She Is Back

※※※ Cross

What the fuck was that?

The question echoed in my skull, a relentless drumbeat under the fading roar of the crowd. I stood at the base of the stairs, my body locked in place, watching the empty space where she’d just been. Where he’d just dragged her away.

That was Lissa. But it wasn’t.

She was back. The hair... fuck. Bright, violent red, cut sharp as a blade. It was hot. I’d give her that. It screamed. It was a declaration of war painted on her head. And the way she stood, the way she looked at me from the shadows—like I was a specimen under glass, a problem to be assessed—it hollowed me out.

And yes, whoever that fucker was—tall, wheat-haired, with the easy arrogance of old money and power—he did piss me off. The way his hand had slid into her pants, possessive and intimate. The way he’d kissed her neck. The way she’d... she’d arched into it. And then the kiss. That wasn’t for show. That was hunger. A hunger I hadn’t seen in her eyes since... since before.

The cold fury that surged up was so pure it was almost beautiful. It was a white-hot blade, cutting through the post-fight haze, the adulation of the crowd, everything. If she wanted to play games, I’d play. I’d played the coldest game of all for four years. I could be ice. I could make her think it didn’t bother me, even though it was burning a hole through my chest.

I turned my back on the empty platform and stalked to the back. The victory felt like lost. The blood on my chest felt cheap.

I showered in the locker room, the hot water doing nothing to cleanse the image from my mind. I changed into clean, dark clothes in my office, the silence pressing in. I couldn’t sit still. The energy, the rage, needed an outlet. A real one.

I had some men to kill.

This wasn’t family business. This was personal. My crew, or a faction of it, had gotten greedy. Pavel, a lieutenant I’d put in charge of a distribution warehouse, had been skimming product—the high-grade pharmaceuticals we cooked in a lab upstate—and selling it to the fucking Genovese, our competitors. He was stealing from me. Undermining me. In my own house.

The irony wasn’t lost on me. Betrayal from within. I knew a thing or two about that.

We hit his place, a nondescript garage in Red Hook, just after midnight. No finesse. Just overwhelming force. My guys, led by Mikey—loyal, silent, deadly Mikey—kicked in the doors. There was shouting and a few panicked gunshots that went wide. We cornered Pavel and three of his rats in the back office, surrounded by bricks of our own stolen product and stacks of cash.

Pavel was on his knees, sweating through his cheap suit. “Cross, please! It’s a misunderstanding!”

I laughed. The sound was flat, dead. “Misunderstanding?” I paced in front of him, the muzzle of my Glock tracing idle circles in the air. “You stole my drugs. You’ve been selling them to the competition. The drugs we make. So, no. No misunderstanding.”

He kept begging, his words dissolving into a wet, pleading babble. I didn’t hear them. All I heard was the phantom sound of a Russian accent whispering in her ear. All I saw was a hand sliding under a leather belt.

I stopped pacing. Looked down at him. “This is just business, Pavel.”

I pulled the trigger.

The report was loud in the confined space. He slumped forward. The begging stopped.

“Mikey,” I said, my voice steady. “Kill the rest of them. Set the place on fire. Grab the cash and the rest of the drugs.” My eyes fell on two custom choppers parked in the garage bay, gleaming under the work lights. Pavel’s pride and joy. “And take the bikes. I’ll take those as payment.”

Mikey nodded, already moving.

I walked outside into the cool night air, lit a cigarette, and leaned against the fender of my parked Hummer. I watched as the garage doors were doused in gasoline. Mikey tossed a lit Zippo inside.

Whoosh.

Orange and yellow flames licked up the doors, greedily consuming the wood and the bodies within. The heat washed over my face. I took a drag of my cigarette, feeling nothing. No satisfaction. No guilt. No release. Just a vast, echoing emptiness. Just another low-life rat snuffed out. The city was full of them. I was just the exterminator.

All I knew, standing there watching my problems burn, was that I had a race on Saturday. At the old airstrip. Pink slips. And that was the only thing on the horizon I could even remotely look forward to. Speed. Danger. A clean, simple contest.

I got home as morning started to break. My fortress. The only place that felt even a little normal. The silence was absolute until I opened the door.

Then came the frantic clicking of nails on marble and two whining, wriggling bundles of joy. Chloe and Nyx. My girls. They didn’t care about red hair or Russian princes or the smell of smoke and cordite on my clothes. They just knew I was home, and that usually meant food or a snack. Their unconditional, slobbery love was the only thing that felt real. I fed them, scratched their ears, and felt the simple, solid weight of them leaning against my legs.

But I had to shower again. The blood—Pavel’s blood—felt like it was seeping into my skin. I stood under the hot spray, closing my eyes, and instantly her face was there. The red hair, wet now in my imagination, was plastered to her sharp cheeks. His hands. In her pants. His mouth on her neck. The kiss.

Fuck.

I got out, toweled off roughly, and headed to bed. The girls followed, leaping up to their designated spots at the foot of the bed. Chloe sighed. Nyx circled twice before flopping down.

I lay in the dark, the throbbing headache from the hit I’d taken earlier now a full-blown symphony behind my eyes, amplified by the night’s violence and the psychic shock of seeing her. The weekend was approaching. Saturday. The race.

The game was on. And the only move I had left was to be colder, harder, and faster than anyone else on that strip. Let her see the monster in his natural habitat. Let her watch.

I finally fell into a fitful sleep, the images of fire and red hair and a Russian’s smug smile dancing behind my eyelids. The only constant was the low, warm weight of the two Dobermans at my feet, a tiny anchor in a sea of fucking chaos.

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