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  “Mom’s with Red again.” It isn’t even a question at this point. We both know when our mother is MIA, she’s most likely with her boyfriend and pimp. It’s not good news when she disappears like this. It means she’s on a binger and God only knows what shape she’ll be in when she reappears. God I hope she didn’t overdose. I’ve hoped for a lot of things, but that’s my biggest fear.

  “Cece?”

  “Don’t call me that. I’m not five.”

  “At least you’re talking to me.” I can hear the smile in his voice and I despise him for it. “Look, I know you’re mad.” He stops me from taking another step and takes the candle from me.

  “That doesn’t even begin to cover it!” I fume. “What the fuck were you doing there? And two fucking thousand dollars, Dante? Are you kidding me with this shit?”

  “Whoa, watch your mouth.”

  “Don’t you dare tell me to watch my mouth, considering I’m the one who just fucking saved your ass, you’re lucky I’m not doing anything more than swearing.”

  “All right! Jesus, fuck, all right. I give up. I fucked up, okay? I’m sorry. I’ll get you the money.”

  “You don’t get it. It’s not about the money! Why were you at Pops? I thought you told me you weren’t gambling anymore?”

  “I needed the money,” he confesses.

  “What the fuck for?”

  He instantly clams up at that inquiry and averts his gaze, setting the candle in his hand down on the coffee table in a small candle holder before flopping down on the couch. His narrow shoulders are hunched over like he’s bearing the weight of the world between his shoulder blades, while he rests his arms on his upper thighs as though to alleviate the burden of whatever’s bothering him. Instinct tells me he’s keeping something from me, something troubling enough that has driven him to gamble again.

  In the pervasive silence that falls, I’m able to examine the somber expression on his face and the shadows playing across his freckled features. He has never been good at keeping his emotions in check, which is mainly why he made a horrible poker player. He’s way too brash for his own good, with a tendency to ignore anyone else’s opinion but his own. He’s mild-mannered at the best of times, but he could be a bully when he wanted to be and that was mostly the reason why Sasha couldn’t put up with him. Right now however, he looks the furthest thing from a bully.

  “Dante,” I press when he still hasn’t given me a reply, “what did you need the money for?”

  “A real good investment.”

  Fucking bullshit. If I had a quarter for every time he said that…

  “I thought you were concentrating on school. What happened to your job down at Fillmore’s?” Last I checked, he’d wanted to be an electrician, and he’d been given the chance to intern for a contracting company. I thought he’d been doing well there.

  He scoffs, “Fucking interning ain’t paying shit. I’m not about to be some dude’s bitch, fetching him coffee and shit just to get my ass nowhere.”

  “So what, you quit?”

  “A month ago.”

  “Fucking terrific.”

  “Lacey, listen, I know what I’m doing.” Finally he looks at me with the same eyes we inherited from our unknown father and whatever is troubling him swims across the clear green surface of his eyes now. “Some of the guys at Pops, they talked about starting up a repair shop. I thought it was a great idea so I told them I wanted in on it. But they wanted the money immediately. They only gave me a week to come up with that kind of money. They were going to shut me out. So… I did what I had to, to get it.” He looks at me for a second longer before looking down at his feet again, shaking his head as though affirming something silently with himself. “I did what I had to do, Cece.”

  My frown deepens as I put two and two together but I know it can’t possibly be the extreme equivalent I’m imagining. The sick sense of dread however, washing hot and cold through my veins, tells me it’s exactly what I fear. “You borrowed money!” It isn’t a question, and yet the way he refuses to look at me is answer enough for me. Smacked suddenly by a wave of dizziness, I slowly slide down the wall I’m leaning against and release a whoosh of air that makes my head spin further. I lower my head between my raised knees and dig the heels of my hands into my eyes.

  “Hey, you don’t need to worry about that,” I heard him murmur, and I jump slightly at the unexpected touch of his hand on my shoulder. “Look, I know you’ve bailed my ass out of more trouble than I can count, but I need you to trust me on this, Lacey.” I look up at the sound of my full name from him to find him kneeling in front of me, squarely meeting my red-rimmed gaze. “This time, it’ll be different. This time, I’m going to do something good and I’m going to get you and Mom out of this place. This idea, it’s going to make us rich, you’ll see.” The sad thing about what he’s saying is that he believes his own lies far more than I do. But I say nothing. Even if I could, the words that would come out would be far too bitter for this sweet moment. I quietly allow him to gather me in his arms like he’s done countless times before when we were kids, and for a little bit of time, he’s once again the big brother who protected me from whatever evil stepped foot inside our home, all the while forced to grow up too fast when our mother abandoned us for Red. For the drugs.

