Chapter XIII
I’m only back about ten minutes before Xav gets home, and when he does, I feel content. He wraps me in his strong arms like he always has and tells me basically what we already know: the police don’t have any idea that all their unsolved cases are interconnected. I like to make my ‘jobs’ different. I don’t take souvenirs like a lot of serial killers do because, let’s face it, I can dress it up with a nice bow and call myself an assassin, but toh-may-toh, toh-mah-toh. It’s all the same whether I get paid for it or not.
I don’t use a specific knife, gun, or weapon. I don’t recreate scenes. I don’t stage bodies. I don’t leave evidence unless it’s to throw off the police. I’m a devious criminal mastermind, and I’ve stayed free for this long because I plan down to the last detail. I make sure if it’s a similar scenario to a previous one, I have just enoughdetails that are different, so there are no chances it will be mistaken and linked to another ‘job’.
“We have another job, home turf.”
Inod. “We’ll go through it in the morning.” Xav kisses the back of my neck again, and I smile and close my eyes.
When I wake, Xav is still asleep. I slip out of his tight grasp, and he grumbles at me, and I grin. He’ll try and sleep more, but he never does. I slip my dressing gown on and slide out of the door into the kitchen, flicking on the coffee machine. I need at least two cups before I can function like a regular person, whatever the fuck one of those is.
Xav pads into the room about forty minutes later, looking sleep-deprived and dishevelled. He really is handsome when he’s him, and not the versions of him he is when we’re out of our apartment. This is our safe space where we can be ourselves. I know I’m a grumpy cow. I know Xav probably takes more of my bullshit than he needs to, but when we’re out of this place, we are anyone but us. I have a million personalities, looks, characters, whatever the fuck you want to call them. Even if I’m out for a run, different hair colour and style, different eye colour, different contouring, the only person who sees me, feels me, my real hair, my real face, is Xav. He truly sees me inside and out. I wonder if I can ever have that with someone else. I long to be touched like I’m loved. I know Xav loves me, whateverour fucked-up version of love actually is. But I long to be cherished, made love to, protected and worshipped.
And while Xav gives me most of those things, we are and never have been… intimate, for want of a better word. We crave something more from each other. It’s probably unhealthy, this weird siblingship, co-dependency, fucked-up dynamic we have going on, but we have only ever had each other. Even the others never stayed long enough. I make that sound like they left. No, they were over-experimented on, weren’t strong enough, and their bodies gave up, but for some reason, me and Xav survived. There has to be a reason for that, and I’m choosing to believe it’s to take down The Collective.
We’ve been gathering information and creating backup plans in the hopes that one day, we can bring it all down and walk away. In reality, we will end up dead or in jail, forever. But I’m fine with either if no other child is harmed at the hands of this organisation, and as long as no other ‘innocent’ person dies at a Collective member’s hands. There are other smaller factions around the world, but ours is the main one. Father is the face, the name and the power behind it all, and his fucked-up little sheep fall into line and do what he tells them. A few of the other factions have assassins. Don’t get me wrong, anyone can become an assassin, but Xav and I are elite. Whatever Father did made us different in some way. We’re cold, hyper-focused, ruthless, stronger, faster, and quicker to think; feelings are long gone. We don’t feel things like normal people do. It’s almost like I can see them in the distance, but it’s like I’m looking at them through fog or plastic. I cannearly make them out but can’t quite reach them. I don’t honestly think it’s a genetic modification or some Frankenstein shit like that, but it was literally kicked out of us, beaten out of our DNA. We were taught to think differently and feel nothing. I know I feel some things, but I’m definitely not normal in any way, shape, or form.
I know I love Xav, but I don’t know how that feels. Jacob, though… it all seems a little closer, a little more in reach, if I could just lean far enough over to grasp it, but I haven’t figured out how to yet, how to integrate myself into his life. I’m working on it, but it’s still not quite close enough.
“Hey, did you hear me?”
“What?”
“Dickhead, I’ve been talking to you for the last five fucking minutes. Is that still your first cup of coffee? Fuck, you’re useless till you’ve had your caffeine intake.”
He shakes his head at me and makes me another coffee. We sit in silence while I drink it, and then he opens up the laptop. “Ready?”
I nod as I take my last sip and slide my mug away from me.
“Don James, local strip club owner. Turns out the strip club is a front for a prostitution ring. He’s too controlling though, so he undertakes all the work himself, so if we chop the head off the donkey…”
“It all comes crashing down, so what’s The Collective’s issue with him?”
“They want the business, not the prostitution side. The strip club is a lucrative, legit business.”
“Doesn’t seem like The Collective’s wheelhouse, really.” I frown.
“Technically, it’s the nephew of one of The Collective members. He has beef with the guy and wants to take what he’s got.”
“So why are we doing it?”
“Because Don doesn’t allow the girls to choose prostitution, they’re mostly asylum seekers, illegals, came in on boats, slipped through the nets, and now they have no way of escaping or making a living on their own. He waits for them and then offers them a place to live, a job, and they take it till they get here, and then they can’t escape him.”
“So, what happens to the girls if we shut him down?”
“Shelley.”
I nod, knowing he will leak the information to Shelley anonymously so that once the hits are done, they can sweep in and save the day. “Does she ever get suspicious of all the anonymous tips she gets?”
“Nah, they get far more than what I send, and they come from different IP addresses, different fonts, different formatting. There’s no way to link them.”
I nod again. “Okay, so a robbery in the alley at the side of the club. I can make it look like a robbery gone wrong, and then he’s near the venue. That way, the police will be on hand to check the girls out.”
“Sounds good. I’ll look into the surveillance, times, and routine and let you know.”
“I will get ready and head down there, maybe see if I can’t get myself a job interview.”
“Sounds good. At least you can get an inside scope on the place.”
