Chance Assassin: A Story of Love, Luck, and Murder (39 page)

“Quit your griping.  That faggot over there got stabbed worse than you and he walked a mile in a blizzard,” Charlie said.

It seemed weird that Charlie was bragging about
me
, who apparently needed to be buried on hallowed ground, until I realized he wasn’t bragging.  He was manipulating.

“Where the fuck did he get stabbed?”

“So, you’re Frank’s brother, huh?” I asked.  I could manipulate too.

He grabbed my upper arm, his fingers overlapping around my pathetic bicep, and pulled me upright.
 
My head swung like a rag doll, rolling back front and center, my chin resting on my chest.  It should’ve weighed less than usual from all the blood seeping down my face, but I could barely lift it.

There was enough of a resemblance for me to believe he was Frank’s brother.  Henry was tall and dark, but where Frank was handsome, Henry looked fucking psychotic.  His eyes were the deep, cold, nearly black color of the deadly water in Casey’s painting.  It scared me to look at him.  There was nothing but evil in his expression, his mouth twisted cruelly, and scars on his face that were undoubtedly from fighting.  He was several inches taller than Frank, and a hell of a lot sturdier looking, with shoulders wide enough to make his head look too small.

Henry gave a new meaning to the word creepy.  Not even Charlie could accomplish the sense of wrong I got off him.

“He killed your sister,” I said, knowing that this was where it had started.  Frank had been right all along.

“Did you?” Charlie laughed, looking toward him.  “Well, she had it coming.”

“Did
Frank
have it coming?” I asked, imagining with horror what would’ve happened if Charlie had asked him to go to the funeral for emotional support.

“He isn’t going to hurt Frank,” Charlie said confidently.

“Yes I am,” Henry said.  “I’m going to destroy him.”

Charlie turned to him, uncertainty flashing on his face.

“What did you do?” I asked shakily.

“Frankie’s your brother,” Charlie said, beginning what he obviously assumed would be a convincing speech of brotherly love.

Henry rolled his eyes, then punched him just as hard as he’d hit me, sending him to the floor in a heap.  I’d waited a long time to see Charlie get his lights punched out, but I couldn’t enjoy it.  My face throbbed with sympathy pain.

“Do you know about this?” he asked, grabbing my hair and forcing me to look at a well-handled color photocopy of a newspaper article, a picture of Frank dead center, younger than I was, his face fuller with youth, the same sad, suspicious eyes.  The headline read
Billionaire Leaves All to Illegitimate Son
.  “I’m his son!” he said, yanking my head back, shoving the paper in my face.

Pain shot through my neck, making me squeak like an effeminate mouse.  I clenched my jaw, unable to right my head when he released my hair.  “Someone has daddy issues,” I muttered.  He smacked me in the back of the head.  At least it wasn’t the face.  “Tell me something,
junior.
  Why didn’t he leave it to
you
?”

He gritted his teeth, breathing ferociously through his nose like a bull.  And me without my red cape and sequined
pantalones
.  “Frank didn’t even want it, the ungrateful queer!  He didn’t want
him
!”

Jesus, this guy needed a shrink.  Didn’t they have psychiatry in England?  “That must have been very frustrating for you.”

He looked at me, his eyes full of pent up emotion, wide so I could see every inch of bloodshot craziness. “You’re mocking me,” he said, and he pulled out a knife.

“No,” I said hurriedly, the blade bringing an onslaught of terror.  “No, I meant it.  I had a brother.  My parents gave him everything.”

“They didn’t love you?” he asked, soothed by my words, subdued by my empathy.

“Not as much as him,” I said, keeping my eyes on his weapon.  The blade was nearly the length of his hand, with a serrated edge that could’ve sawed through bone.

“Does this scare you, darling?  Where’d you get stabbed?”

“Already stabbed once, no point in being stabbed again,” I said, trying to scoot back further in the chair as he lifted my shirt with the tip of the blade, sucking in my stomach the best I could.  The muscles were tight and sore from being kicked, like the gnawing pain of hunger from days without food.

“There it is,” he said, touching the knife to my scar.  “Did that hurt?”

“Yes,” I whimpered.  To think that knife play used to turn me on.  So did being tied up, my body at the mercy of my captor, the threat of danger in my bound limbs but never my mind.

“Why didn’t they love you?” he asked, loosening his grip on the knife and letting my shirt fall back down.

“I don’t know,” I sighed, my breathing slowing from the point of hyperventilation.  “Why didn’t he love you?”

