“Sal, I know what I’m doing.”
“Do you?” she asked. “I don’t think so. I don’t even think you’re Kane anymore. He would never do this shit.”
I was tired of this conversation. I needed to find my way to Alaska before Tommy found Maurelle. She’d never let him live if he threatened her. I couldn’t have that on my conscience.
“I’m out of here,” I told her. “You can relax.”
I pushed past her, ignoring her calls to get me to come back and headed to my car. The flight from here to Alaska was just under 7 hours. I just hoped I wasn’t too late.
Maurelle
I was out of breath, and exhausted. The last few hours had been fun, but they’d taken their toll. I moved back into the room, blood splattered the walls, and window. His heaving body was coated in his own blood, his eyes closed, resting from the torture. He’d given me names.
So many names of his clients here in the United States. I could close his empire down. Quite easily, but I was having fun watching him scream and call out for it to end. Those same requests that had been denied by him back then. I’d known a girl, the same age as me, who had disappeared after spending a night with him. They’d carried her out in sheets, and even at a young age, I knew what that meant.
The Vicomte was a monster.
He’d turned me into one.
He couldn’t leave here alive.
I slammed the door of the bedroom closed, startling him awake. He opened his one good eye left. The other was sealed shut from the swelling.
“Just end it,” he grunted. “I told you everything.”
“No, you haven’t,” I said. “Where is she?”
His sick little smile returned and he laughed with what breath he had left. “Why?”
“I want to know where she is,” I said. “Now spill it, before I spill your guts.”
“She died ten years ago,” he said, his smile gone. “She was a good worker, and knew how to do her job.”
My hand shook as I listened to him. “How?”
“Overdose,” he said. “She got into the drugs, and over did it. You can’t have your revenge on her for handing you over.”
“No, but I can take it out on you.”
“Go for it,” he said. “But make sure you end it, because if you don’t, I’ll be coming for that daughter of ours.”
My hand moved before my brain made sense of what he had said, the blade slicing across his neck. Blood spewed out of the wound as I took a step back, letting the life drain from him. The sound of him trying to breathe, gurgling for air, hung heavy in the air as I watched my tormentor die before me.
It was over.
I was done.
Once he was gone, I sat in the chair, thinking of Camille and how something so pure, so beautiful had come from such an ugly man, and from such an ugly union. Slowly, I rose, moving over to him and cutting the final message into his stomach. I dropped the knife and moved out of the room, and down to the bathroom at the end of the hall.
Looking into the mirror, I saw the blood covering my arms and my face. I felt relief and anger, and sadness all combined together.
I felt the panic rise in my chest as I burst into tears. A single tear running down my bloody cheek, leaving a pink line there.
Kane
I got into my rental car and drove toward the last known ping of Tommy’s phone. It was in Anchorage, but I doubted that was where she was. He would have returned with her if he’d found her.
“I don’t know what you think you’re doing in Alaska, Garrick, but you get your ass back here now,” O’Leary bellowed down the speaker of my phone as I turned down the road, toward the town of Anchorage.
