Page 55 of For a Price

“You don’t know her like I know her. If you’re here ’cuz she’s gotten herself in deep shit, just know we haven’t seen her in years! We can’t help you find her!”

“Please let us go,” Debra weeps. Tears streak down her face as if expecting sympathy. “H-he’s right. We… we don’t know where she is.”

“That girl was trouble,” Richard goes on, growing more defiant. He pushes himself to his feet, wobbling slightly. “Caught her stealing money from under the mattress. Snuck out at night all the time. Failed her classes and got in trouble for kissing some boy in a stairwell. She knew what she was doing—she tried to ruin my life. Had the nerve to say I took advantage. She was a no good, rotten criminal in the making. Nothing but a little thieving slut?—”

No one is quicker than I am in a physical confrontation.

This is one of those moments as Richard goes from ranting about a thirteen-year-old girl to being shanked in the stomach by my blade.

He grunts at the impact, his jaw dropping open in shock. Blood immediately spills past his lips and soaks through the fabric of his ratty shirt.

Debra screams.

I’m unmoved by the theatrics. My dark gaze remains linked with Richard’s wide-eyed shocked one as I walk him backward ’til he’s pressed up against the wall.

“Guess what, Richie?” I ask. “That little bitch… that little thieving slut… is very special to me. And she told me what you did to her. So now I will kill you.”

The scene becomes nothing but a messy, gory slaughtering. I drive the large knife up through Richard’s insides, gutting himlike a fish ’til he’s cut completely open and his intestines are flopping out onto the kitchen floor.

My men put an end to Debra’s cries with a quick bullet to the head. The wife who had so eagerly sided with her piece of shit husband dies on the spot. Her eyes remain open, the tears still wet on her cheeks.

We leave them like that, dead and bleeding out in their home.

It’s a deserving end for two horrible people, but most importantly, my kitty cat has been avenged.

Katerina looks disturbed when I walk through the door with blood splattered on my clothes. She’s curled up on the living room sofa reading a magazine. She sits up, dripping curiosity at the sight of me.

I stride past her into the bedroom.

Only a couple seconds pass before she follows, showing up in the doorway.

“What…” she starts, then swallows. “What did you do?”

“Work.”

“Work?! You’re covered in blood!”

I give a dark laugh as I tug off my shirt and begin undoing my pants. “Devochka, you’re more innocent than I thought if a little blood scares you.”

“A little blood?! You’re drenched in it!” She pauses before taking a couple cautious steps forward. “What were you doing?”

“Trust me, devochka, you don’t want to know. You don’t have the stomach for it.”

As I walk off toward the bathroom, she seems to take my words as a challenge. The soft pad of her footsteps trails afterme until she’s stopped at the threshold and I’m at the shower, twisting on the knobs.

“The stomach for what? What did you do?”

I decide I won’t keep the truth from her. As far as this situation is concerned, she can know what I’ve done. My back still turned on her, I fuss with the shower knobs until hot water sprays out of the showerhead and I’m tugging down the last piece of clothing I’m wearing. I step out of my boxers and tell her what I’ve been up to.

“Today I went to West Garfield. I found the home of your foster parents and I murdered them.”

“Wha… you… you what?” she sputters out. She pads a couple steps closer. “My foster parents!?”

“You heard me, kitty cat,” I answer blasély. “Richard Hudson and his wife, Debra, yes? They’re dead now.”

Silence follows my revelation.

Silence that goes on for a long time. So long that I glance over my shoulder before bothering to step into the shower.

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