Page 21 of My Violent Valentine

I sigh. “Mina, you know I can’t feel the things you want me to feel. I told you from the beginning what I am.”

“You didn’t have to kill her,” she whispers. “There were other options. You could have threatened her. She might not have talked.”

“But she still lost her dad. We killed him. You killed him. We’re not just taking out bad people who deserve it. We’re taking out all their family’s futures along with it. You’ve always known that.” I may be a monster, but at least I understand what we’re really doing here. Even if my grasp of empathy is only an intellectual exercise and can never be more.

She doesn’t reply because she knows I’m right. Maybe I shouldn’t have shot the girl. Maybe there was another way. Not as convenient of a way, but is blowing up my relationship with Mina really worth the convenience of a clean kill and no witnesses?

I can’t decide.

I don’t say anything else, I just grab her hand and squeeze. After a long moment, she squeezes back. And I don’t know what the fuck that means, but I think maybe she’ll be able to forgive me eventually. But I’m not sure she’ll ever be able to see me the same way again after tonight, and I know this choice will haunt me.

The fighting has slowed, and there seem to be only a few left. I catch her gaze, a question in mine, and she just nods. I nod back, and then we leave our hiding spot to take out the last few guys together.

There’s five left. I guess they really are just all going to fight to the death.

Never mind. Four guys. One of them just got stabbed in the kidney.

All four of them turn on us, and... fuck, maybe we should have just stayed hidden until it was over. It appears the four left are all on the same side. Mina and I both draw our guns at the same time. We each take one of the guys down, and then Mina’s gun gets kicked out of her hand by one of the remaining two. I aim my gun at him, but get tackled from behind by the other guy.

I’m fighting to try to get enough space between me and this piece of shit to put a bullet in him. At the same time I’m trying to keep an eye on her. My gun gets knocked from my hand and slides across the floor. I manage to kick my guy off me and pull the second gun from its holster. I turn and fire on the guy trying to choke the life out of Mina.

He lets go and drops dead to the ground. Before I can turn the gun on the last man standing, he kicks it out of my hand. Goddammit, what is with it with these guys? Enough with the fucking martial arts.

This meathead has me pinned, his big hands wrapped around my throat, and I can’t reach my gun to get him off me. From the corner of my eye I see a glint of shiny metal. Mina pulls him back by the hair and slices the blade of the engraved knife I gave her across his throat. He releases his grip to clutch at his own throat as he chokes and bleeds out all over me.

She shoves him to the side and wipes her blade clean on his shirt before putting it back in its sheath.

“I really love that knife.” She holds out a hand to help me up.

I really love that knife, too.

Together we survey the carnage. This is… a lot.

I find the wine cellar and bring up several bottles. I don’t have to explain to Mina; we are absolutely mentally in sync right now. We’re muddying the crime scene, making it just a little bit harder for the good folk at the local police department to do their jobs. Together we pour the wine over the bodies. I strip the linen off the table, dip it in the fire, then toss it to the center of the room.

Within moments, flames shoot up to the ceiling. I grab Mina’s hand and we walk out.

“Do you think Gremlin will take back the knives and throwing stars we didn’t use?” she says on our way to the car.

“It can’t hurt to ask.” But not tonight. It’s been a long day already.

11

MINA

“Do you think we left evidence behind?” I ask. I was cavalier when it was a clean and ordered kill, but in the end it was messier than it should have been. And even with the misdirection of fire and all the precautions we took, it still feels like everything is somehow unsafe.

“No,” Brian says. But he has the steering wheel in a death grip, belying his fears.

I mentally run through the chain of events. The listening devices Brian planted no doubt got destroyed in the fire and likely any devices left by anyone else as well. We searched the property until we found the van where the data was coming in. Only one side was officially watching the Nolan estate, the other side was watching them. Brian destroyed the tech in the van, and there were no recordings. So everything is clean. It’s all clean. It’s fine. Maybe if I say it to myself a hundred more times, I’ll believe it.

“Brian, are you okay?”

“No.” His hand is shaking as he tries to turn on the radio and no doubt the Chopin CD that we traveled with.

I close my hand over his and pull it away from the console, then with my free hand, I turn the music on. He lets out a long slow breath as Chopin’s second nocturne begins to play. I wonder how the composer would feel knowing he routinely soothes an unrepentant killer’s soul.

Maybe I’m mentally obsessing about what evidence may have been left behind to avoid thinking about the one thing I don’t want to be thinking about. That girl.

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