I nodded slowly and kissed her neck then breathed the smell of her hair deep. “I’ll do it,” I said. “If you promise I get another night.”
“I’m all yours as soon as the sun goes down,” she said.
“I’m not sure I want to wait.”
She kissed me then pulled away. “Be patient. You’ve got some shooting lessons to give.”
I groaned and tugged at my hair. I didn’t love the idea of actually teaching these girls how to kill considering I was far from trusting them, but Irene was right. If we were going to arm them, we should also show them how to fight.
“You better be worth it,” I said, laughing.
She gave me a sly smile. “You know I am. Now come on, get to work.”
I sighed but headed out into the living room. Sasha was speaking quietly to Anna in their native language, and both girls looked up as I approached.
“It was brought to my attention that I should teach you two how to shoot,” I said. “How about we start today?”
Sasha sat up straight and a glimmer of her old self reappeared. “Seriously?” she asked. “You’re going to give us a lesson on how to be badass mafia killers?”
“Something like that,” I said, rubbing my face, and looked at Anna. “Are you up for it?” I asked.
“For Mila, I’ll do it,” Anna said, her face hardening.
“Fuck, yeah,” Sasha said, slapping Anna on the knee. The smaller girl winced. “Let’s go shoot some shit. You’ve got guns, right? Do you have, like, big machine guns? Can we shoot some cool rifles and stuff?”
“No,” I said. “And the first lesson is, guns aren’t fucking toys.”
“Right, sure.” Sasha leapt to her feet and helped Anna up. “But, like, we get cool and fun targets, right?”
“Goddamn it,” I said, looking up at the ceiling, then led the girls out back for their first lesson down in the woods.
* * *
Sasha picked it up surprisingly fast. She shot with a smile on her face the whole time.
Anna took a little more work. I went over the procedure again and again and let her practice with a few different guns until she felt comfortable and was hitting the target more often than not.
Both of them stayed in the mansion and started reaching out to some of the other girls using burner phones. They called only, never texted, and didn’t stay on the line for long. Irene helped them, and soon the three of them had a good list of girls that were willing to help, girls that the Healy family had hurt, abused, and wronged.
“I need to go talk to some of them,” Anna said one morning a few days later after shooting practice. She’d gotten a lot better over that short time and didn’t flinch anymore when she pulled the trigger. Sasha, meanwhile, shoved the gun into her waistband like a gangster and leaned up against a tree, arms crossed over her chest.
“You sure that’s a good idea?” she asked.
“It’s not,” Anna said. “But if we’re going to make this happen, I’ve got to make actual contact and show them this is for real.”
Sasha grunted, but looked worried. “I keep thinking about Mila,” she said softly.
Anna nodded and stared at the ground. The girls were still grieving over their lost friend and I couldn’t do a thing to fix that for them. I’d lost men before, lost Omar recently, and other guys before him. I knew I’d lose more in the future. It never got easy and it never went away no matter how much time passed. They all haunted me, the specters of their memories and the knowledge that if they hadn’t joined the family then maybe they’d still be alive, with all the limitless possibility of a normal person.
Still, some people weren’t built for the real world. I looked over my shoulder, back toward where Irene sat next to the pool. She was one of those people, even though she rebelled against it. I was too, and I embraced my nature.
Living slow, living a normal life, that wasn’t for me.
“She’d want you to keep going,” I said, looking back at Anna.
“How do you know?” she asked.
“Because she came with you, right?” I tilted my head and shrugged. “She wanted to get the fuck out of there. Probably wanted it as much as you.”
“True,” Anna said. “It’s not just Mila, though. It’s all the girls.”
“Some might not get through this,” Sasha said and her voice sounded far away. She focused on something in the distance. “I keep thinking about that. If we go against the Healys, someone’s going to get hurt.”
“Make sure they understand the risk,” I said. “That’s as much as you can do. Make sure they understand they might die if they fight with us, but they’ll also never be free if they don’t. They’ll die in some Healy room of a drug overdose, or beaten to death by some pissed-off client, or any number of shitty ways girls die when they’re nothing more than flesh to be fucked and used.”