57. Brian

FIFTY-SEVEN

brian

Fuck me. Could my life get any worse right now? I keep Mina behind me. I count twelve men. They’ve seen the damage Mina and I have done. A few of them seem particularly pissed off about the girl. Yeah, I get it, I fucked up. Moving on.

We’d have no chance at all right now if it weren’t for the fact that about half of them are from each criminal organization, and they really want to kill each other more than they seem to want to kill us.

The men assess me and Mina and then assess each other while Mina and I assess them. It’s a lot of assessing.

I see the fight in them. I see the unspoken question. Do they kill us first or do they just start the war they wanted to begin with now that their leaders can’t hold them back? I’m not sure what the right move is. If we start shooting, do they just focus all their efforts on us until we’re no longer the bigger threat?

I’m sure this isn’t all the members of these two groups. But it’s clear now in hindsight that someone suspected something was up and they knew Cole wasn’t actually going out of town. I wonder if some of them knew about the affair all along and wanted to catch them in the act. Maybe their presence here was meant to be a sting operation to confront Cole and Clarissa on their betrayal.

These guys may not have even known about the contracts on their bosses’ heads. Why bother putting out a hit when they could just depose their leaders themselves? Why bring in tourists?

That’s a lot of money for something they were perfectly capable of doing on their own. Suddenly I’m not even sure if we’re getting paid for this shit, and that pisses me off. I could have just done irreparable harm to my relationship with Mina, and if there’s no payday on top of that, what exactly is the point?

I wonder where they waited outside and how many listening devices they had planted to know when to come in here. Did they see me shoot the Uber driver? Did they hear the fight between me and Mina? The very idea that these pieces of shit would eavesdrop on such a private moment enrages me.

But maybe the originators of the contracts aren’t even here at all tonight. Maybe the money is already being wired by people who have no idea how this all went sideways.

Maybe there are different factions within the ranks with different goals and ideas on how things should be run around here. It isn’t as though putting a hit out on one of your leaders wouldn’t be frowned upon in this kind of life. Can one ascend the throne if they aren’t next in the line of succession?

Isn’t such a line meant to stop hostile takeovers like this to begin with?

I wonder if our clients are members of either of these two groups at all. Maybe it’s just someone wanting to take advantage of chaos to take over a territory. Maybe these guys were tipped off and this entire thing was a set-up from the start.

“Well, this is interesting,” one of the men finally says, his gaze trained on me. I’m not exactly sure why he felt the need to give me the space for three minutes worth of inner monologue before saying something so uninspiring, but whatever.

“How so?” I ask.

He just looks at me like a big dumb jock which he probably was in high school. I think he didn’t expect to have to explain why walking in here to find me and Mina with their leaders, a teenage girl, and a full string quartet dead is so damn interesting. But, like a math teacher, I like when people show their work.

“Shut the fuck up,” He says.

I just chuckle. Hopefully they fight as bad as they verbally spar. If so, we might actually get out of this alive. I hear a metal click, and I realize Mina just loaded another magazine into her gun. She’s ready.

And I’m always ready.

I’m relieved that she isn’t too fucked up over me shooting the girl to defend herself. I may have lost her, but I can’t lose her.

“I say we take these two assholes out first, then we fight,” the large dumbass says.

“They betrayed all of you,” I say. “Putting their own passions above their people. We did you a favor, and you know it. I think such a kindness deserves a free pass out that door, don’t you?”

There is always the slimmest of chances that we could just walk right out of here and let these meatheads slaughter each other.

A few of the men look antsy. They’ve been waiting for orders, but they’re eyeballing each other pretty intently, and self-control seems to be running out. Finally a wiry guy with glasses and a neck tattoo rushes one of the men on the other side, and then they all join the fight.

Dumbass still has his sights set on us and barrels toward me with purpose. I unload the rest of my ammunition into his chest, and he falls. Mina has moved out from behind me, and is taking out another gang member who is headed her way with a knife. I can’t get to my other magazines because I didn’t expect a melee, so instead I holster my weapon and grab a solid silver tray. I throw it like a frisbee at one of them, and the sharp razor edge slices his throat. The metal clatters onto the hard ground, causing another guy to step on it and slide comically across the floor. I punch that one in the throat and grab Mina’s hand.

