Page 101 of The Hangman's Rope

She swallowed hard, and didn’t ask any more questions or say anything after that.

I drove the lift back to the caretaker’s shed and lifted her down and into my arms.

“Hold on to me. There are all kinds of screws and nails and shit littering the ground in here,” I said and she complied beautifully. I didn’t set her down until we reached the bottom step leading up to the apartment on the outside of the house.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said, putting her hand along my cheek, as though she’d plucked the thoughts, the worries, the concerns, right out of my thick skull.

“I would understand if you did,” I said haltingly. Being vulnerable was never my strong suit but with her, it had always somehow been easier. Not easy, but certainlyeasier.

“No,” she said, and she put her mouth to mine. I kissed her back, fiercely, as though it might be my last kiss I would ever get from her. She wound her arms around my neck and molded herself to the front of my body. I realized that with her standing on the bottom step like she was, we were eye to eye and a near perfect match in height.

I drew back and looked at her in the hazy yellow glow of the porch light and she smiled at me. Her eyes with their silver hue were brighter somehow, less shadowed with grief, the pallor of fear gone from them… and the difference was immeasurable.

We went upstairs, I showered and had her shower with me. The clothes we were wearing going into the burn barrel down by the caretaker’s shed. She pouted about the nightgown – it was her favorite, but I wasn’t about to chance transfer or micro evidence so in the barrel it went. Washing wasn’t enough – even though I had a feeling no one would go looking for Calrose Pierce – which that’d been why we’d had trouble locating the douche. Calrose was his middle name and Pierce was assumed. It was Michael Calrose Andretti – and he was a mutt, his father Italian, his mother a whore, ol’ Cal a bastard born out-of-wedlock, trying to climb some ladder into the Family to appease his daddy issues.

I didn’t know.

It was all drama all the time with those rigid, pedantic fucksticks. We didn’t tend to fuck with the Italians much and they tended to look down on us as little better than lowborn street thugs even though some of us had family money damn near older than some of these ‘family’ names had been anything other than lowborn street thugs themselves.

Still, parlaying with them had been almost easier than expected – which I was sure Syn was noodling on. Mancini had given up Cal and bits off his other men with barely a second thought. His boy and only heir being his only real concern. Odds were, he was trying to turn an unfortunate misstep into a net gain and would want something from us in return. Savannah wasn’t really a foothold for the mob – it was their playground.

A stop along major trade routes from Florida where they did have a stronghold or two, up to the North East – where they for sure ruled with an iron fist.

Trouble on either end, they may be sniffing around for some of those guns we were running to the Columbians, and that was dangerous territory.

You didn’t say ‘no’ to the Italians, nor did you say ‘no’ or short the Columbians – but we were pretty much working at max capacity when it came to what we were running off Parris Island. We’d just have to see what was what when it came down to it.

Mancini’s apology needed to be louder than his disrespect… but I wasn’t entirely sure it’d been that – we might have an angle to play there. We’d have to see. I didn’t worry over much about it. That was Syn’s problem. Maybe Corvus’. They were in charge for a reason.

I stayed a grunt with just an aptitude for running the ledgers and numbers. I was happy there. It was quiet. I liked the quiet… and the addition of Lorelai in my life hadn’t disturbed my peace in the slightest for all that anyone might think that it had.

No, she hadn’t been an upset to the balance at all – at least in my estimation. I’d come away with one hell of a net gain where she was concerned, and it was nice. It was real nice.

I took my woman to bed just as the sun began to rise over the old oaks draped in their Spanish Moss, wavering in the slight breeze off the river.

She tucked herself gladly against my body, her lips finding mine in the soft pre-dawn glow of the bedroom and I was both surprised and not when she sent all the signals that she was wet, and ready, and wanted me inside of her.

There was something about killing a man that drove you toward life, and what was more life affirming than the act of sex?

I gave in to her feminine wiles readily, and relished the way she rode me, her long auburn hair sparking fire in a halo around her head as the light seeped into the room through the curtains that she liked to leave open, the golden light of dawn warming her moon pale skin as her large and perfect tits bounced with every thrust.

She was beauty, she was grace, and I’d learned that she was like the poison flowers that she was fond of growing… deadly when taken or ingested the wrong way.

She bent, putting her mouth to mine, panting, tired, and I picked up where she left off, gripping her hips and ass with my hands and working my hips up and down, thrusting deep up into her from down below.

I loved the way she writhed over, me, the way she captured my face between her hands and kissed me fiercely. I loved the way she threw herself wholeheartedly into loving me and I loved how wild and joyous she made me feel.

She added so much to my life here, and I loved her fierceness and tenacity in the face of all she’d been through and I knew, deep down, that she was the one for me. That all other women would pale in comparison to her light.

I held her tight, breathed her in, and for the first time ever in my existence – I feltwhole.

Chapter Thirty

Lorelai…

I knelt in the dirt behind the Horowitz plot and smiled at old Mrs. Horowitz who was getting far too old to come leave flowers at her husband’s grave on the regular. I understood more clearly now what Reaper had been trying to say to me.

Mrs. Horowitz would be horrified to know her husband shared a plot with Calrose Pierce… but old Mr. Horowitz? He didn’t care, and as Mrs. Horowitz beamed at me, I patted the last of the dirt surrounding the white oleander tree I planted behind their headstone so that Mr. Horowitz would always have something growing and for at least part of the year blooming at his grave.

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