I stayed put and watched the slaughter… unable to believe what had just happened.
I sat at the bar across from Damien, still in a daze from what I’d witnessed a few hours ago. It was three in the morning and I should go home and get some sleep, but I was so disturbed by what I’d seen that I couldn’t close my eyes.
If I did, I would relive it…over and over.
Damien was still a part of the business, but since Maddox didn’t care for him, he sent him on mediocre errands. I was the one he wanted, but he put up with Damien to keep me happy. I took a big pay cut because of it. I never told Damien why.
Damien rested his fingers on his glass as he leaned back against the booth. It was late on a Tuesday, so we were the only two people in there. The bar closed an hour ago, but they stayed open for us. There was a distinct animosity between us, but we stayed diplomatic to get the job done. “So, you took those guys out?”
“They’re gone.”
“Well, that was easy. I admit Maddox has resources we never did.”
There was a reason I couldn’t kill him. “Some guy came up behind me with a knife…”
Damien leaned forward. “You kill him?”
“No.” I swirled my glass before I took a drink. “Maddox did.”
Damien continued to watch me.
“He saved my life.” Instead of feeling invigorated with life, I felt dirty. I felt like I’d unfairly cheated death. A part of me was disgusted to be alive because I’d rather be dead than be saved by a man like him. And I’d like to be dead…just to be dead.
“Seriously?”
With my eyes focused on my glass, I nodded. “Yeah. The guy was about to stab me, but Maddox shot him.”
Damien rested both of his elbows on the table and ignored his drink. “I’m surprised he would do that.”
“That makes two of us.”
“He must like you.”
I shrugged. “I don’t understand him. He’s the sickest motherfucker I’ve ever met. I don’t understand what makes him tick. I don’t understand what he wants. He goes to strip clubs but seems uninterested in women. He makes a fortune but then burns it. Now he has saved my life…when he doesn’t even need me.”
“I haven’t dealt with him much, but you’re right. He’s weird.”
“Not just weird…inexplicable.”
Damien looked into his glass for a while. “I’ve seen him around women…but never with women. You know what I mean?”
I lifted my gaze to look into his.
“He’s oddly obsessed with you…”
“Damien, what are you saying?”
He finished his drink before he pushed the glass away. “I don’t know…maybe he doesn’t like women. Maybe he likes men… Maybe he likes you.”
The theory didn’t faze me at all. “If he were gay, he wouldn’t have raped my wife. I mean, ex-wife…whatever the fuck she is.” There was so much pain in that sentence, I had to close my eyes for a second. We had both been through so much just to be together, and in the end, we weren’t together at all. She was raped for no reason. It was all my fault.
Damien looked slightly uncomfortable by the statement. “I don’t think that means anything.”
He was right. It might not.
“The guy knocks off any guy who gets in his way. Why would he care enough to spare you? I understand not killing you himself, but stopping someone else from killing you? That’s odd to me. Why does he care whether you live or die? He threatened to hurt Sofia if you rise up against him. It’s genius. He got rid of your wife, and now you’re alone.”
“Doesn’t matter if I’m alone or not. I’m not gay.”
Damien shrugged. “Just an idea…”
I sat at my desk in my bedroom with a bottle of scotch, the watch Sofia gave me, and a black revolver lying on the wood in front of me. Maybe I had too much to drink. Maybe the alcohol didn’t water down my sorrow. Maybe it only made it more potent.
But I didn’t want to live anymore.
I was a prisoner of a psychopath who might be in love with me. I was also a prisoner of a woman, a woman hundreds of kilometers away, sleeping soundly in her bed. The sun would rise in an hour, and she would leave for work, while I sat there and considered the unthinkable. Terrible things had happened to her because of me, and that made me hate myself so much. But the fact that I loved her so much made me hate myself even more.
The curse was still in effect…because I was so miserable.
I didn’t want to live because Maddox saved me. It seemed like I’d cheated death, like he’d taken away a merciful gift. If I were gone right now, everything would be better. I’d rather be dead than without the woman I loved.
How could I spend the next few years, torturing myself every day? Every time I visited her and our son, I would die a little more inside. I would have to watch her remarry, have more children with some other guy. I’d have to be mature and understanding about the whole thing. I couldn’t just marry someone else…because I would never love someone else.
I had no other option.
This was the easy way out.
Without my existence, Maddox had no reason to care about Sofia or my son. He would forget about them like they never existed in the first place. Very few people would miss me. Sofia would be upset, but some other guy would take my place, and after a few years, she would forget what it was like to love me.
It was a coward’s way out.
Well, what else was I supposed to do? If I tried to kill Maddox and failed…the consequences were unthinkable. But continuing to be Maddox’s prisoner was just as inconceivable.
I grabbed the gun and checked the barrel. A single bullet lay inside. I closed it again, took off the safety, and cocked the gun. After one more drink, I would opt out.
But then my phone started to ring.
Sofia.
I watched her name flash across the screen as it continued to ring. I was tempted not to answer and to finish what I started, but the possibility of her needing me quickly changed my mind. What if she needed help? What if, in a few years, Andrew needed help? What if one day her new husband couldn’t fix her problems? If I weren’t here, what would she do?
I grabbed the phone and answered before the voice mail picked up. “Sofia?”
Her voice was quiet, like she’d been sleeping and recently woke up. “Are you busy?”
I looked at the gun sitting in front of me and clicked the safety. “No.”
“Andrew is kicking so hard that I can’t sleep…”
I didn’t know what she expected me to do about that, but I did like knowing she thought of me. I’d never felt my son kick, and that felt like such a waste.
“And I hated the way we left things last week…”
We would never part on good terms. Our relationship was too emotional, intimate. There would never be a time when we could say we were good friends and nothing more. At least on my part, she would always be the woman I loved…no matter how many years had passed. I could be fifty and still feel the exact same way. And that had nothing to do with the curse—that was all me. “We’ll never leave on good terms, Sofia.”