“Voodoo, take her home. We’ll finish up here,” Venom said from behind us. When I turned to look at him, I could tell he was less than happy with my actions, but I didn’t care.
“Let me grab my things. Will you be okay for a minute?” He clasped my upper arms and leaned down to look me in the eyes. I nodded. His macabre makeup should’ve been unsettling, but I found it strangely beautiful.
He had the items gathered up quicker than I could’ve imagined, which told me he’d done this before. What surprised me was that I wasn’t bothered by it. Not wanting to analyze why nothing from the night really upset me, I took a deep but shaky breath.
“Come on,” he said as he took my hand. We started to walk away, but I stopped and turned to look at Venom.
“I’m not going to say a word. And I hope you kill them both.” Then I turned back around and walked with Ogun “Voodoo” Dupré back to the clubhouse.
When we went inside, the prospect seemed shocked to see me coming in the door with Voodoo.
“We’ll talk later,” Voodoo said to the man, who blanched and swallowed hard.
Once he closed the door to the room, he leaned on it and ran a hand through his hair. “We need to discuss what happened tonight.”
“Okay, but I meant what I said. I’m not going to say a word to anyone. I’m not going to fall apart. I’m going to say this explicitly and once. I shot Ivan in the dick because he was going to rape me in front of Grishka; I shot him between the eyes because he had no remorse for trying to kill me—something he would’ve succeeded in doing had you and your friends not intervened. I shot Anatoly because he’s a piece of shit brother who held down his fifteen-year-old sister while she was raped repeatedly for money. My aim was off because I meant to shoot him in the dick too. I shot Grishka in the dick because he doesn’t deserve to have it and in the stomach because it wouldn’t kill him right away and I wanted him to suffer for selling me off to the highest bidder not once, but twice, then threatening to sell me and my friend into the sex trade if I didn’t comply. I don’t regret it, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.” I paused, waiting for his response. The only thing he’d done was cover his own junk when I’d talked about shooting them. It didn’t seem like he realized he’d done it, and if the seriousness of the situation wasn’t so severe, I might have laughed.
“Regardless, you shouldn’t have seen that. It’s still your father and your brother. I didn’t mean for you to have to see what was going on.”
“No. He’s not.” It was incredible, the relief I experienced at the knowledge that the asshole who’d destroyed my innocence wasn’t actually my father.
“What?”
“Grishka isn’t my father. He admitted it to me when I was at his house. My father was one of his men. I have no idea if he’s alive or dead, but I mean to ask my mother. Yes, Anatoly was my brother, but he was an asshole and a piece of shit. But I need to know something,” I said.
“I’ll do my best to answer,” he warily replied.
“I pieced shit together. Is that what you do? Your club? Are they assassins? Hitmen? Whatever you call it?”
He bit his lip and appeared to weigh the situation and his answer. “Let’s just say that we clean house for society. The people that slip through the cracks or get past the system.”
Satisfied, I nodded. “Good.”
People needed to know that someone was taking out the trash when those who were supposed to, didn’t. But it wasn’t my place to announce it.
Determined, I walked up to him, grabbed his shirt, and pulled him in for a kiss. Shock held him back for a second. Then, he was all in, his tongue twisting with mine and his teeth tugging on my lip. My fingers sank into his dark hair, and I breathed in the strangely comforting scent that clung to his clothes.
Breaking away gently, he looked at me and grinned. Then his thumb rubbed my lip and chin. “You have my face paint on you.”
Pulling him in again, I said against his black-and-white lips, “I don’t care. It’s kind of sexy.”
I got very dirty by the end of it.