Razing Grace: Razing Grace Part 1 (16 page)

It makes me feel like doing this again every night.

RAZE

“Okay, wait!” Miles holds up his hands.

“Three seconds, Miles. Explain this shit.” My jaw could crack with all the pressure I’m placing on it. “Two.” I continue my count.

“Okay, fuck,” Miles curses under his breath. “It was nothing, I didn’t touch her, nothing happened. She just got a bit… frisky…”

I step towards him, my fist balled on either side of me.

“Noooo!” He quickly throws his hands out. “Not like that. We just danced. I didn’t touch her or anything.” I relax back, cracking my neck from the tension. He stares at me blankly. “But why do you care, Raze?”

“I don’t care in the way you’re implying I care, Miles.”

He drops back down to the sofa, removing his glasses and rubbing his eyes. “I don’t know what you want with me, with her.” He shakes his head before leaning back on the sofa. “That girl isn’t lost, Raze. She’s exactly where she wants to be, that’s what makes her so lethal. She doesn’t need to be found because she’s not actually fucking lost. She’s just… absent.”

I step toward him, taking a seat on the single sofa. “For her to help me, she needs to need it, or want it, or this won’t work.”

Miles shakes his head, leaning forward and snatching the bottle from me. “That’s where you’re wrong. She will help you so she can get out of here. That,” Miles points upstairs, “isn’t your problem. Get what you need and set her free.”

I lean back, my index finger gliding over my upper lip. He has a point, but I have too much risk running on my part for one thing to slip past me. One little error on anyone’s part will fuck this up and it will be the end of everything. I can’t risk that.

“Fine,” I lean forward, taking the bottle back from him. He’s clearly had too much to drink and I need Miles alert at all times. There’s a reason why I preserve him; you don’t send your best soldiers out for bullshit battles. You save them for when you really need them. Use them as your trump card. Miles is my trump card. In our world, the devil doesn’t come wearing horns and a trident. He comes wearing an immaculate suit and sometimes a mask. “But I need her in a better place than she is in now before I take the next step in this. There’s too much at risk. We have the Yakuza on our ass, who’ve also risked a fucking lot by going with me on this.”

“True,” Miles responds, sitting forward and resting on his elbows. “I don’t think there is any part of her to save though, Raze. She’s tortured, in a way. Whatever you all did to her, twisted her head enough to make her not recognize what is reality and what isn’t at times.”

“I knew her before she came here. She cried for days on end in the dungeon. Never seen a chick cry that much, mainly because I’d kill her before it got that bad.” I take a sip of my drink, letting the flaming liquid set my throat on fire. “But then one day she just stopped. I saw it and I recognized it.” I place the bottle back onto the table and look at Miles. “One month. One month to tame her in some way. Enough that I won’t run the risk of having to put a bullet in her anyway.”

Miles watches me closely, standing to his feet.

“Would it bother you if you had to put a bullet in her, Raze?”

I hear the accusation in his question. Standing up, I square my shoulders and stare down at him. “No. It won’t. I’ll do what I have to do to protect what I need to protect.”

“Well, there’s a reason you’re the boss, boss.” Miles chuckles while walking away. “You didn’t get kingpin for nothing,” he adds before walking up the stairs.

I clutch onto my tie and pull it off, throwing it across to the recliner. Running my hands over my hair, I take another pull of the alcohol. Miles is right. There’s a reason why I got my title, how I got to where I am. I’m Switzerland in the drug, sex trafficking, and weapons trade between all the major mobs. The Yakuza, The Italian Mafia, Russians, Skinheads, blacks, hell, even some bikers. Not the bikers that run Vegas; those are the bikers I need control over in order to get one hundred percent control over this pipeline, but everywhere else, I do. Hell, I even have the IRA eating out of the palms of my hands. I have too much at stake to risk having a now mind-fucked nun to suddenly wake up one day and remember her Hail Marys before blowing up our entire operation. “Would it bother you to put a bullet in her, Raze?” I play back Miles’ question. My eyes glaze over as my Adam’s apple jumps at the next gulp of alcohol I swallow. Fucking would it? It shouldn’t.

A figure catches the corner of my eye and my head slowly drifts to it. “Hey, you wanna play?” Cassia walks towards me in her all white lace bra and panties. I stretch my arms wide, my legs following suit as Cassia lowers her body onto mine. Her legs straddle my waist and her fingers come up to my hair. I reach for her hands quickly, shoving them away. “Sorry,” she whispers, her cheeks turning pink with embarrassment.

“Get off.” Her fingers pause at the button of my shirt. I study her closely. “Now.”

Quickly swinging her leg off my lap, she stands to her feet. “Sorry, I thought you might be a little tense. Did you have a good day?”

Pushing up off the sofa, I walk towards her and shove the bottle into her hands. “Bed.” Cassia nods her head, taking the bottle in her hands and making her way quickly up the stairs. Walking towards the stairs, I kill the lights and make my way up. Once I hit the top of the stairwell, I walk down towards the door which leads to my bedroom. Stopping at the last door to the left, I can hear music coming out of Millie’s room. “Crazy fucking bitch.” Gripping the door, I push it open.

MILLIE

The sound of 50 cent and Chris Brown rapping about “No Romeo, No Juliet” is pounding through the speakers on the TV as I swing around on the post of the bed. I decided to experiment with the makeup which was in the bathroom too. I was aiming for the smoky look my sister pulls off so well, but then thought I looked more like a washed-up raccoon who has smoked too much crack. I’m drunk, so I’m not caring too much about appearances anyway.