  Chapter Five

  Knox

  I hum a tune I’ve known since I was a child from a past I don’t remember. I’ve never been able to place the words. Maybe it’s a lullaby my mother once sang to me. The tune is a mysterious one and admittedly it’s not one I’m fond of, but it never fails to come to mind when I’m working. Slipping out of my leather jacket, I hand it on the back of the solitary chair in the room, exchanging it for a body-length, rubberized apron I tie at the neck and back. I unfasten the first two buttons of my dress shirt and roll the sleeves up to my elbows.

  The clear vinyl tarp rustles beneath my booted feet as I gradually make my way to the rolling table that holds my instruments. They’re new, so they gleam nicely beneath the bright overhead light. There had been an unfortunate accident with my last set that had forced me to leave them behind at my last job. I’m not going to lie, they’d held some great memories. I performed my first job with them. But whatever, it isn’t really so much the tools. It’s how precisely you perform the job. And I can honestly say that I’m damn good at what I do. The instruments were just an extension of that.

  Scalpel, drill, and a retractor is all I’d needed then, and that hasn’t changed much. I still only use the three, but the scalpel and drill are my personal favorites. I put a stop to the humming to look at the face of the man on the table.

  Yuri Khitrova, my boss and adoptive father, put the order out for my latest assignment, and Luciano Costiera was it. Nephew of Marco Costiera, head of the city’s Italian mafia and one of Yuri’s very few friends. I know a lot about Luciano. I have twenty pages of notes written in a little notebook filled with mundane facts. Things I didn’t necessarily need to know, but it helped make my work that much more intimate. I have notebooks of all my victims.

  Luciano is thirty-four, a year older than I am, but looking down at his overweight form, his rapidly deteriorating hairline, and weathered features, one would probably put him somewhere in the mid to late forties range. Poor diet, poor lifestyle, and an excessive amount of drugs will do that to you. Luciano is not married. He doesn’t have any children. What he did have was a terrible temper and the propensity to fuck and mercilessly beat up prostitutes.

  The reason why he is here now on my table, is because he’s become a nuisance to all those around him. Especially his uncle, who has supported him financially for years. This was a favor, a request Marco Costiera has asked of his friend. For me to permanently rid him of his troublesome nephew. So Yuri gave me the order and I am only too happy to oblige. I seldom ask questions. It’s easier to follow orders. It makes getting to my favorite part that much easier…that much faster. Every opportunity I get to whet my appetite, this limitless hu
nger for gore and death, I will do anything to make it happen.

  Like a cat would stalk and chase the mouse before gobbling it up. I always prey on my victims first. It makes the capture that much more rewarding. But I am a little disappointed at how easy it’d been to hunt this particular prey down. Men like Luciano were creatures of habit. Habits make it easy to be killed. Luciano always traveled with two armed bodyguards who were rendered utterly useless once the paid girls and the large amounts of drugs were thrown into the mix. It was very easy for me to slip a prostitute a few hundred dollar bills to lure Luciano away. The money would have been enough to buy her silence about her interaction, but adding in the promise of coming after her and slitting her throat in the middle of night drove the point home. That had been the easy part.

  What hadn’t been easy was the process of lugging the overweight fuck to this cabin once he’d gone limp in my arms from the injection of the needle into his carotid. But it was worth it.

  A slow clinical perusal of Luciano’s naked body shows him tightly strapped to the large wooden table beneath him. There is no escape for him. The bamboo rope restraints and long strips of gray duct tape bisecting his body will ensure that he remains exactly where I want him. He is struggling, of course, his overweight frame twists and wriggles like a worm on a hook, desperate to escape an inevitable fate. I savor his futility. It’s a good thing he’s fighting. It will make the journey to death much sweeter.

