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Fuck, what now?
I was instantly running with Doc on my heels. Through the maze of hallways. Down the steps to the entry. Alarm bells were going off in my mind. One of Vincent’s cast offs? He didn’t fuck around with women too often but they never took it well when he didn’t want to see them again.
My brother was even less interested in repeat customers than I was. The woman screaming like a banshee did not sound like one of the high class broads my brother took to bed on the rare occasion. And he never ever brought them here.
So who the fuck had the balls to come in the front fucking door and start screaming like that?
I knew the answer as I skidded to a halt, my hands out. My heart was thudding in my chest. I wasn’t scared. I was fucking horrified.
Timothy’s wife was standing there. A steady drip drip drip sound was the only noise. She had her hands full.
I knew it was her because of what she held in her hands.
In one hand was a gun. In the other hand was Timothy. What was left of him anyway.
Mrs. Parker was holding Timothy’s head.
“You did this! You did this to him!”
“Mrs. Parker, I swear to you that we did not.”
“Liar! You are all liars and murderers!”
The woman was fighting back tears. I knew she was in pain. I tried to be sympathetic.
I also really wanted to get the gun away from her.
A preternatural sense of calm came over me, just like it always did in this sort of situation. Not that I’d had any ‘wife waving decapitated head around’ type situations. This was a first.
But anytime the shit hit the fan, I got real focused, real fast.
“Doc, go down to the kitchens and out the back.”
He raised his eyebrows and I hissed at him, “Don’t make me repeat myself.” I didn’t take my eyes off Timothy’s wife as Doc took the side hallway that led to the servants quarters. Then I turned my full attention to the situation at hand.
“I know you are upset but think, Mrs. Parker. Timothy owed a lot of people money. How could we collect if he’s dead?”
We hadn’t done this. I knew exactly who had killed him though. The Capellini family was known for this kind of thing. They liked taking body parts. They usually started at the bottom and worked their way up, keeping the mark alive as long as humanly possible. It was fucking gruesome.
My brother and I didn’t like them, but we couldn’t say shit.
Our father had forged an uneasy alliance with the five families decades ago. So we stayed out of their business, and they stayed out of ours. The shit they pulled was twisted though. Extreme torture. Real dramatic bullshit. Even my father had said the Capellini family gave him the creeps.
I had a feeling Timothy had been through a hell of a lot before they finally took off his head. I actually felt bad for the sack of shit. But now I was dealing with his wife, who looked like she’d snapped a gasket.
I understood that sometimes people had to get hurt or killed in our line of business. I’d grown up in this world and seen shit that would turn your hair white. Nothing surprised me anymore. I wasn’t squeamish about causing pain for a purpose. What I didn’t understand was the excessive cruelty that some families showed. The Capellini’s in particular took a hard line to people skipping town owing them cash. Leaving the remains for the wife was not a classy move though.
And now she was in my house, waving a decapitated head around. I wondered idly if she’d had in it in a bag or if she’d just been carrying the damn thing around in the open. Judging from the amount of blood on her clothes, I was pretty sure she’d been cradling the head like a baby.
“Let me help you.”
“Oh, sure, like Micheal helped me? He said everything would be fine!” She lifted the head up so I was staring Timmy in the eyes. The expression on his face looked more bemused than tortured. I hoped for his sake that it had been fast. Maybe the Capellini’s had been in a hurry. “Everything is NOT FINE!”
That’s when all hell broke loose. Tiny went for the gun. I dropped low as a shot rang out. And the head went flying.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw a hole in the plaster not far from where I’d been standing. Exactly where Doc had been standing, in fact. Thank fucking God I’d sent the biker to the basement. He did not need to get shot over this shit. With any luck he was halfway back up the coast by now.
I stared at the lady, now empty handed. Tiny had her gun. And the head was somewhere behind me.
