Inside Body Canvas, I flicked on the lights of my sleek and clean parlor with tiled flooring that reflected the soft glow of the track lighting mounted on the ceiling. The parlor was closed for the night, so I had the entire place to myself. I walked to my workstation, which hadn’t been used in a while. I didn’t take on many clients these days, and no one could use my private station. The smell of disinfectants and fresh ink tickled my nose, reminding me of the early days when I first started tattooing people.
It had been years since I inked myself. It made sense that Eva was the person to inspire new art.
I took out my sketchpad, drew the passionflower, and transferred it to carbon paper. I turned on the machine, its sound humming in the air bringing me some comfort. Sitting down on the leather chair, I cleaned my skin and applied a layer of petroleum jelly onto my right thigh. Then I placed thecarbon paper and grabbed the tattoo machine. Two hours later, I had tattooed a dark rose with thorns spearing out of it, surrounded by four passionflowers taking on the cardinal positions of north, south, east, and west on a compass. The thorny rose symbolized my dark past, which was now just an image on my skin with no attachment. The passionflowers held power over the rose—over all the art on my body.
Eva represented the passionflower, healing me, loving me in ways she’d never understand. The art tingled on my skin, making me fully aware of its presence. It was important to me that I embedded a symbol of Eva onto me—into my soul.
Life was full of smiles, roses, and thorns, all of which served their purpose while coloring our landscape with depth and meaning.
I couldn’t wait to show it to her. What would she think?
My phone rang, snapping me back to the urgent matter. I reached for it and saw Godfrey’s name on the screen.
“Did you find something?” I asked.
“Andrew’s body was just discovered in the harbor.” Godfrey gave me a location.
I quickly added ointment and a bandage over the new tats and rushed off to the location.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Kain
I stood at Godfrey’s dock, staring at Andrew’s dead body, which had been pulled from the water by one of Godfrey’s men. Blood stained Andrew’s clothes on his chest from the multiple gunshots. The bullet wound on his forehead swelled with blood smeared around it.
A strange heat crawled through my chest. Relief came first, sudden and fierce, like a chain snapping loose inside me. Then anger followed, hot and bitter. The man responsible for putting me in that hell and stealing years of my life was now reduced to this—a stiff corpse. Beneath the anger and the relief, something unexpected settled over me. Not peace, but something close to a strange quiet.
I looked over at Godfrey. Was he experiencing this strange feeling of shock, relief, and emptiness?
For a moment, the world tilted, and I concentrated on my surroundings. Soft yellow lampposts along the dock cast longreflections onto the black waters, the light flickering with each shifting wave. I listened to the sounds of boats thunking against their moorings and the smack of water lapping against the pier. The salty air and smell of seaweed filled my nose. My pulse roared in my ears as the past flooded back fast—the needle piercing my neck, the lack of breath, the first cut into the human body to retrieve an organ, the feel of a bloodied heart pulsing in my palm, the unstoppable tremors, the endless nightmares, the hopelessness, the guilt, the determination to survive, the fear, the explosion, the escape . . .
It all was too much, and I stumbled a couple of steps.
Godfrey caught me by the arm. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, trying to compose myself.
The concern for Eva had drained me, and now this shock of Andrew took whatever energy I had left. And somehow, through all of this, the past felt . . . smaller now.
I had hoped Andrew could offer clues to save Eva, but now I had to look elsewhere.
“He’s dead.” I scrubbed a hand over my face. “And took part of the past with him.”
“I imagined Andrew dead a thousand times,” Godfrey said. “But not like this.”
I stared at Andrew’s lifeless eyes and pale skin. He’d been shot in the head and several times in the chest.
“I imagined him begging me to set him free. I wanted to hear him scream.” Godfrey sighed, looking out into the black waters. “But I don’t feel the satisfaction I thought I would.”
“It’s because you have a soul. Despite what he did to us, he’s leaving his wife a widow and a daughter without a father. They’re innocent in this.”
“If they knew more, they’d be dead.”
I whipped a look at Godfrey, wondering if the murderer had gotten to them too.
“I checked already. The wife and daughter are safe at the hotel.”
“Good,” I said.
