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8
LUKA
Not many things went right the last time I saw Noelle two nights ago.
Except for one thing: when she told me that bastard’s name. Jake Miller. It’s been there all this time at the forefront of my mind, the way a new target tends to take over my every waking thought.
Since then, I’ve found his address and virtually everything there is to know about him. At the time he got arrested for domestic assault but was released when the charges were dropped. He has a sports betting problem, too, and is deep in debt as a result. Probably trying to relive his glory days.
There’s one more thing I know about him after checking last night’s camera feed: he’s been paying nighttime visits to Noelle’s house, fucking with her lights. I don’t know what he expected the outcome to be—was she supposed to collapse into his arms and beg for protection? Or is he simply a childish prick who would rather torment a woman than win her over?
Either way, with the footage taken overnight cued up on my phone, I knock at his front door six houses down from mine. He answers, wearing a football jersey, and with a beer in one hand. “Yeah?”
“You’re Jake Miller, right?”
“Sure am. Don’t you live down the street?”
“Are you home alone?” I ask, ignoring his question.
“Yeah…” He cocks his head to the side. “What’s this all about?”
Before he knows what’s happening, I shoved him inside and closed the door. He’s still sputtering, his beer sloshing everywhere when I take him by the jersey and haul him in close. “I have something on my phone I want you to see, Jake Miller.” I pull it from my back pocket and push play on the video, which clearly shows him peering through Noelle’s front window in the middle of the night before destroying the lights hanging from Santa’s sleigh.
“This you?” I ask, and the sight of his blank-faced shock is almost too gratifying.
“How… why…”
“Why? Because some asshole’s been fucking with her, that’s why.” I shove him away from me but am soon on him again, holding him in place by his throat. “Now, here’s how it’s going to be. You are never, ever to step foot on her property again. Not even if she invites you, which she will never do again once I tell her what I found. Do you understand me?”
“So fucking what? I didn’t do anything that bad.”
I’m almost glad he said that. “Is that really the defense you’re going with? Then maybe I have to convince you in some other way.”
Before he can stop me, I take the beer from his hands and smash the bottle upside his head. He falls back against the wall, stunned, immediately placing a hand where I made contact.
“What the fuck?” He barely has time to study the blood on his fingers before I drive my fist into his nose.
He bends at the waist, choking and gagging on blood, and this time, it’s my knee driving into his face, catching his cheek and his eye. “You are never, ever to go near her again!” He falls to his knees, and I kick him in the ribs again and again until he lands on his side and curls up in a defensive position.
“Please, stop!” he cries out between each deliberately placed kick to his back and stomach.
“Say it. Say you’ll leave her alone.” He doesn’t answer quickly enough, so I pick up an empty bottle from the end table. It, too, finds his head, leaving me with nothing but the jagged neck in my hand.
I roll him onto his back, cupping a hand around the back of his head and pulling him up before touching the jagged glass to his throat. “Or I will watch you bleed out here and now. Do you fucking doubt me?”
His eye is already swelling shut, his nose gushing blood, and his scalp bleeding in two places. He’s bleeding inside, too, I’m sure of it. “Please…” he whispers, his body heaving in silent sobs.
“Say it. Say you will leave her alone from now on. You are never to go anywhere near her again.” I press the glass against his flesh just hard enough to draw blood, and that’s what snaps him out of his indecision.
“Yes! Yes, I swear. Please, don’t kill me!” The smell of piss fills the air, and I look down between us to find a wet spot growing on his sweatpants.
He lets out a broken sob when I release him, falling back onto the floor with his hands laced behind his head. “Don’t make me pay you another visit, or I might decide to cut off your balls instead of slicing your throat,” I warn before peering out through the front window, then leaving the house and heading down the street.
No one saw me. Even if he dared go to the police, he has no proof—my blood-stained leather gloves are the only thing that made contact with him. I peel them off now with the intention of disposing of them soon. I doubt he would tell any of the neighbors. Even if he did, I could just as easily reveal what I know about his gambling habits. Who’s to say one of the people he owes money to wasn’t the one who turned his face into a horror show?
It’s been a long time since I’ve done anything like that. Not since my unofficial retirement, a few months after my whole world fell apart. After I lost the one single light in my life, work was the only chance of losing myself. Burying the pain.
There was one problem: I felt her on my shoulder, my Christine, and she was disappointed in me. Stupid superstition, but I couldn’t shake it. I couldn’t bring myself to harm or kill for money, with her always watching.
