Chapter Two

Keres stared off into space with memories she hated to relive. Being held down, unable to move or escape to save herself. The brutality. The pain. God, the pain . She wanted to shut it all off and bathe in a pool of forgetfulness. However, it was therapy day, so there wasn’t much she could do except tumble into her ever-present nightmare. To walk down memory lane yet again and relive the worst day of her life. Trauma never stopped, and her rapist continued his assault over and over on her psyche.

“Keres?”

She blinked and refocused her gaze on the video. Modern day therapy available through a cell phone chat. “Oh. Sorry. Woolgathering.”

“How was your week?” Her therapist, Kori, had a soft voice that oozed with understanding. Many times, Keres had lashed out, needing to shake the woman’s reserved nature, without luck. Guess that’s why she came highly recommended. So far, she had taken Keres’s moodiness in stride.

“Have you worked on your healthy coping mechanisms?”

“Healthy?” Keres snorted. “No booze. No drugs. No promiscuous sex. You’re no fun, you know that?”

“So, you’re thinking about having sex?”

Just like that, her bravado collapsed. “No,” she muttered. “I still hate penises.”

Kori didn’t even blink. “Do you still think every man is guilty by association?”

“Aren’t they?”

Kori cocked her head. “What about Darby?”

Keres frowned. “He doesn’t count.”

“Why not? He has a penis.”

“Yeah, and he’s gay.”

“So gay men are excluded?”

She may like Kori, and felt safe within her presence, but everything she said was analyzed to death. Although, to be fair, that’s what therapists do. “Okay, gay men are excluded. Is that what you want to hear?”

“Keres, I’m only here to help you cope with what you went through.”

She sighed and ran a hand over her face. “I know,” she said, contrite. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize to me. You need to forgive yourself. None of this was your fault just because you survived.”

Words were easy to say, yet harder to believe. Maybe once she got her revenge the nightmares would stop, because time wasn’t healing all her wounds. The invisible ones were still embedded in her soul.

****

After her video chat, she came down to the gym to find Darby teaching a class. When he saw her, he gave a small jerk of his head in acknowledgement. The big ex-Marine Raider had opened his boot camp workout gym when he retired, and when he had found her half dead in that alley, he’d brought her here to rebuild her sanity. If it hadn’t been for him pushing her to survive, she wasn’t sure she’d be there today.

She headed into the office and plopped down in Darby’s chair and kicked her feet up on the desk. The framed photo of Darby and his husband, smiling with happiness in their gazes, always saddened her. Two more victims of the Deathmen. Keres leaned her head back and stared up at the ceiling, finally allowing herself to think about the previous night. She’d taken great joy in ending two of the men who had raped and tortured her and Abigail, and if that damned her soul, so be it. Tonight offered one more opportunity to exorcise the demons haunting every moment of her life and she was determined to end another monster.

About twenty minutes later, Darby opened the door. When he saw her feet on his desk, he raised an eyebrow. She smiled cheekily and lowered them to the floor.

“How was therapy?” he asked, closing the door behind him.

She shrugged. “We talked about healthy coping mechanisms.”

“Did she have any suggestions?”

“Surprisingly, she didn’t mention slicing off dicks and stuffing them in mouths.”

“Go figure,” he said. “Get out of my chair, brat.”

She rose and moved to the small sofa pushed against one wall.

“Okay,” he said once he sat down. “We need to talk about tonight. Peterson is going to be tough. He doesn’t leave that damn nightclub alone. Maybe I should just snipe him.”

“No,” she said, immediately shaking her head. “A quick death is too good for him. He needs to suffer, like I suffered. Like Abigail suffered.”

“He’s dangerous.”

“Everyone is dangerous,” she retorted. “ I’m dangerous. Maybe even more than the Deathmen because I have nothing to lose.”

“You know what happens if he catches you again.”

“Yes,” she said solemnly. “But I need this, Darby. I need to see him suffer before I send his soul to hell.”

“Even if it means you could be hurt again?”

“I’m not that helpless girl anymore,” she reminded him. “Even if he happened to get the upper hand, he won’t keep me down for long. You’ve taught me well.”

He sighed. “I know. It would still break my heart.”

She smiled, and the warmth from his words thawed a bit of the ice that encapsulated her emotions. Darby looked at the photo on his desk. Sadness twisted into bitterness, causing the large, raised scar that bisected his cheek to turn a mottled red. It ran from just under his eye, through his lips to his chin. A souvenir from his own entanglement with the Deathmen. He had lost his husband that night, so when he had found her lying in that alley bleeding to death, he made a vow to help and protect her.

Then they had come up with a plan to eliminate them all. Starting with the three that had raped and stabbed her. Ending with the death of their leader, a man only known by the name, Davorin.

“They can’t hurt me,” she said softly. “I’m already dead.”

“Don’t say that.”

Keres decided to change the subject. “We need to come up with a game plan to isolate him. I don’t think hinting at a quick fuck behind the club is going to cut it.”

“No,” Darby agreed. “They’re on defense because of Seker and Compton.”

“So, we have to catch him in the club.”

He raised an eyebrow. “With a hundred or so witnesses?”

She thought for a moment. “What if he goes to the bathroom and we catch him in there?”

Darby rubbed his chin. “That’s possible. We can even give him something to immobilize him. He would see and feel but couldn’t fucking move.”

“Oh, that’s good. I like that idea.” She tilted her head, fantasizing about what she could do to him while he was paralyzed. “What drug can do that?”

“There’s a drug called tetrodotoxin,” he replied. “It a paralytic produced by bacteria found in certain fish speciesand is about a thousand times more toxic to humans than cyanide. Shuts everything down, including the lungs. It’s usually fatal.”

“Then I’ll have to work quickly. Can you obtain it?”

“Silly question.” He winked at her. “Now, the best way to get it into his system would be ingesting, but winging it isn’t going to work. Compton and Seker were easy. They listened with their dicks instead of reasoning. Peterson is going to be cautious.”

“Then we’ll have to be clever.” She thought for a moment before the answer came to her. “Why don’t we go with something very clichéd? A drunk girl crashing him and I put it in his drink. How can he resist that?”

He thought for a moment, his eyes downcast. It looked like he mentally struggled with something. Then he looked at her, and she saw resolution. Acceptance. “And I have just the means to accomplish this. Wait here.”

He was gone for a few minutes and when he came back, he carried a small metal box, which he placed on the coffee table. When he opened it, she saw four rings, each with a different colored gem in the center of the chunky gold.

“Rings?” she asked. “How’s that going to help?”

“These rings are different.” He picked one up with an orange stone. “This one, for instance, has tetrodotoxin in it.”

“In it?”

He touched the stone, and a small compartment slid out, holding a white powder. Keres’s eyes widened.

“I thought those types of rings only existed in movies,” she said, smiling. “How did you open it?”

“Here,” he replied, pointing to a very small clasp on the side. “You just press it but be careful. Do not touch the toxin.”

“This is awesome.” Her mind raced with possibilities and looked at the other rings. “What’s in the rest?”

He pointed to each stone. “Red has sarin. Blue has GHB. Green has anthrax.” He closed the compartment and held out the ring to her. Keres took it and slipped it on her index finger.

“I’m equal parts awed and horrified you have these. Where’d you get them?”

“Let’s just say somewhere in Russia.”

Which meant he wasn’t going to tell her, and she shouldn’t ask.

“Okay,” she said, creating a fist. “We have a plan.”