The Woman in the Trunk

I took a moment to strip and wipe off the excess blood, then went to scrub up in the sink before moving to uncover my phone, checking who I'd missed.

Emilio.

With a curse, I checked the time, wondering how much I had let pass, what was going on with Chris and Gigi.

It wasn't as bad as I thought.

Just shy of two hours.

Not long in the grand scheme of things, but Paulie had felt every moment of it.

"Yeah?"

"It's done."

"Okay. I know you've had a similar night to the one I've had, so I am going to need you to call Brio and get him over to the shop."

"Who?" Emilio asked, sounding exhausted. I didn't blame him. I was sure that once the adrenaline wore off, I would be drained as well.

"Our other guest this evening. Things came to light. About certain hands. And underage bodies."

"Oh, fuck," Emilio hissed. "Alright."

"Yeah," I agreed.

"Does he know?" he asked, clearly meaning my old man.

"No. Took a bottle to bed."

"Those two were tight."

"I have zero tolerance of this kind of shit."

"Yeah, no. I get it. I agree. I'll call Brio. I'll get a cup of coffee and help out. If you can be up, so can I," he said, proving again that he had it in him to work harder, just chose not to for a boss he didn't respect.

Me, on the other hand, he would endure two murders and body disposals for.

"Appreciate it," I said before hanging up, then put my phone back in the bag before moving around, collecting up instruments, taking them to the sink.

I bleached them and soaped up as much of my body as I could, grabbing some old uniform pants and a jacket from a dusty box in a corner to slip on before making my way upstairs to put the tools back into the dishwasher, setting it to run again, then making my way back down with some industrial cleaners the guys used to clean down the shop each night.

By the time I had everything set up and ready for them, they were coming in the back door, shuffling down the steps.

Emilio first, half-empty iced coffee in his hand.

Brio next.

He was just shy of my height, a little thinner, but fit in a more wiry way. He kept his black hair buzzed, had a sharp jaw and onyx eyes. He had an array of black and gray tats snaking up his arms and across his neck. He'd never gotten the memo about dressing for the family, wearing jeans, a black tee, and black Tims. He looked more like a gang member than a made man in the mafia, but Brio had never been someone to give a shit about appearances.

He moved toward the door first, hands in pockets, casual as can be about a corpse clean-up. He should have been, with how many corpses he'd created that needed to be dealt with.

He glanced in the room, head nodding, before turning back to me.

"That's a good amount of damage. Respect that," he said, grabbing for the latex gloves I'd found upstairs, taking the box of black bags.

"At least you don't need to cut this one up," Emilio said, sighing, drawing Brio's attention back to me, again, impressed. The sick fuck.

"I'm hurt I wasn't invited to the festivities, I'm not gonna lie," Brio said, clucking his tongue.

"The night really wasn't supposed to take this turn," I told him, shrugging, feeling the weight of my arms from all the hacking and slicing and lifting of bodies.

"You always did know how to make shit interesting," Brio said. "Is something going on that I need to know about?" he asked, pinning me with those icy eyes of his.

"Not that I know of. Yet. The way shit is going lately, just keep an ear for your phone, yeah?"

"Got it," he agreed, ducking into the room.

Emilio stood with me for a moment, finishing his coffee. His gaze cut to me as Brio's voice carried to us from the other room.

But he wasn't talking to us.

He was talking to the body.

He did weird shit like that.

"I heard you like touching little girls," he murmured, and I could hear him dragging a chair across the floor, likely trying to get the meat hook uncurled, so he could drop the body. "Got off easy, man. Did you know there are five basic types of torture? You got sharp, blunt, cold, hot, loud. Sure, sure, there are millions of little subsets within each group. Hot water. Fire. That sort of thing. So many ways to spend so many hours. We would have had lots of fun, you and me."

"Jesus Christ," Emilio hissed, shaking his head. "I hope to fuck that bastard never gets pissed at me. He'd revive a man just to rip out his teeth one-by-one."

"Oh, shit. Sorry 'bout that man. Guts just fell right out. Guess I gotta be more careful with ya."