We run from the fight and hide under the massive entryway stairs. It’s so enormous we barely have to crouch. Since they didn’t let us just walk out, we sure as fuck aren’t leaving them alive to talk about us later. I take this opportunity to reload magazines. I don’t know why I chose such fucking difficult locations on my body for ammunition holsters. I have to contort myself like a circus clown to get them.

The fight rages on with grunts and kicks and chairs smashing, unidentifiable things clattering. Every now and then I hear the sickening squish of a knife slicing through skin. Don’t these guys fight with guns? Maybe they need more intimate violence than a gun allows for.

I glance over to Mina. She’s started crying again. Fuck.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“For what?” She sounds so defeated, and I hate that I’ve put this sound in her voice. I promised myself that I would never be the one to break her or hurt her.

I sigh. “Mina, you know I can’t feel the things you want me to feel. I told you from the beginning what I am.”

“You didn’t have to kill her,” she whispers. “There were other options. You could have threatened her. She might not have talked.”

“But she still lost her dad. We killed him. You killed him. We’re not just taking out bad people who deserve it. We’re taking out all their family’s futures along with it. You’ve always known that.” I may be a monster, but at least I understand what we’re really doing here. Even if my grasp of empathy is only an intellectual exercise and can never be more.

She doesn’t reply because she knows I’m right. Maybe I shouldn’t have shot the girl. Maybe there was another way. Not as convenient of a way, but is blowing up my relationship with Mina really worth the convenience of a clean kill and no witnesses?

I can’t decide.

I don’t say anything else, I just grab her hand and squeeze. After a long moment, she squeezes back. And I don’t know what the fuck that means, but I think maybe she’ll be able to forgive me eventually. But I’m not sure she’ll ever be able to see me the same way again after tonight, and I know this choice will haunt me.

The fighting has slowed, and there seem to be only a few left. I catch her gaze, a question in mine, and she just nods. I nod back, and then we leave our hiding spot to take out the last few guys together.

There’s five left. I guess they really are just all going to fight to the death.

Never mind. Four guys. One of them just got stabbed in the kidney.

All four of them turn on us, and... fuck, maybe we should have just stayed hidden until it was over. It appears the four left are all on the same side. Mina and I both draw our guns at the same time. We each take one of the guys down, and then Mina’s gun gets kicked out of her hand by one of the remaining two. I aim my gun at him, but get tackled from behind by the other guy.

I’m fighting to try to get enough space between me and this piece of shit to put a bullet in him. At the same time I’m trying to keep an eye on her. My gun gets knocked from my hand and slides across the floor. I manage to kick my guy off me and pull the second gun from its holster. I turn and fire on the guy trying to choke the life out of Mina.

He lets go and drops dead to the ground. Before I can turn the gun on the last man standing, he kicks it out of my hand. Goddammit, what is with it with these guys? Enough with the fucking martial arts.

This meathead has me pinned, his big hands wrapped around my throat, and I can’t reach my gun to get him off me. From the corner of my eye I see a glint of shiny metal. Mina pulls him back by the hair and slices the blade of the engraved knife I gave her across his throat. He releases his grip to clutch at his own throat as he chokes and bleeds out all over me.

She shoves him to the side and wipes her blade clean on his shirt before putting it back in its sheath.

“I really love that knife.” She holds out a hand to help me up.

I really love that knife, too.

Together we survey the carnage. This is… a lot.

I find the wine cellar and bring up several bottles. I don’t have to explain to Mina; we are absolutely mentally in sync right now. We’re muddying the crime scene, making it just a little bit harder for the good folk at the local police department to do their jobs. Together we pour the wine over the bodies. I strip the linen off the table, dip it in the fire, then toss it to the center of the room.

Within moments, flames shoot up to the ceiling. I grab Mina’s hand and we walk out.

“Do you think Gremlin will take back the knives and throwing stars we didn’t use?” she says on our way to the car.

“It can’t hurt to ask.” But not tonight. It’s been a long day already.