“He didn’t know about me.”

“That must be Frank’s fault, too,” I mumbled, then gasped and bit my tongue.  God damn my lack of inner monologue!  I’d just committed suicide.

He tilted the knife toward me with a shit-eating grin on his face.

“I didn’t mean it,” I said pleadingly.  There was no acting tough now.  All my training amounted to nothing when I was tied to a chair.  I couldn’t even flee.  Begging for my life was my last resort.  “I didn’t mean it.”

“You like getting buggered, do you?  Does it feel good?  You like penetration?”

“NO!” I screamed, the fear overwhelming me.  I prayed that I’d pass out before he hurt me.  I prayed that Frank would come.

He laughed.  “What’s the matter?  You don’t think I’m handsome?”

“No,” I said, starting to cry, trembling against my restraints.

His hands were calloused and rough as he touched my face, caressing my cheek.  I didn’t want him touching me.  Frank’s hands were soft.  They were warm.  They weren’t about to stab me.

He slipped the knife in slowly, a fraction of an unbearable inch at a time, relishing in reopening my scar as I screamed in pain, the rush of adrenaline abandoning me.  Then it started to go numb, my eyelids fluttering as I was filled with warmth.  Shock.  He knocked the knife downward, away from the original wound.  A fresh gasp of pain infiltrated the calm like a gunshot in the night.

I moaned, my head falling against his shoulder, weak from trauma.  He held my head almost affectionately, then plunged it in deeper, the blade making a plinking sound as it popped through the back of my shirt, hitting the metal of the chair behind me.

It hadn’t hurt this much before.  I never would’ve been able to walk to safety if it had.  The only thing keeping me from slumping to the ground was the rope around my wrists.

Charlie mumbled something from the floor, drawing Henry’s attention away from me.  I would’ve thanked him if this wasn’t all his fault.

Henry helped him up like he was a child who’d tripped and skinned his knee.  “Call Frank,” he said, and gave Charlie a shove away from him.  “Tell him I want to meet him.  If he comes in armed, I’m killing you and the pretty boy.”

Charlie started dialing with his head down.  There was blood racing down the side of his face.  He looked defeated.  And scared.  “Frankie.  Frankie, listen.  No, listen.  I made a mistake, kiddo.”

I closed my eyes.  I could imagine Frank’s voice, hysterical and angry.  Charlie didn’t explain much, just where we were, that I was here, that I was dying.  He told him to leave his gun at home.  Charlie was crying.  Even with all the things he’d done to him, he really did have love for Frank.

Henry took the phone from him, droning a badly accented
bonjour
into the speaker.  Then he approached me again.  I struggled to raise my head, defiantly looking him right in the eyes.

“Say ‘ello, sweetheart,” he said, pressing the phone against my ear.

Frank didn’t sound scared.  He sounded pissed.  “Vincent?”

I whimpered his name, the tears starting to flow.  I could feel it, the bad feeling Frank always spoke of, the sense of danger loud and clear, distinct in the way my premonition of dying young had never been.  I was going to die.  Eleven days after my eighteenth birthday.  And even if Frank was able to end his brother’s life before he ended Frank’s, he still would’ve won.  Henry still would’ve killed him, because Frank couldn’t live without me any more than I could live without him.  We were both about to die.

“It’s okay, baby,” he said reassuringly.  “Do you remember what I said before?  About you causing me trouble for a very long time?  Don’t be scared.  I will get you out of there.  We’re going to get married.  We’ll have cake.  We’ll get a big TV.  The flat kind.”

“Okay,” I sobbed.

“I’m going to hang up the phone, but I want you to keep talking.  Tell me a story, V.  Talk like you’re nervous.”

I sniffled, straightening up with a renewed feeling of strength.  He was coming.  He was already close, on his way before he got the phone call.  Frank wouldn’t have been sitting around, twiddling his thumbs and waiting for Charlie to call him.  He would’ve been searching for me.  And he knew all the best places.

“Your brother doesn’t look like you, Frank,” I said, fighting back tears when I heard the call disconnect.  “He must look like your father.  I’ve always looked like my mom.  My brother looked like my dad.  Henry must look like your dad too.  Maybe it’s something to do with birth order.  Only my parents loved him more than he deserved.  I’m sure if your dad knew about Henry he’d love him more than you.  He probably wouldn’t love you at all, if he knew what you do.  Vocationally I mean.  And for fun, really.  Fathers don’t usually approve of that sort of thing.  Charlie certainly doesn—”

Henry rolled his eyes and tossed the phone in Charlie’s direction.  Where Charlie
should
have been.  “You talk too fucking much.  I told you to say ‘ello.”

