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I honestly thought the nigga was bluffing but he pierced her skin with the scalpel, drawing a deep, thick bead of crimson.
“Fuck! Okay! Okay!” she squeaked frantically. Bakari still dragged the line down toward her navel while more blood followed the incision.
He was in his zone.
“I know where she is!” Takia said in a sudden rush, like she knew what information we wanted. That was the only thing that stopped Bakari’s hand from moving deeper into her gut.
“You do?” I asked with a half-smile “Great. You’re going to tell us where she is a little later. I want to know how many people she has at her hideout. How many guns are going to be on me when I get there?
“Just one other person. I would be the other.” Her words came out ragged and airy.
“Oh wow, so you’re her right-hand hitter, huh?” I nodded slowly, understanding coming over me.
“Yeah,” she answered, breathing in shallow huffs.
“Were you the one she sent to kill me at Marcus Jackson’s?” I heard the tightness in Bakari’s voice and knew he was thinking about Rob.
Takia didn’t answer.
Bad choice on her part.
Bakari sniffed and nodded his head. He dipped the scalpel into the previous cut and Takia let out a scream that would have been at home on Animal Planet. He sliced through her navel jerking to the left when she tried to pull away from the pain.
“Damn. You gotta stay still or else you’re going to get even more fucked up.” There wasn’t an ounce of tenderness in Bakari’s voice. It probably shouldn’t have, but it turned me on even more seeing him be cold and indifferent.
Takia was bawling her fucking eyes out on that table. Snot ran over her wobbly lips as she tried to say a prayer of all things. A fucking prayer.
“So, were you sent to kill me at Marcus Jackson’s?” he asked again.
“Me…and another hitter.” She coughed and then howled with agony as her stomach muscles naturally contracted. Blood seeped from the clean line that had been sliced into her skin.
“So you stood in my motherfucking face when I came to work and gave your fake ass condolences knowing you were the one who killed Rob?”
My chest hurt for him. Absolutely ached and split in two.
I’d never been emotional at a kill before and I’d watched dozens between Mother, Father, and my siblings. There was something small and vulnerable in Bakari’s voice that bared his hurt so distinctly that it crushed me. There was nothing I could do to protect him from that kind of pain. It was the sort that latched on to your soul and bared down with jagged teeth.
His head hung for a moment, then he pulled all of his shattered pieces back together, quietly slipping his murderous mask back in place. It was something I’d seen every killer I knew do at some point. There had to come a moment when you made peace with what you were going to do. When you put your emotions deep in the back of your psyche and ended someone’s life.
Takia wasn’t going to die by my hand.
The look in Bakari’s cold eyes told me that. This was going to be a personal kill. He was about to see the cathartic side of murder. A mixture of pride and grief swelled in me.
I grieved the naivete Bakari used to have when he examined life. It afforded him a protective barrier before…but now? Now he knew that for life to exist, there had to be a balance between light and shadows.
Sometimes, we had to live on both sides.
“Bakari, please! I was only following orders.”
“You took joy in seeing the pain on my face that day. The day before his motherfucking funeral.” His teeth were clenched and his anger was on full display. Beautiful and growling. It had grown fangs and claws since I’d last seen it. Now, it was monstrous and bloodthirsty.
I was broken away from my observation when my phone wouldn’t stop incessantly vibrating in my pocket. Since I technically wasn’t a member of the Temple anymore, I didn’t get wanded down for weapons and phones.
With a hefty sigh, I checked my phone to see Zee blowing me up. Eli, too.
“What the fuck is going on?” I muttered out loud. Then the lights in the OR began flashing yellow.
Nineteen
