Total pages in book: 64
Estimated words: 62497 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 312(@200wpm)___ 250(@250wpm)___ 208(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 62497 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 312(@200wpm)___ 250(@250wpm)___ 208(@300wpm)
So I’m not sure what to do now.
How do I spend a week at home when I have only just gotten used to going out every day and stepping into the real world?
Taking a deep breath, I press call.
He doesn’t say hello. Hell, I can hardly hear him breathing to know he even answered until I pull my phone away and check that call was picked up.
“I had two men here asking for you,” I tell him.
“Who were they?” His voice rocks through me, and I shiver before I answer him.
“I don’t know, they didn’t share names.” I pause. “Who have you told about us?”
“No one.”
With that being all he says, I think he’s hung up, but I finally hear his breathing through the phone.
“Kenzo.” I don’t bother expecting him to answer. “I don’t want your house.”
“Fine.”
And then he does end the call.
And I sit there staring at my phone for ages, wondering why that hurt more than expected. And why I’m not a total mess with what happened last night? Someone died, and I got fucked. And I let it happen, and I loved it. Gripping my phone tight for a moment, I then throw it across the room, where it hits the wall and falls to the floor. I roll over and curl myself into a ball before I go back to sleep and hope to not dream of him.
Oh, what lies I tell myself.
Kenzo is full of moments of mayhem, and no matter how much I tell myself to stay away when he reaches out to touch me, I get sucked in once more.
Like a moth to the flame as they say.
Twenty-Six
Kenzo
“He’s been sending people after you, and you know it,” Kyson says. I stretch my neck from side to side, cracking it. “When will you actually believe it’s him?”
“I asked Pops, and he said it wasn’t him.”
But when he said it, I detected the lie.
The problem is I am not sure how to come to terms with that lie. The man means so much to me and knowing that I am going to have to do something about him makes it all the worse.
“How do you explain this, then?” He points to the bodies at our feet—two men I killed just moments before he showed up. The graveyard is getting full. And the cleaners are sick of my calls, so I’ve had to dispose of some of the bodies the old-fashioned way.
By myself.
One of the men grunts, apparently still alive—but barely.
“Did you at least get any information from them?” he asks as we watch one of the men reach for something, his grasp coming up empty.
“Bit hard to do when they were here to kill me.”
I walk over and bend down near the man. His hand slides back to his body slowly, and he looks me in the eyes. “Who sent you?” The man grunts, and I know he wants to swear at or kill me, probably more so the latter. I look up at Kyson. “See, no help.”
“You are unbelievable. You need to ask them when they are alive, not on their last fucking breath.”
“Not quite on his last breath,” I say, smiling and turning back to face the almost-dead man who thought he could kill me.
What a laugh.
I was in the middle of finishing burying the last guy when these two knuckleheads thought they could sneak in and finish the job he failed at completing. Little did they know they weren’t quiet about it, and I heard them the minute they entered the graveyard. It only took one more footstep from them for me to know their intentions. The first was easy, I shot him straight in the chest. But to my surprise, he’s still alive. The other moved out of the way and ended up with three bullets in him—the one to the head was the killer shot.
Pun intended.
“Just kill him already,” Kyson grumbles, walking away. He stops and looks back.
I place my fingers on his eyes and then dig in. His eyeballs feel like sweet, slick marbles as I push in deeper. He lets a scream rip free, but I press harder until he finally goes quiet and stops moving.
“You couldn’t have used a gun?” Kyson gripes, actually walking away this time.
I roll the body into the hole, grab the shovel, and start filling it with dirt. It takes a good thirty minutes before I’m done. It’s hot, sweaty work, so my shirt’s off and thrown over my shoulder as I walk out to find Kyson leaning against my bike, waiting for me.
“What?” I ask.
“You’ve been off even more than normal.”
“How?” I pull my shirt on over my head.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Kyson asks.
“No. Now get the fuck off my bike.”
He doesn’t, of course.
“That ain’t going to happen. Talk…” I ignore him again. “Why has it got you so fucked-up? He isn’t—”