My door opens just as my body swings around the metal panel with a bottle of Jack Daniels in one hand and the other gripped tightly on what is quite possibly my future career as a stripper. My eyes collide straight into Raze’s, and with a small chuckle, I place the bottle onto the nightstand and let my body drop back onto the mattress. He walks towards the bed, the energy shifting to new levels, the only levels they shift to when Raze is near me, and the bed sinks under his weight. We remain silent for a few beats until I roll onto my side, placing my hand under my face.

“Are you going to kill me, Raze?” I whisper, my eyelids feeling weighted from all the alcohol and dancing.

I watch him for a few seconds, waiting for him to answer me and watching his expressions as he stares blankly down at the floor. He lifts his head, his face turning over his shoulder slightly to look at me. “No. I don’t think I am.”

I smile gently, a yawn slipping out. “Aren’t you going to ask me the same question?” My mumbled response is the last thing I remember before letting my fatigue consume me.

***

The pounding of my head thuds so loudly, it pulls me from a deep sleep. I hear my door swing open and the smell of the dark pits of hell hitting me instantly. Coffee! “Morning, puddin’. How’s your head?”

I groan deeply, my hand flying out to reach for the pillow beside me. Snatching it, I throw it over my face. “What is that sound…?” My throat contracts while the mattress sinks beside me.

“That would be the sound of your alcohol consumption last night.” Miles pats my leg through the blanket.

I peek out from underneath. “Is that mine?” He laughs, handing me the cup and I sit up, scooting backwards until my back hits the headboard. Raking my fingers through my hair to brush it out of my face, I take the first sip of the black goodness. Sighing, I let the hot liquid cloak my insides with its magical powers. “Thank you.”

He smiles, climbing onto my bed until he’s leaning against the headboard beside me, his legs stretched out with mine.

“Miles?” I whisper, my eyes remaining on the ticking clock hanging from above the television.

He turns to look at me. “Yeah?”

“Everything is numb.”

He turns to face me more and I turn my head towards him. “You wanna talk about it? I sort of understand crazy,” he jokes, but I can see a look flash across his eyes.

Exhaling, I sit the coffee on my legs. “The weird thing is, I can’t even pinpoint an exact reason as to why I’m feeling the way I am. Everything inside of me, all the emotions I had, the love I had, the way I’d get upset if my sister would cuss around me, it’s gone. Now, I just… don’t… care.” I lean my head back and look up to the ceiling. “They messed with me for days, Miles. And that may be some tame shit compared to what you’re used to, but to me, it was chaotic. All I had in that dark cell were my own thoughts and their harsh actions.”

“Did they rape you?” Miles asks, his question genuine and a notch above a whisper.

A sadistic chuckle comes out of me. “That’s just it, Miles. It wasn’t rape because not once, while they were preforming their acts, did I tell them to stop. It hurt. I caved into a shell that sits in the corner of my head, but I liked it, Miles. I more than liked it, and that’s far worse than me being raped.”

I pull my bottom lip into my mouth and turn my head towards him. His hair is tied in a bun at the back of his head today and he’s wearing a crisp suit with no tie. His skin glistens when the morning sun peers into the room through the cracked open curtains and my eyes drop down to his lips, his lips that are suddenly looking very lickable.

A growl comes out of him. “Millie, don’t look at me like that.”

I pull my greedy eyes off him and smirk. “Sorry, can’t help it.”

He gives me a knowing smile. I know he’s attracted to me in a way. I’ve never thought I was ugly, but more recently I’ve found myself more appealing… more of everything.

“But, how’s that worse than if they actually raped you?” he continues.

“Because,” I swallow, drawing my legs up. “Because they showed me what it’s like, what it feels like to have someone make you feel good and dirty all at the same time. They tapped into a dark side of me that I didn’t know was there, and now, there’s no way that darkness can be drawn out. I don’t even think I want it to leave.”

Miles chuckles, his long lean fingers tapping on his leg. “And how do you feel about that? About the new you?”

I breath out a slow, steady breath of air. “I don’t. I just know I like it. But I also know that they have to pay in some way.” I bite down on my lip when I realize I had a case of verbal diarrhea. His hand grips my wrist tightly and I whip my eyes to his. “Let go of me, Miles.”

“You cannot go after any of them, do you understand me?” He searches my eyes closely, his jaw flexing and his eyes hard.

“Why not? I have nothing to live for. I have no home. I don’t want to see my sister. I don’t want her to see me like this. I’d rather her last memory of me be how I was, not how I am now.” I rip my hand out of his grip and stand from the bed, still in the clothes I was wearing last night.

He gets off the bed and comes toward me. “Puddin’, what the fuck are you thinking?”

I need to ask him what the fuck the whole calling me puddin’ is about, but I’m bringing it down to Miles being Miles and making up a funny name.

“I’m thinking, Miles, that battles aren’t won by surrendering. They’re won when the blood of your enemy is dripping from your damaged hands.” I let out a shaky breath. “Miles, they still stole something from me. I may still be a virgin, but they stole my choice to decide when I wanted to feel how good it was to have someone caress me. You think I wanted the first time for a man to have his hands on my body to be while I was handcuffed and shackled to a cold, dirty concrete cell floor? No, Miles.”