Page 5 of Retaliation
I wanted to gag, but I forced it down and wrapped my fingers around his flabby arms and smiled coyly instead.
“Tomorrow night then, okay? I’ll come after hours. Let me get my beauty sleep tonight, though, yeah?” I teased, giving him a little shove, and he finally stumbled back.
“I’ll be waiting.” Jackson shoved me against the wall again and brought his sloppy mouth down to mine.
I wanted to puke but let him kiss me instead. If you could even call it a kiss. He groaned like this was something magical, and I stared up into the sky, waiting for it to end and methodically planning his demise.
“Okay, big boy,” I teased, breaking the kiss and faking a ragged breath. “Let’s save the rest for tomorrow.”
Jackson staggered back and grunted like a drunk ape. How was this guy even married? I’d probably be doing his wife a favor by killing him. He stumbled away down the alley, and I deftly backed into the shadows to wait for him to leave. The fucker was so drunk he might not even remember our play date. But I would be there, and he’d regret forcing himself on me. You picked the wrong girl, Jackson. My head felt clearer now that the ugly fucker had officially killed my buzz and my libido. I climbed up the fire escape and into my apartment. I tugged out of my clothes and put on an oversized t-shirt. I washed my face then brushed my teeth twice to get the yuck Jackson left behind out of my mouth.
I padded barefoot into my bedroom, if you could call it that. It was just a room with a bed, no personal touches anywhere. I didn’t even own a dresser or nightstands, just a bed with a shitty iron headboard and a small lamp on the floor. I didn’t care about furniture, and it wasn’t worth the money to decorate when I destroyed it so often after my nightmares. And besides, I had my own fully furnished room at the apartment I shared with Tibby downtown. When I slept there, the nightmares stayed away too. Here in this sad little apartment, weapons were more important. The most expensive furniture I owned here was the gun safe hidden behind a false wall in my bedroom closet. Another reason why Dev could never come to my place. As my landlord, he’d easily find the new addition Tibby and I added to the closet. Although he didn’t seem like a snooper.
I pulled the covers around me like a cocoon and sighed, staring up at the peeling popcorn ceiling. What a fucking day. Started with murder, ended with assault.
“Ugh, gross. At least I’d make him pay for the shitty end to my day,” I murmured to myself.
Well, it wasn’t entirely shitty. I remembered a few good things from before Lailah died, before my life became focussed on revenge. I closed my eyes and forced my brain to focus on those memories instead. At least, I tried. Sleep usually brought me nightmares of the people I killed, so I avoided it often. It wasn’t so much that I regretted killing them, what scared me most was that I felt nothing at all.
CHAPTER TWO
Sara
Islipped the handwritten note under Dev’s door and scurried back into my apartment. I was taking a risk, I knew that. But I was getting restless. I needed to get The Obscuritas Princes under my thumb now. Dev had come by the apartment after he closed the bar, and I could barely keep my raging libido in check. What was with me these days? We talked about having a movie night, but that date with Dev would have to wait because tonight, I was hunting. Despite the strange desire I had to wrap myself in his arms, I needed to focus on the reasons I was here in the first place. I pulled out my phone and dialed Tibby’s number.
“Reporting for duty, Nova,” her big voice boomed into my earpiece.
“Why are you always shouting?” I grumbled, grabbing my backpack.
I stuffed it with extra leggings and my favorite blade, a small, unadorned dagger. I picked up the dainty chain that held my mother’s key and placed it around my neck. I knew it was a keepsake I should hide away, but I felt safer with it on me. The skeleton key was one of the only things I had from my mother and father, from my life before. I closed my eyes, taking in a deep breath, remembering that day.
“My fierce little warrior,” Joseph Bronwen whispered, tucking a hair behind my ear, his face grim. “I have to go away now. I’m taking your sister somewhere safe. And you will be safe here.”
Tears burned my eyes. “Why can’t I go with you?”
“It’s not safe for us to be together,” my father whispered.
We sat in the back pews of a church in some small town we stopped at after driving for hours. I wasn’t even sure what state we were in. My father cupped my face, wiping away my tears.
“You are stronger than all of us, Seraphina. I must go and hide your sister from the men who killed Lailah.”
“Where’s mom?” I whispered for the hundredth time.
“She’s keeping us all safe,” my father responded for the hundredth time, a lie we both knew he had to tell. He wouldn’t say anything else about the night before last, and I pretended not to know she was dead. Joseph pulled out an old skeleton key made of gold. “This is for you, Seraphina. When the time is right, you will find what you need from…from your mother’s family. Can you keep it safe for her until then?”
I nodded, accepting the key but uncertain about the rest. I didn’t know a thing about my mother’s family. Only that they were very far away.
“Don’t show it to anyone, it’s yours alone, okay?” Joseph whispered, his voice serious.
“I’ll keep it safe until mom comes back for it.”
I kept my eyes on the key. I didn’t want to look up and see the truth in my father’s eyes. My mother wasn’t coming back. And I wouldn’t see him or my sister, Michaela, ever again. I knew it deep in my bones. Something was waking up inside me. I couldn’t understand it but I knew everything was changing.
“Sara?” Tibby’s voice cut through my trip down memory lane. “You there?”
I shook my head, forcing the memories out of my mind. “I’m here.”
“What’s the plan tonight?” Tibby asked, the keys of her keyboard clicking in the background.