“I was getting to that,” I said, keeping my eyes on him.  Where was Charlie?

“It’s too late,” he said, and pulled out a gun. 
My
gun.  Son of a bitch.  He’d taken the silencer off.

He held my gun to my head, forcing it so hard against my temple I had to tilt my neck into an L like Charlie’s sister.  It hurt.  It really fucking hurt.  And then I remembered a fact that Henry didn’t know.  A fact that
could
hurt him.  Frank had trust issues.  He held a grudge.  So when someone constantly pointed their gun at him, and had even once upon a time shot him, that someone’s first bullet was never going to be one.

“He’s gonna kill you,” I said.  “He’s gonna come in here and shoot you in the face and then he’s gonna track down everyone you ever cared about and—” I screamed as he fired, the shot so loud I couldn’t hear myself start to laugh hysterically at the why-didn’t-he-die-look on his face.  “He doesn’t give me live rounds.  I’m just a kid!”

Proving that Frank not only got all the looks in the family, but the brains as well, Henry tossed the gun away.

This should have been cause for celebration.

It wasn’t.

He yanked the knife from my side.  It hurt even more coming out, and as the staunched blood began to flow freely, I knew I wouldn’t last long enough for Frank to find me.  I started crying again, wanting to go back to bed, back to Frank, back to Chicago where the knife was so much smaller.  And I was really, really scared, and I didn’t want to be stabbed again, so I forgot the cardinal rule: That until I learned to trust my instincts and take care of myself, I had to have faith that Frank would protect me.

I pressed my toes against the cement floor as hard as I could, forcing my body away from Henry, away from the knife, and away from Frank, who just entered the room and started shooting.  It was silenced.

I woke to the crisp sound of a page being turned.  It wasn’t Frank.  I knew what he sounded like when he read.

I opened my eyes, squinting against the brightness, a steady ringing…no…
beeping
filling my right ear.  I couldn’t hear anything from the left one.

There was a strange looking young man sitting at the foot of my bed, a sketchbook in hand.  He had wavy dark brown hair down to the collar of his yellow t-shirt, tucked messily behind one ear, his head slightly tilted.  His eyebrows were knit together in concentration, sharply arched in a way that might’ve looked sinister on someone with a less goofy face.  He had a mouth that was far too wide, overshadowing his other features.  He was frowning.  It looked wrong.  Casey.  Frank’s brother.  Frank’s
other
brother.

I remembered the big reveal, and reaching for my gun.  I remembered missing breakfast.  My phone wouldn’t stop ringing.  Why couldn’t I hear on that side?

Casey raised his eyes, looking right at me for a couple of seconds before turning back to the sketchbook on his lap without registering that I was looking at him too.  Then he did a double take and leapt to his feet, knocking his drawing to the floor and screaming, “He’s awake!” while jumping up and down.

I attempted to tell him to please shut the fuck up or at least turn down the volume, but I couldn’t talk.  Oh, God, I’d lost the ability to speak.  What cruel injustice!

The bed shifted beside me, and there was an increase of pressure on my hand.  Frank.  “Vincent?  V?  Angel?”

Angel.  I loved when he called me that.  I squeezed his hand back as he moved into my line of sight.  He looked awful.  I was almost glad I couldn’t focus on his face.  It looked like it had been weeks since he’d eaten or slept, or even showered.  But his eyes were so beautiful; his usually stunning irises were the most vibrant green, made even brighter in contrast to the swollen redness from crying.  As pretty as they were, I never wanted to see him like that again.

“That motherfucker,” I grumbled, suddenly filled with fury.  “He shot me in the fucking head!”  Then I thought of how Frank had looked nearly this bad when he’d almost lost Bella, and I started to cry, bawling like a baby at the thought of losing him even after I’d survived.

“Shh,” Frank said, holding my face, tears in his eyes as he tried to calm me down.  “You’re okay.”

I closed my eyes.  I was dizzy.  My head hurt.  Frank called my name, his voice panic stricken and far away.  I opened my eyes again.  There was a man in a white coat standing above me, shining a flashlight in my face and asking me questions.  He seemed satisfied with whatever response I wasn’t sure I gave him, and he stepped back, speaking briefly to a woman with puffy blonde hair in the corner before efficiently walking out.