When I get to Steve’s suburban neighborhood again, it’s almost midnight.
I round the craftsman house, trudging through the thick bushes circling his pool. I can see him through the double glass doors of his living room, passed out, from the drinks and the Ambien. I carefully pick at the lock of the door, my gloves and balaclava intact, watching him intently, in case he wakes up.
He doesn’t.
I push the door open and head straight to him. He is sprawled on a maroon couch, a football game rerun playing in front of him. I snap a glove off and place an index finger under his nose. Feel the heavy breeze of his breathing.
Not dead yet. Shame.
I’m not going to use the gun if I don’t have to. Too messy, and I don’t want to get in trouble. Instead, I’m going to make it look like an accident.
Steve always said that a bad attitude was like a flat tire. One can’t get super far before changing it. So I put my big girl pants on, think about it from all angles, and come up with a plan.
I squat down, picking up Steve’s head. It is heavy and hard in my hands. Of course I want to do it like in the movies. Tie him to a chair and throw our past between us. Spit in his face and punch him. Make him cry, and beg, and piss his pants, all while swaggering off in five-inch stilettos.
But I cannot afford to get caught. Not when I’m trying to piece my life back together. I may never forgive men for being men—that ship has sailed. I will never marry, never fall in love, never give another person with a dick a chance—but I can still carry on.
With his head firmly in my hands, I angle his body to a slumped position and calculate what it’d look like if he accidentally fell on the glass coffee table in front of him. The next few minutes is a lot of me moving his limp body back and forth on the couch and turning the coffee table slightly to ensure his head meets its sharp edge.
Then I walk behind the sofa, grab Steve by the shoulders, and hurl his body forward with force. His head smashes on the edge of the coffee table.
Glass shatters.
His face is all cut up, but I can’t see it, because he is lying there facedown.
There’s blood everywhere.
So much blood.
He still doesn’t move, not even a flinch, and I suspect he wasn’t aware of dying, he was so deeply unconscious. My heart twists in disappointment, so I tell myself that even if he didn’t know he paid for what he did, at least he won’t be able to do it to anyone else.
“Goodbye, bastard. Hope Satan gets you.”
I slide out unnoticed and make my way back to Boston.
To my new life.
To the new me.
“Mr. Whitehall, your vehicle awaits.”
I fell into the backseat of the eye-catching vehicle and continued barking at Sam Brennan during our transatlantic phone call.
“You said Simon came highly recommended.” I was aware I sounded one, accusatory … two, clipped … and three, utterly deranged. “He is a fucking joke, period. Where was he when Belle got attacked? When she was followed?”
I felt like a helicopter mother trying to convince an AP teacher why her Mary-Sue should get the scholar award this year. My complete transformation, from a man of leisure and pragmatist to this hysterical, illogical, blubbering mess, was not lost on me.
The young driver settled in the driver’s seat of the Rolls Royce Phantom. Mum loved to parade it around whenever she thought the paparazzi were nearby. I wagered she thought the paparazzi were definitely looking for me. She had no idea I’d come here to verbally bash her back and forth on the floor a-la Hulk and deliver some very bad news to her.
She thought I’d arrive bearing an engagement announcement.
“He was exactly where he was supposed to be,” Sam countered efficiently. “In Madame Mayhem, the only jurisdiction he was allowed to cover under your contract. Did you want him to stalk her?”
Yes.
“No,” I scoffed, flicking invisible dirt from under my fingernail. The driver crawled from Heathrow Airport into the unbearable London traffic. I loved my capital city, but it had to be said—everything west of Hammersmith should’ve been trimmed away from London limits and duly given to Slough as a gift.
“But he was conveniently absent each time she got into trouble.”
“He was doing the fucking filing to find excuses to be near her! This is a highly trained former CIA agent.” Sam’s fist crashed into an object on the other end of the line, shattering it to pieces.
I pulled my phone away from my ear and scowled at it. I had recently (and by recently, I mean in the past ten minutes) decided I was no longer a smoker. There was simply no justification to engage in such a harmful habit. My unborn child deserved more than an increased chance at developing asthma and a house that smelled like a strip club.