  He meets my dead gaze with beady, watery brown eyes, soaked with fear so potent it has a stench. He shrinks back when I approach. One swift pull of the duct tape placed across his mouth releases a barrage of expletives and unintelligible words that surprise me. I thought there would be begging. Denial and maybe, even some bargaining. It’s typically how it goes with my victims. This outright show of anger tugs at the corners of my mouth.

  “You goddamn son of a bitch. Just you fucking wait until my uncle gets a hold of you. They know I’m missing. They’re going to come for you!” And on and on it goes. I don’t talk to them. When I’m ordered to dispose someone it’s usually past the point of talking.

  The lullaby begins again and it syncs with the thrumming in my head. The thrum, like a steady buzz of an electric line after it rains, has been with me for as long as the lullaby. The lullaby almost always precedes the thrum, it’s the appetite and the thrum, the hunger. Running my index finger along the sharp cold steel of the scalpel slices my finger open and draws blood. But there is no pain, only my shortness of breath in sweet moment of bated anticipation.

  “Don’t you fucking touch me with that, you sick fuck!” I won’t return the duct tape to his mouth. The cursing is another welcome note in this building symphony. Luciano’s inevitable screams will be another. With mindless ease, I grab the pair of rubber, elbow-length gloves set by my tools and slip them on one hand at a time.

  The blade of the scalpel is sharp. One long, smooth vertical swipe down a hairy thigh is deep enough to shred through the muscles. I always start here. It has been this way since I first took down my first victim. There is no reasoning behind it, at least I don’t think there is. Psychoanalyzing myself isn’t at the top of my to-do list. Besides, I doubt it would be as fun as what I am about to do. I hum while I work, like one of Snow White’s dwarfs, only I’d be called Stabby.

  Ever methodical, I start with vertical lines up and down Luciano’s body and then intercept those lines with diagonal ones, all deep enough to tear through skin. When the scalpel has done all it can, I reach for the saw. The teeth of the saw penetrates muscle and shreds through it like it’s paper. Elbow deep in guts and blood, swimming in self-induced euphoria, I’m oblivious to the fact that Luciano has stopped screaming a long time ago. When the blade of the saw comes against the resistance of bones, I take the drill, the loud whir takes me the rest of the way through and then the retractor help me to pry open the rib cage.

  His heart will be harvested. Yuri has interested buyers. Organ harvesting is apparently a lucrative market. The rest of Luciano’s organs aren’t good enough for resale. When I’m done, I gather all the remains of what had once been a human being inside the vinyl tarp and walk to the adjacent bathroom.

  Tossing everything in the tub, I pick up the gas mask from the floor where I’d left it earlier. I quickly unscrew the black caps on each of the white, unlabeled bottles I’ve lined up in front of the tub. Taking a gallon in each hand, I pour the light green liquid acid on Luciano’s remains. It foams upon contact, releasing gaseous fumes. I have the gas mask on for precisely this reason. I don’t stop until each of the ten bottles has been emptied about ¾ of the way inside the tub. It’s a thick, gooey mess with the consistency of molasses. The pale green color of the liquid mixing in with blood and flesh gives it a murky yellow color. Adding in the apron and gloves turns it into black sludge.

  There will be nothing recognizable about this in a few hours. Nothing for the police to find but sewage. I turn off the bathroom light and return to my work area. The work table is clean, ready for its next victim. So is the well-worn wooden floorboards. Not a splatter of blood anywhere. I’m meticulous in cleaning my instruments with the hand towel I carry inside my black suitcase. They will be sterilized later when I get home. Refastening the first two buttons of my shirt, I retrieve my jacket from the back of the chair and slip it back on. With one last thorough scan of the room, I grab the cooler, the mask, and my instruments, now wrapped in their protective case. At the front entrance my hand automatically goes to the wall and the flick of the switch turns off the overhead light, blanketing the room in darkness.

  The condemned cabin is a favorite work site of mine. It is secluded, small, and nondescript, surrounded by shrubbery and trees in the woods. The windows have been boarded shut, while thick, black vinyl sheets absorb whatever light might escape. From the outside it is a decaying wood cabin that most rarely dared to approach, and I have horror movie tropes to thank for that. The closest house to the cabin is two hours away, providing me the luxury of coming and going without arousing suspicion.

