“That’s right,” I reply, holding his face as I lean closer to him. “Forever and always, my love.”
“I love you, Gracie,” he rasps. His hands travel up my sides, slowly, knowing it’s the last journey they’ll ever take over me. Finally, he takes my face and I close my eyes as his lips brush across mine.
Soft and endearing.
Painfully heartbreaking.
Lovingly, Victor kisses me one last time. Thirty years of love, three decades of memories and all the lessons we’ve learned melt into that one kiss affirming the one thing that may have once been lost to us—the beautiful love we created will never die.
We’ve found eternal love in a sea full of illicit temptations.
“I’ll see you soon,” I whisper against his lips, pulling back a fraction to stare into his handsome face one last time.
“Goodbye my love, until we meet again,” he says softly.
And we would meet again.
He’ll be the man in the charcoal suit.
I’ll be the woman in a turquoise jumpsuit.
He’ll grin at me and I’ll take his hand and together we’ll be.
Always together.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
It takes a special breed to kill. For me, there has always been a ritual I take part in before I commit the act. In the early days, Val and I would get pissed drunk on a bottle of Dewar’s before we took our guns to the streets. When I became the boss my hands rarely ever got dirty, but I had trust issues, never willing to leave room for error, I always took care of the bodies. I’d drive seven hours to the middle of nowhere, blasting Sinatra’s ‘My Way’ with a shovel beside me and a corpse in the trunk of my Cadillac.
The ritual changed as I got older. I took to God before I slit a throat or pulled the trigger; I prayed for the unsuspecting soul that would meet his maker and while I was at it I threw in an Our Father for myself. It was a crap shoot, really, asking our Heavenly Father to relieve me of all the crimes I committed and those I had yet to, but still, if there was a chance he did then why not take it?
It was selfish of me and in some sense I felt like a coward.
You see, I didn’t think twice before murdering someone. I did it with ease and with confidence. Hell, I did it with grace, each hit becoming more of a work of art than the one before. Even as I dug the holes and covered the bodies with the Earth’s soil I had no regrets. I was cocky and arrogant in murder just as I was in everything else. It wasn’t until I went home with blood on my hands and saw Grace asleep in our bed that I questioned my actions.
I wasn’t afraid of dying; it came with the power, with the suit and the gun. I was afraid of leaving this earth and never seeing my Gracie again. Saint Peter will wait for my beautiful bride, not I, my ass was headed straight to the depths of Hell.
There was no way my sweet, innocent Gracie would ever meet Satan.
Grace and I were over. We ended when my bride of thirty years kissed me one final time and walked out of that visitor’s room in Otisville. It ended when my shackled legs shuffled onto the bus that dragged my ass here.
There is nothing left to my existence, nothing to look forward to, all that’s left is the last hit. I had a vision for my last kill, a premeditated hit that would be just as dramatic as the first one I ever committed. I contemplated reenacting my first hit but my connections were gone and getting my hands on a gun and a bottle of bleach was goddamn impossible.
Along with my connections, my body failed me. I was running out of time and didn’t have time to sit on the G-Man. Once that motherfucker’s eyes find mine he’ll know exactly what’s about to go down and if I don’t strike first, then I’ll be the one in a body bag by the end of the day.
And I’m not going out like that.
Revenge is a beast that’s been living inside of me since I watched the life fade from Val’s eyes, his body riddled with bullets, each one meant for me. It was finally time for me to lay down my life for his memory, time for me to give the brothers of the Satan’s Knights the peace they so badly craved. It was time to avenge the deaths caused by the G-Man running his product through mine and Jack’s streets.
It was time for the last hit.