Page 19 of Taming Seraphine

Don steps through the threshold and lets out a low whistle. “Messy.”

“Good thing I don’t pay you for commentary,” I say. “Are you up for the task?”

His grin widens. “Sure, but we’ll have to wait until nightfall for the disposals. Anything more than two bodies attracts attention.”

“Fine.”

I leave them to it and walk across the living room to check on Seraphine, fully expecting to find her crouched in front of Billy Blue and carving out his balls.

When I open the door, she’s bent over his corpse and removing his shoes. The bed has been stripped and two full trash bags lean against the wall, presumably filled with blood-soaked sheets. She glances up at me before pulling off his socks and adding it to the pile.

“There’s a crew in the living room cleaning up dead poker players.” I want to make a barb about her having killed them, but I’m already feeling bad about putting someone so delicate to hard labor. “Don’t attack their dicks.”

Her pretty features twist into a scowl.

A chuckle rises from my gut. This situation is beyond fucked up. If I don’t laugh, I might turn a gun on everyone and keep shooting until someone puts me down like a rabid dog.

* * *

Hours later, long after the clean-up crew has bagged up every corpse, broken the down blood-sodden armchairs into transportable pieces, and scrubbed the walls and parquet floors clean, I’m standing in the spare room over Seraphine with my arms folded over my chest.

Billy Blue’s naked and castrated corpse sits in a corner of the room, his eyes staring unseeingly into the void.

This is cruel, and what I’m doing to her makes me an asshole.

I should be a gentleman and help the girl, but this is part of her education. Anton always said not to kill more men than you can clean up after unless you have a crew on standby or you’re working behind a long-range rifle. This is a lesson best learned through blood and sweat.

After scrubbing her room clean and changing into another set of Miko’s old clothes, she sits in the passenger seat of my Jeep with her arms folded over her chest.

We’re parked by the woodland at the edge of Anton’s land, waiting for the sun to set before she completes the final stage of her clean up. Resentment rolls off her narrow shoulders in shockwaves, although she hasn’t asked why I didn’t allow the crew to take care of Billy Blue.

“It’s time.” I reach beneath the dashboard to pull the lever to open the trunk.

She shoots me a scowl.

“Find a spot to bury the body.” I flick my head toward the woodland. “Avoid the roots and stones, or you’ll be here all night.”

Her features turn sour.

“Go.”

She opens the door, hurls herself out, and flounces out into the woods. As she passes the treeline, she casts me one last plaintive glower.

My lips twitch, and I shake my head.

“What a brat,” I mutter.

I sit back and watch Seraphine traipse around, trying to find the right patch of ground. The more time I spend with her, the more I’m convinced that she really could be Capello’s daughter. Or at least the child of someone wealthy enough to spoil her. I can tell that much by her inability to operate a mop.

The burner phone I set up for the Capello job rings. I pick up, already expecting to hear from one of my two cousins not trapped behind bars.

“It’s Benito.”

“Did you get the files we sent?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he sighs. “Capello gathered a shit-ton of information. It’s a lot to sift through, and Roman is getting impatient.”

“Not surprising,” I mutter. “How is he holding up?”

---