“Okay,” I whisper.
“Okay,” he says, pulling out his gun.
There’s a twister blowing up inside of him as he takes my hand and leads me from the room. It’s a storm that’s binding us together. It’s a blizzard to blow all of our pain away. It’s something that was set in motion long before there was a sidewalk, a stare and a red dress, but tonight?
Tonight, that twister is turning for me.
33
Joseph
The jet banks sharply and then rights itself for our final descent. The ocean is a strip of violent blue beneath us. Dante’s island is glinting like a not-too-distant jewel on the horizon, and Anna can’t seem to take her eyes off it.
“Holy shit,” she breathes. “Now I get why she married you, Santiago.”
His resultant glare is tossed across the aisle at her, but she returns it with a flick of her middle finger.
“Bad girl,” I murmur into her ear and she wriggles her ass against my dick as sweet punishment.
“A bad guy wouldn’t have any other,” she says, locking her arm around my neck and drowning me in her scent again. I steal a taste of her happiness in a kiss and feel a small hand toying with the rings on my chain. “Just tell me one thing. Did you buy them to prove a point, or are you actually intending to—?”
I shut her up with another kiss. “A shadow never shares his secrets,” I murmur, trapping her jaw between my fingers. The outlines of her bruises are still visible from the car accident in Colombia, but she’s never looked more alive. Beneath her skin is that emerging butterfly again, and I want to be present for every beat of those beautiful new wings. “Get back in your seat. We’re landing.” I tip her off my knee, but her river-deeps are still gleaming at me.
“Keep on turning, Joseph,” she says quietly. “Whatever happens, just keep on turning for me.”
I frown at her. “What—?”
This time it’s her who shuts me up, not with a kiss, but with the lightest touch of her finger to my mouth. “I don't know who you are or where you’ve come from,” she says, her eyes darting across my face in a way that makes me forget my own fucking name. “There are scars on your soul that may never heal. You’re a killer and a savage, and the secrets in your past scare me more than your trigger finger sometimes. But you showed me I had too much time running through my veins to stop all the clocks.”
I think of my brother in that moment. I think of sitting on straw bales the day the Texas sun set on his life. I remember him telling me I’d catch the right one when it came my way.
“Does this mean your pussy’s back on the menu later?” I shake off her finger and temper my crude words with a smirk.
“On the bed, against the wall… I’m not sure Eve will appreciate us fucking in her kitchen, though.” Her laughter breaks through her battle lines.
“Then we need our own kitchen someday.”
“Maybe we do.”
There’s a pause as she traces my jaw with her fingers. “You may have this big, frozen wall around your heart, Joseph Grayson, but it was still big enough to beat for the both of us when—”
“Oh, stop with the bullshit,” drawls a bored voice. “He’s just some lucky asshole who drinks all of my bourbon and aims a gun better than me.” Dante’s standing across the aisle, arms crossed, one eyebrow cocked in disdain. “When you two have finished sucking each other off, you might want to notice we’ve landed. My wife is waiting for me, and it’s been a while since my dick has enjoyed the same attention.”
“You still can't help yourself, can you, Santiago?” Anna glares at him as she unclips her belt. “Third time’s a charm, you know?” She waves her fist in his direction with a scowl.
“If it means not having to listen to you word vomit for hours on end, then go right ahead,” he responds dryly.
“What’s that?” I say, pointing to the iPad in his hand.
“New trouble,” he says, holding it out to me. “Roman Peters believes we have issues in New York again. Some Bratva piece of shit called Benni Morozov who’s not staying dead.”
“Want me to handle it?” I rise to my feet and scan my eyes over the email from the FBI special agent.
“We’ll monitor it. If needs be, I’ll let Sanders know.”
“And Colombia?”
“I’ve giving Viviana an army and a month to introduce the new Santiago cartel order. If she can’t fortify the distribution channels in that time, we’ll think again.”
I watch him exit the jet into Eve’s waiting arms, suppressing another smirk as he spins his wife around on the spot like a lovesick fool.
“Do you think Eve and I will ever be close again?” asks Anna anxiously, following my gaze. “We haven’t spoken in so long…”
“Don’t sweat it.” I draw her into my embrace, feeling her arms twist around my waist as she seeks out my reassurance. “Good friends always stay close, no matter what the fucking distance is.”
“True,” she whispers, placing her cheek against my chest. “But shadows stay even closer.”
Epilogue
One month later
It’s past midnight. The warehouses are deathly silent. The light rests on the surface of the water like a vengeance that never dies.
I’m tempted to dive in and disperse the worst of it. Then I remember what he’s done. What they’ve all done, and I resolve to leave the diving to those who still have a splash of morality left in this world.
I hear the car pulling up behind me, followed by the heavy slam of a door. The click clack of his metal cane shoots sparks off the concrete while I stand and wait for him. As he draws closer, I hear snatches of his labored breathing, courtesy of the lung surgery and the tracheostomy he required after the first three bullets hit the side of his face and chest. The subsequent two hit him in the thigh, crippling his walk indefinitely. He’s adapted to his new body, though. He’s grown in so many other ways.
“Viviana,” he greets gruffly, his accent still thick and generous, despite living these past two years in the healing environment of the sunshine state. “You did well, mi vida. You befriended the weakness, perverted it to your advantage, and now you’ve rooted yourself in the organization like a festering, weeping sore. I couldn’t be more proud of you if you’d killed them yourself.”
I turn to face him, recoiling slightly as I always do. The day they killed him, they let the monster on the inside climb out and obliterate his skin with scars.
But he didn’t die.
Not completely.
They left him in a lake of blood when they dived headfirst into the same stretch of water running alongside us. They never checked to see if he was striking a bargain with another devil in his stillness.
He bought his anonymity and freedom from a crooked system.
He paid handsomely to disappear back into the shadows.
And now he’s back to reap the revenge we both so richly deserve.
“First we unpick, and then we unravel,” he declares, cracking his cane against the concrete again to bolster the plan.