The Woman in the Trunk

"What else needs to be done?" I asked, needing to know his plan, that if I was going to walk away, he wouldn't rush downstairs to deal with Giana.

"I need to watch the fire to make sure everything gets burned down," he said, going for the liquor cabinet again.

That was exactly what he would do, too. Get drunk and watch the fire.

I just needed ten minutes.

"You know what to do," I told Emilio as I walked past. "Don't skip any fucking step, no matter how frustrating it gets. Or annoying your company gets," I added, voice lower.

"Don't worry about me. I've done this with you more times than I can count. Nothing will trace back."

With that, I made my way upstairs, going into my childhood bedroom to wash off with ancient soap, making sure I scrubbed every inch of me five times over, getting under my nails and in my hair, until every inch of me squeaked.

Only then did I get out, dry off, and find an old t-shirt and running pants in my closet that still fit even if they were a little tight across the shoulders, arms and close to floods at the ankles. But they were clean and evidence-free; that was all that mattered.

I bleached the tub and the floor, then made my way back downstairs, finding half the dining room floor already ripped up, boards cut up and sitting in black bags, waiting to be burned.

"Leave," my father demanded as soon as I walked into the room.

"What?"

"Leave. I'm done with you for the night."

Done with me.

That was a rich way to put it.

I'd just saved us all from indictments.

But he was done with me.

"There's still—"

"Did I fucking stutter, boy?" he snapped, using a tone I hadn't heard from him in a while. One that said if I pushed, that gun in his hand would be pointed at me. And his men would be cleaning up another mess.

He was unstable.

But that was all the more reason I needed to stay.

To make sure he didn't go downstairs, didn't take it out on Giana.

"Get out of my mother fucking house, so I can get some goddamn peace," he snarled, grabbing his bottle, heading toward the stairs.

Good.

That was good.

My father liked to drink, but it always hit him like a handful of sleeping pills.

If he was heading upstairs with a bottle, in another twenty minutes, he would be out cold.

I could leave now and come back, to be there when he sobered up to discuss the Giana situation.

And until then, I knew Chris was down there to make sure none of the other guards went in.

It was fine.

I actually had one more dark mark to etch into my soul before the night was over.

I put up with a lot when it came to our family.

Men with their addictions, their bad habits, with their rage issues.

But I would not tolerate a fucking child rapist.

That was just not going to stand.

Decision made, I caught a cab back to my place to grab my second car, one I rarely used because it was flashier than what I typically drove. But it was wheels. And it had a nice, roomy trunk.

I wasn't planning to take him far, anyway.

I just needed to get him out of his apartment, into my trunk, then across town to the butcher's shop.

I needed a little time with this particular bastard.

As a whole, I didn't enjoy having to beat men whose only crime was having a family emergency that ate away at the money they saved to pay us. It was a necessary evil. A duty I carried out because this lifestyle didn't work if you weren't able to stomach doing terrible things to bring about the wanted result.

But once in a while, when there was a particularly annoying asshole you knew beat on their wives or kids in their spare time? Yeah, you could enjoy that shit a little more than usual.

There were only a handful of times I had craved the bloodshed, though, and thought of pained screams as music to the ears.

In fact, I was pretty sure this would only be the second time that I grabbed someone, knocked them cold, tied them up, and threw them in at trunk—only to carry them down the stairs and string them up in a basement—and done so with absolute fucking glee.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" Paulie asked, finally coming to, doing so slowly at first, then all at once, finding himself suspended from a meat hook in the ceiling, the cuffs biting into his wrists from hanging while unconscious.

He had a giant fucking egg on the side of his head from where I'd needed to whack him several times to keep him down while I moved him around, got him strung up.

From the looks of that thing, he had to have a killer migraine jackhammering through his head right about then.