Page 44 of Femme Fatale
He stopped behind me, close enough I could smell the citrus of his aftershave. He spoke into my ear, low.
“You know what your problem is, Zeke? You never learned how to win. Always happy with second place, always content to let someone else pull the trigger. Even now, with your club at your back and this new whore you think you love, you can’t help but lose.”
He would pay for calling Selene a whore.
He leaned in, breath hot on my neck. “I didn’t lose,” I said. “I got out. I lived. Simone did, too.”
Jack’s hand came down on my shoulder, fingers digging through the vest and into the wound underneath. It was a warning, not a killing blow. “You’re a failure,” he said. “Just like your sister.”
I twisted in the chair, the handcuffs biting into bone. “Let me loose, I’ll show you failure.”
He laughed, stepping away, and I could feel the heat draining from my ears to my teeth. He walked to the desk, pulled a drawer open, and set a silver .45 on the blotter. Polished, engraved, the initials JS carved into the grip. He didn’t pick it up. He didn’t need to.
He perched on the edge of the desk, legs crossed at the knee. “I heard you joined the dykes. I suppose that’s an improvement over the whores and the junkies, but it’s hardly a step up.” He flicked a finger at the surveillance screen, where Selene’s casino had burned bright in the night, then gone dark. “You always had a thing for lost causes.”
I tried to lift my arm, show him the middle finger. The steel stopped me, but the effort was worth it. Blood trickled down my wrist, pooling under the cuff.
Jack uncrossed his legs, leaned forward. “Do you even know why you’re here?”
I bared my teeth. “You need someone to blame. You want to kill me yourself. I’m the only one left who’s not afraid of you.”
“Wrong again,” Jack said, voice lowering until it was almost a growl. “You’re here because you’re mine. You always were. Every bone, every scar, every mistake—you are the legacy I built. And you will die at my hand, or by my order, because you belong to me.”
He stood, the chair squealing under his weight as he did. He paced back and forth, a tiger in a cage, never letting his eyes off me for more than a blink. When he spoke again, it was through his teeth.
“Simone was the only one I ever cared about. Your mother was a whore, and you? Well, you were never anything but the reminder of my own bad judgment. But Simone, she was perfect. Smart. Beautiful. Until you ruined her. Until you let her get away.”
He circled behind me again, and I felt the anger coming off him in hot waves. He bent low, lips at my ear.
“Where is she, Zeke? Tell me, and maybe I’ll let you bleed out instead of choking to death on your own tongue.”
I spat, the glob hitting his shoe. “Simone is a thousand miles from here, and she’d rather swallow glass than see you again.”
Jack straightened, face going cold. He wiped the spit with a silk handkerchief, then snapped it back into his pocket with a single, theatrical move.
He went to the door, opened it, and let two men in. I recognized one—a lifer named Kane Daemon, ex-cop who’d worked the door at the old brothel before Jack bought him off.The other was a new face, but the kind of muscle you could hire cheap in this town with his thick neck, dead eyes, and hands already callused from breaking bones.
“Make sure he stays alive until morning,” Jack told them. “We’ll have company soon.”
He paused, looked at me one last time. “You were right about one thing, though,” he said, and the smile was back. “I do want to kill you myself. But I’m a patient man.”
He closed the door behind him, leaving the two thugs and me in a room that suddenly felt smaller, the walls closing in with every tick of the clock. I watched the gun on the desk, the wolf-head necklace catching the lamplight and throwing it into my eyes. I could feel the blood still leaking under the vest, the edges of the wound hot and wet.
Kane stood by the door, hand on his hip, bored. The other guy, silent and expressionless, watched me like he was waiting for the green light to end it.
I let my head slump, let them think I was done. But I was already working the cuffs, grinding them against the bolt in the chair, counting the breaths until Jack would come back, and hoping Selene was half as good at murder as she was at fucking me up.
I didn’t plan to die here. Not before I made my old man regret every second he’d spent keeping me alive.
***
Jack came back just after midnight. The two thugs snapped to attention, but he waved them off with a lazy flick of the wrist. “Out,” he said. They left without a word, closing the door so soft you barely heard it latch.
He didn’t bother sitting. He walked to the desk, poured another shot, and eyed the gun. His hands were steady, almostgraceful, as he rolled the .45 toward the edge, lining it up like a dealer setting a favorite card on the table. The wolf necklace swung gently from the lamp, catching the light, hypnotic.
I’d spent the last hour working the cuffs, flexing every joint, trying to find slack. The skin at my wrists was raw, blood sticky around the metal. I was sweating through the vest, and every movement yanked at the wound under my left pec. Didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to wait for the morning. Either I got out, or he’d have to kill me in front of a mirror.
Jack leaned against the wall, hands folded. He never looked at me directly. “You know, Zeke,” he said, “there was a time I thought you’d run this town. Maybe take it further than I ever did.”
