“And you’re sure about this?”
“About what, the wedding, you, this life we share?”
“Yeah, I guess,” he said, taking a pause.“After the weekend with Oscar, nearly getting my head taken off, and coming home to a pile of cash on the table and booty from your looty, I had kind of panic attack.”
“Booty from my looty?That is a new one,” she said looking at him offering a smile.“The liquor was from Swallowtail’s sommelier.She paid for it, so he will have to replace the loss at a whopping cost, and he more than likely won’t do business with her or that caterer again.It is not much, but I am doing guerrilla tactics here, hitting her where she lives.Can I ask you something?”
“Sure?”
“Do you know how to set up offshore accounts, accounts off the books, and dark web payment sites?”
“Yes.Why?”
“I’m going to start taking her money,” Helen said, watching his face.
“And doing what with it, if I may ask?”
She leaned back in the seat after clicking on a GoPro camera and an Eskimo style sleeping blanket.A second glance made her also click on the hammock.If she had to do surveillance, it sure as shit wasn’t going to be her lying on the ground in the bushes.
“There are four Fields of Flowers in Indiana,” she said.“I’m going to shut them all down.I will use the money for counseling services for the kids, clothes, school supplies, whatever they need.”
“That is what the Archangels do,” Mustang said.
“Gabriel is working on Pennsylvania with Yield where we found Hornworm,” she said.“I am working with Azrael on Swallowtail who is in Michigan.”
“Perhaps, my dear wife,” he said, “you should let Azrael handle the money aspect while you handle working on this wedding and a fantastic honeymoon.If that fax goes off, your head needs to be on the task at hand, not stealing money on the dark web and hiding it from a pedophile.”
She squinted at him.“Do you think I’m not capable?”
“The issue is that you are,” he said.“You also tend to get lost in the moment and go to a dark place, and it is more difficult to bring you out of it the more you mentally visit that cell.The job is difficult enough as it is.Don’t add ugly to our lives when we didn’t invite it to the party.We must have balance to enjoy the beauty.”
“Balance,” she repeated.
“Helen, I was never interested in getting married or having kids because of all the ugly shit I’ve seen and had to carry.You are only starting.”
“Did you have to pull out a dead dude’s teeth and burn off his fingerprints, then set his body on fire and kick him off a ravine?”
Jay nearly stopped breathing.“What?I’m sorry; what did you say?”
“Have you had to assess a broken body, undress a man, and see a catheter get inserted into a tiny penis against your will?”
“Well, no,” he said.
“Please, don’t tell me what I can and can’t carry,” Helen said.“I carried, as a child, the realization that I could never be a mommy because my mother’s boyfriend in his drunken state took my cherry, tore up my insides so he could get a fuck.Abi, in return, took his life.”
Jay took a deep breath.He knew there was a lot of darkness in her past.The level of it he didn’t know, and personally didn’t need to know, but he understood.She wasn’t a broken flower but a strong woman whom he loved and supported with everything in him.He looked forward to the life they would share.
“Helen, I’m sorry those things happened to you, as well as what happened with The Collector, but we are here, in the now,” he said.“You are the strongest, most thoughtful, absolutely stunning creature I have ever had the pleasure to share space with, and I love you.I am asking you to allow our love to grow and blossom into the beautiful flowers they are supposed to be before you have to walk into another field of wilting roses to drag out bodies.Those days are ahead.We have a month before you bring the family together to celebrate us.I want to celebrate us.”
“I hear you,” she said softly.Helen looked at the stack of invites and sighed.“Those envelopes aren’t going to stuff themselves.”
“Roger that,” he said, looking at the two different invitations.“Why are these different?”
“That one,” she said, pointing, “has your name and Helen McDaniel; it goes to my Dad and Aunt Stephanie.The one with the different time that says Shenita Nelson goes to my mother.”
He looked at it noting the hours’ time difference.“This one is an hour after the wedding.”
“Anita Barnes is going to make a grand entrance in a loud pink ball gown, waving a wand and wearing a tiara,” she told him.“However, we will all be sitting down eating dinner when she arrives.It will completely take the thunder from her roll.”
