“You need to go back to your room until I’m finished with him.” I pointed behind her, directing her back to safety.
Her foster parent finally recovered, and he ran toward me at full speed. My wrapped fist met his momentum head-on, and he screeched in pain while scrambling away from me into his kitchen. The man wasn’t skilled in fighting, and when he pulled a knife from a drawer with a snarl on his face, I winced. Leaving a bloody mess to clean up wasn’t ideal, and as I glanced at Katie, I knew I didn’t really want her to see any of that.
Advancing quickly, I yanked his wrist forward fast enough to trap the weapon and twisted hard. The metal clattered on the floor as he wiggled in my grip and punched wildly through the air, hoping to land a blow.
I calculated each punch and made sure to hit him in the temple, hard in the gut, and at weak points that I knew would break bones. The chain, my training, and the fact that I’d done it all before gave me an astronomical advantage.
It didn’t take him long to realize I wasn’t stopping. That flight response kicked in, his body panicking and starting to flail every which way. He freed himself long enough to throw a bowl at me and yell out that his wife would be home soon.
“I’m not worried about who finds you dead.” I smiled at his ridiculous warning, and my hand pulled a gun from where it was tucked into my waistband behind me.
His eyes widened despite the increasing swelling, and his hands shot up to the sky. “Is this about her? I’ve never touched her. She’s a liar, I swear. She came messed in the head. Doesn’t cry, doesn’t talk, doesn’t do anything.”
I glanced at her. Katie was leaning against the doorframe of the hallway, watching with her arms crossed over her chest. Even though her curves had filled out, she looked tiny in that black sweater, like she was still the same kid I met who was trying to save her father.
“That true, Katie. You a liar?”
“My father was too proud to raise a girl who lied, Rome.” She said the words barely above a whisper and looked down as she tucked herself deeper into that sweater. Without another word, she pushed off the wall to go back to her room.
Something twisted in my gut, snarled in anger, and unleashed in my soul.
When I looked back at the man, he was crying and stuttering over his words. “Please, man. She’s beautiful and . . . I have a problem . . . we needed the money, okay?”
Bile rose fast in my throat, bitter and acrid. I shook my head once, trying to wrangle the angry beast that clawed at me to get out. The man had sold her. I knew it already, but still I whispered the question, “How did you get the money?”
A bead of perspiration formed as his eyes darted everywhere, like he’d been caught. “Look, there’s only been a few guys who paid to be with her. She’s asleep when they come, I swear. I got a lot of–”
I raised the gun so it pointed right at his head. “You’re going to die in the next minute. Don’t waste your breath, because you can’t change my mind.”
Changing tactics, he tried to turn the tables on me. “You’re a fucking monster,” he cried with his hands in the air.
“Tell me something I don’t know.” I motioned for him to come toward me, curling my hand up and down over the rusted metal. I carried it sometimes, when I knew I wanted to inflict real pain. My father had me use that chain to strangle the life out of my first kill. At the age of twelve, most would have cowered at the request.
I’d embraced it.
The man ran toward me with a loud yell, hoping to catch me off guard. I stepped to the side, raising my gun above my head so that he didn’t grab for it. Muscle memory had me using his own force to yank his jaw as I moved. The loud crack signaled that his spinal cord had separated from his brain.
The sound quieted the rage in my veins, soothed the monster that wanted a life to eat. We got what we came for.
I pocketed my weapon and enjoyed the silence.
I knew how to deliver kills. I was comfortable with it, almost took pleasure in it. A man fought for his life like a fish out of water, flapping about and trying his best to flounder back to safety. He’d been no different. Normally, I called Sergio and he brought a cleanup crew right after. I was used to leaving the scene, used to washing my hands of the situation, and used to moving right on.
That day, I couldn’t.
My real problem, the one that caused me extreme discomfort, was the girl in the next room.
My boots clomped on the wood floor as I peered inside two rooms that stunk of old cigarette smoke before I reached hers. She sat on a pink bedspread in the third room, legs crossed as she leaned against the wall. “Is he dead?”
“It doesn’t matter.” I didn’t go near her but took in her dyed hair, pink tips on her dark strands. She let them fall over her face and down her shoulders like she wanted to hide behind them. “Let’s pack you a bag and get you to a friend’s house. Do you have a contact at CPS?”
She laughed, but her smile didn’t meet her eyes. She stared out of the window, and I wondered how many times she’d contemplated running away. “I’m not calling them. They knew what Marvin was.”
“Katie,” I sighed. “Not all of CPS is bad. The world dealt you a fucked-up hand.”
Her eyes cut to me, glistening silver like a sharpened blade. “He paid someone at CPS. They aren’t all bad, sure. But that guy was. They’re all getting a cut. The girl that was here before, she told me . . .”
She choked back a sob and brought her arm up to cover her cry. She straightened then and wiped away the tears so roughly they left red marks on her cheeks. “They get thousands for having men visit us. Over and over and over again, Rome. Before that, her ownfamilybefore was selling her for years. The world is fucked up. I’m not calling CPS, not calling anyone I don’t trust now. I’ve got friends. They’ll come get me.”