Page 25 of As Angels Sin

I try to kiss her, but she turns her head, and my lips meet her cheek.

Oof, that has to sting.

“I need to go.” My neck tenses so hard, my head starts to rattle.

“Wait.” Fia presses her flat palms into my chest, desperately trying to keep me in place. “What? Why? We’re just getting to the—”

“I have to get out of here.” I clench my jaw, and ball my fists, while a sharp sting reverberates in my head. I can’t tell whether it's fury or a blood clot hitting something vital...

Yes. It’s time to go. Otherwise, I’ll make a much more regrettable decision than anattemptedhit on Fiametta’s life.

Now we’re talking. Do it. Grab your knife. Slice her pretty throat.

No, not her. Never her. But this house is full of people deserving of my vengeance, and many more who aren’t.

***

One Week Later

“You’re overthinking things, Crue. If either of the dons wanted you dead, do you think you’d still be here?” Mark asks, stopping at one of the fourteen different booths that are scattered across the dilapidated, abandoned warehouse.

“I get the logic, only I don’t understand it.” I say, keeping my eyes focused ahead.

The fourteen sellers at this odd market sale sit among the various trinkets and toys of their trade that are scattered across their tables. They and their lackeys are all gross human beings. Out of all of the goons that work for the sellers, only one, a set of twins, seem to be of normal proportions, with their bits in the right places and their faces easy on the eye.

Well, the male twin anyway. His sister has suffered some kind of mangling injury to her left arm, from the mid forearm to just below her shoulder. Whoever did it wasn’t much of a professional, and the scarring and skin regrowth has left the flesh there mottled, spotty and loose.

I avoid eye contact with them. With all of them. It’s out of principle, mostly, but also because they’re all fucking disgusting.

“And you don’t need to. Matteo said everything’s okay, Lorenzo gave you easy access to his daughter’s peach...” Mark lifts a hand grenade off the table, looks at the twin sister’s arm, and puts it back down again. We both know a grenade wasn’t the cause of her disfigurement. A grenade’s impact that close to her body would’ve left her dead. But Mark’s in a tormenting mood, and these are easy victims.

Why are you complaining?” he asks.

Because I haven’t killed anything in months. Not even a God damned fly.

Instead of my shadow’s answer, I just shrug my shoulders as we move from one table to the next.

“Man, I love this place,” Mark says, barging through a crowd of three and on to the next booth. The owner is a bald man, who must direct his profits directly into enormous helpings of whatever the hell he can shove down his throat. He can barely lift his neck with all the fat dangling from it. “It’s like P.T. Barnum’s house of freaks.”

This quarterly event is organized by some mysterious benefactor, whom no one has yet had the fortune to meet. It’slike a market fair in its set up, the same kind as old folks frequent, to sell the crap they’ve been hoarding since the sixties. Only this black market is a hot bed of people like me. It’s for weapons, drugs, and on rare occasion, contracts with some poor fool’s name on. My very first hit came from the Black Market, and if Mark doesn’t hold his tongue, our names may very well be next on the list.

“You’re not wrong,” I say quietly. “But these freaks aren’t safely locked up in cages. They’re sitting behind tables, stacked with guns, bombs, and every deadly weapon under the sun. You might want to shut the fuck up before you get us both killed.”

“Christ, you’re no fun when you’re moody. Y’know that?” Mark shakes his head, disappointed, and moves over to the next table.

“Why do we even come here anymore?” I look around and see only young blood. New mercs and wannabe assassins, who are trying to carve their names into our history. Soon, they’ll learn that this isn’t the way to do it. Infamy is a lot harder to run from than one might think.

“I like to laugh at the little one doing his monkey dance,” Mark gestures with his neck toward a midget. “Always gets a chuckle out of me.” But he isn’t chuckling now.

“Answer honestly,” I put on my serious voice because I’ve had enough games for one lifetime. The old fucks, running their mafia families, can get away with it, but Mark has to know when it’s time to be serious.

“Because you’re gloomy. Glum. Whichever way.” He stops dead before we reach the last table. “You try not to show it, and you hide it well to them.” He waves a hand at nothing, but I know he means Matteo and Lorenzo. “But I know you far too well to fall for it. I’m trying to cheer you up.”

If he really knew the true me, Mark would know it doesn’t work like this. I don’t get a kick out of other people’s misfortune. Hell, I’m one of these freaks, only my deformity is on the inside.

Right now, it’s pressing on my brain, and it’s applying so much pressure I’m ready to collapse.

It needs a kill.