Page 7 of Ravaged By the Dark

“Pancakes!”

She wiped the tears off her cheeks and smiled at the sweet little boy. “Yes, we can get pancake mix.”

“Yes!” J.J. yelled and ran to her bed, jumping on and getting comfy. Normally she would insist he sleep in his own bed, but she had the feeling they were both feeling a little dejected and abandoned, so she decided to let him be.

Tomorrow was another day, and she would have to put one foot in front of the other and come up with a good plan, but that was for tomorrow. Tonight, she wanted to wallow in her new reality—a reality she wasn’t sure she was prepared to handle.

Arek stepped into the badly damaged study and stopped to watch his brother. He was bent over, sweeping up small shards from one of the antique vases. Then he looked at the larger part of the mess on the floor—the four men lined up on the floor, none of them breathing.

“Wow, and you say I piss people off?” Arek teased as he walked the rest of the way into the room, counting the bullet holes in the walls.

Trev stood to face him, and Arek smiled at his outfit. Laughter took over, and soon he had tears rolling down his cheeks. His brother was wearing silk pajamas with a plush black house coat and matching slippers while he calmly killed and then cleaned up like there weren’t four bodies chilling a few feet away.

“Bro, we are definitely on the other side of fucked up if you think you look normal right now,” he said in response to Trevor’s confused expression.

Usually, Trev was the reserved one out of the two of them, but he smiled wide, and soon they were both laughing.

“Fuck I need a drink.” Trev deposited the ruined vase in the garbage and proceeded to pour them each a glass. “Here.”

Arek took the offering, and they each took a seat to stare at the…unusual floor decorations.

“So what happened?”

“You know that job I turned down a couple of weeks ago, the one for the leader of the Imperial Mafia?”

“The white supremacist group?”

“Yeah, that’s them. I couldn’t take it since I’ve already been paid to represent the accuser.”

“That’s not your normal MO.”

“I know, but they paid a cool mil upfront as a non-refundable deposit, and I couldn’t say no to that. Anyway, Mister ‘All High and Mighty’ sent these thugs to change my mind.” Trev tapped his glass, and Arek knew he was thinking of what to do next. “The cleanup crew is on the way, but this guy—I get the feeling he’s gonna send more. We can’t have these fuckers showing up all over the place taking pot-shots at us.”

“Do you know where he lives,” Arek asked, his hands already itching.

“I do, and I think it’s time he met the Sandman.” Trev used the nickname Arek had earned overseas. They each had their own. Trev was Crosshairs, and Arek was Sandman, but together they were called Father Time, and they were the deadliest duo that had ever enlisted. More than once, they were ordered to handpick the team for the jobs no one wanted, and they had enough dirt on just about everyone who was anyone to make sure they were owed favors for the rest of their lives.

“Fuck, I love it when you talk dirty to me,” Arek teased. “Anyone you want to pin it on?”

“I have a few ideas.” Trev smiled an ‘I’m gonna rape your mother’ look that would make anyone swallow hard, but Arek understood what was dancing in Trev’s eyes. It was the darkness that lived inside both of them.

Arek tossed back the rest of the vodka and stood. “I’ll go get changed.”

Renee stood in the kitchen holding J.J. in her arms. He was only a couple of months old, and already he had stolen her heart. She glanced up at the fight happening in the other room and watched as her mother and stepfather yelled at one another. The yelling was nothing new, but the topic was what had her heart pounding hard in her chest.

“I told you, I never wanted kids!” her stepfather yelled, pointing at her holding J.J., and she swallowed the golfball-sized lump in her throat. It had taken her two years to open up and feel relaxed with Josh as her stepfather, but it wasn’t until this moment that she realized how much she’d started to see him as her dad. She barely remembered her own father. She was only six when he took off, and Cody, her older brother, had stepped right into the role. Well, he had, but Cody was spending more and more time with one of the local gangs, to the point that she barely saw him at all anymore.

“It takes two to get pregnant! I didn’t do this on my own,” her mother yelled back.

“Bullshit! You stopped taking your pill.”

“I missed a couple of days by mistake. I didn’t stop taking it. I don’t get it. You were fine with Renee. What makes J.J. different?”

Renee was rooted to the spot, unable to move or breathe as she waited to hear his response.

“Renee isn’t my daughter, and she never has been.”

Tears filled her eyes as Josh looked at her and his eyes softened. “Renee, I didn’t mean it like that.”