  I’ve always worked at night, especially when the job calls for a removal this thorough. The night is quiet. Still. With my back to the door, I wait for a moment, simply listening. Nothing. The lullaby…the thrum…gone. There is nothing except the quiet now, and I’m temporarily satisfied by the blood I just spilled. But this imitation of peace won’t last long. It never does. There will be more bodies. My line of work assures that. Yuri has many enemies, criminals like himself who eventually needed to disappear and I was always the one called to get the job done.

  ***

  I’m not what you would call normal. The word has no meaning to me. But I’ve been pretending to act normal. It’s something I’ve been practicing since I’ve been aware of the thrum and its significance in my life. I was seven when I first heard the lullaby. Second grade, just before recess. It happened in a squall. Nothing and then all at once. I remember everything about that day. The bell rang and the other children went to play. Not me. Never me. I always stayed behind, mostly by choice, but never contested because the other children thought I was weird. I think maybe they unconsciously knew that I was lacking something fundamental. Something they all had and I didn’t, and maybe even never had at all. Whatever it was, I was alienated, excluded from their games. But I couldn’t say it bothered me. I was indifferent to it. Katia would sometimes play with me. Yuri’s youngest daughter, my adoptive sister, kept me company when she wasn’t with her own friends. But she’d been home sick that day.

  In the small classroom with its oversized, rainbow-colored letters hanging over the chalkboard and tiled number blocks littering the carpeted floor, I sat in the beanbag chair staring fixatedly at the class pet. Sweet Ms. Devon always stayed with me but she’d left for a moment. A moment to heat her lunch. A moment to speak to a fellow staff member in the teachers’ lounge. But it’d been a moment too long for me. The noise in my head had been too loud. The urge too strong. The pink-eyed little rabbit, Mr. Apples
, and the yellow pair of scissors sitting blades down in Ms. Devon’s “Best Teacher” mug had been too much of a temptation for me to resist.

  The pounding of my heart. The lullaby and the thrum. The latch had given way beneath my shaking fingers, soaked with apprehension and anticipation. The struggle. The frantic movement of something living, something warm, with the same accelerated heartbeat as mine grappling for life. Desperate for freedom even while knowing the inevitable hand of death loomed was intoxicating. The thrill, the excitement, the sweet seductive power. I swam in it. Like too much candy on Halloween. Too much ice cream in the summer. It had been a quick death for Mr. Apples. It had been crude. Amateurish. But ever so effective in quieting the discord of my mind.

  Poor, sweet Ms. Devon came to find me on the floor of the overly-bright classroom. Huddled on the floor, covered in Mr. Apples. She’d been one to smile a lot. But I stole her smile that day and replaced it with horror instead. Her pretty features contorted like a Kabuki mask.

  I wasn’t allowed to return to that elementary school again. Yuri didn’t take me to the therapy sessions he’d been strongly advised by the school principal to take me to. I was ignored for the most part. Something I was used to. Yuri only had time for his business and nothing else. So my education fell to homeschooling after the second incident happened at another school. But in between long divisions and history, boredom led me to the woods on the Khitrovas’ land. Woodland animals were captured in crude traps and dissected to curb my increasing appetite. My demand for prey grew bigger and bigger until finally, the need for something livelier, more complex, began to gnaw at me.

  Katia propositioned me with my first human prey. She’d always been a strange child. Just like me. She’d wanted her brother dead. Dmitry Khitrova was a cruel, spiteful shit who’d pestered me almost as much as he had his sister. It’d been hard for him to get a reaction out of me so he’d gone after Katia, teasing and torturing her, and she’d always fallen for his antics. Until the day she’d decided to make it stop. Late one night, we snuck into Dmitry’s bedroom. It hadn’t been thoroughly planned. There was never really a plan when I killed those little animals. The trap always did the job and I would follow my instinct after that. But I’d followed Katia’s lead like she’d known what she was doing. I didn’t know how far she’d wanted to take it, but I’d been more than ready if she’d wanted it done. I think she’d slipped Dmitry a sleeping pill at dinner, so he’d been dead to the world when we snuck into his room. We hovered over him like ghosts, watching him rhythmically sucking life in and out of his lungs. Katia had been on one side of the king-sized bed, with its ornately carved four posters, and I was on the other, a butcher knife taken from the kitchen in my clammy left hand.