She stood there slumped over the counter, and her full pink lips started trembling. Her eyes filled with tears, and I looked away, because, fuck, I didn’t want to see her cry.
“Go to the first room on the right if you’re going to do that,” I said through clenched teeth.
I’d seen plenty of women cry in my life. I didn’t want to see it again.
She left without a word. I heard the door slam.
I finished scrubbing my shoes. Her dad’s blood came out mostly. They weren’t ruined, at least.
I stopped near a control panel for my alarm system next to the front door. I flipped it open, typed in my passcode, and armed it. Now if she left the apartment, the thing would start blaring.
I hurried into my bedroom and shut the door before it fully activated.
The space was gloomy and small, dominated by a big bed. I leaned up against the door and shut my eyes, squeezing them hard.
I couldn’t remember the last time I lived with a woman. Probably not since I was a teenager, stuck in my father’s house. There were always women around my father’s house, so many women, cycling in and out. Few stayed for very long, except for my mother. She lasted the longest, but even she went sooner or later.
Now I had Tara, my test and my gift.
Some fucking gift. She was gorgeous, I could admit to that, but I didn’t want her, and had no clue what the hell I’d do with her now.
That was a problem for tomorrow. I stripped off my clothes and got into bed. Downstairs, the sound of laughing people eating good enchiladas and drinking copious inexpensive Coronas drifted up through my floorboards, and lulled me to sleep.
2
Tara
I woke up in a psycho’s apartment and had no clue what I was going to do.
Early dawn sunlight streamed in through the blinds. The sound of people eating and the horrible smell of their food drifted around me most of the night. I’d barely been able to sleep. I kept feeling the hot slash of flames against my face, and felt the burning tug of ash in my throat as I tried to scream my father’s name. It was too late though, his body already crumpled and dead.
My whole life, burned to nothing.
And that psycho in the other room acted like it was no big deal.
I stared at the ceiling. Small, spiderwebbed cracks ran through the paint. I wondered if he was lying, all that stuff about them killing me if I ran away. I decided he probably wasn’t and that scared me even more.
I sat up and my head pounded. The room was simply furnished with a bureau and a nightstand. A small Timex clock showed it was just after six in the morning, the letters glowing red. There were no personal photos anywhere in the apartment, which I thought was strange.
I had pictures at home. Or I used to anyway. Pictures of myself and my mother before she left, pictures of my father before he’d spiraled into anger and drinking, pictures of myself when I was younger and still happy.
This guy had nothing, like his life didn’t even exist. There were paintings, and drawings, and a gorgeous rug on the floor, and the furniture all looked expensive and wood and custom made, but there was no character to any of it.
Like I was in some magazine spread. Gorgeous and impersonal.
I got up and opened the door. I used the bathroom, glanced through the medicine cabinet for something to use as a weapon—a razor, some scissors, anything—then walked toward the kitchen.
He stood with his back to the doorway, looking out over the living room while he pushed down the plunger of a French press.
I considered grabbing a knife from the block nearby and plunging it into the thick muscle on his back. I tried to remember his name, but couldn’t.
I kept seeing him pull the trigger. I kept seeing my dad’s head snap back as his blood and brains drenched the couch behind him. I screamed, then threw myself at the other guy, the one named Dean, and he’d punched me hard in the face. Things were fuzzy after that, until I was on my knees in the back yard.
None of it made sense. I knew my dad was involved with some shady people, but those guys acted like they were part of some organized crime family. They mentioned the Healys—but I had nothing to do with them. They were distantly related on my mother’s side and she’d always told me stories about them getting into trouble, stealing things and selling drugs, but I had no clue what they were doing these days.
“You want some coffee?” he asked, and I nearly screamed. I covered my mouth, heart suddenly racing, pulsing in a quivering uneven thump. I breathed hard to steady myself as he finished pushing down the plunger. He poured a mug and slid it to me over the counter.
He was shirtless, and his muscular chest was covered in tattoos. I gaped at his defined chest and abs, at the cut V that led down into his loose, light sweats. Cursive words scrawled beneath his collarbones: God Judges.
His eyes were deep green and his hair jet black. His jaw was square, and his nose crooked, like it’d been broken too many times to set properly. His cheeks were covered in the hint of a beard, and he was handsome, god, he was handsome, and he scared me, those dead and gorgeous eyes, those tattoos.
I picked up the coffee and it burned my tongue.
He poured some for himself then brushed past me. He sat at the small, round kitchen table that was placed outside of the living room area. I stayed in the kitchen, and kept the counter between us. I felt safer with some distance.
The apartment was like a museum. I had trouble connecting the brutal, cold killer from the
