His final screams rebounded in the basement.
When I finished decorating his face like a Christmas tree, I sliced his throat open and let him bleed out like an animal.
Then I carved a cross into his chest à la De la Croix style.
The halls were quiet and empty as I trudged my way to my room in the west wing, the night’s events having exhausted me. I craved a drink, a cigar, and the words penned by my wife.
Her stories were becoming an integral part of my nights and I was suddenly unable to go to bed without reading her writing. I knew it stemmed from my need to feel close to her.
I’d been thinking about my wife incessantly for days and like a miracle, she manifested right in front of my eyes. By the bay window, the moonlight kissing her silhouette,mon angesat on a chair next to a small marble table housing a chess set.
The universe guided me to the only heaven I’d ever known.
Darla was so concentrated on the game that she startled when I towered over her, my sins drenching me from top to bottom. The faint smell of gunpowder and blood stuck to my frame like a clingy lover.
She cursed and placed a hand over her heart. “My God, Zeno. What are you doing?”
The softness in her voice returned an ounce of humanity back into me. The punisher lay at rest around her, for she would never be subjected to my violent side. Not now. Not ever.
“What areyoudoing?”
Darla swallowed, eyeing my busted knuckles. “Rough day at work?”
My lips twitched into a smile. “You can say that.”
“Are you okay?” she murmured, taking inventory of my face. She lingered on the bruise near my cheekbone, the only time Geoffrey clocked me when I stuffed him in the trunk of my car.
I liked that she cared to ask. Sparing her the details of tonight, I replied, “I am, Darla.”
She didn’t say anything more and I took a seat opposite her. “Why are you playing chess at two a.m.?”
“I’m not really playing. Just studying the pieces, I guess. I’m no good at chess, but I’d like to be.”
I chin-nodded at the scattered board. “I can play with you…if you’d like.”
Pathetic. I sounded like a schoolboy asking his first crush out on a date.
“Why aren’t you sleeping?” she inched, brushing a hand down her waist. Tonight, she wore a floor-length silk nightie that did nothing to hide her pebbled nipples. My cock woke up from a deep slumber, pressing against the seam of my trousers.
“Why aren’tyousleeping?” I arranged the chess pieces and turned the board around so she was white.
Darla smiled a little sadly and flipped the board back around so I was white. “I struggle to sleep sometimes. My mind races and I can’t get it to slow down unless I’m bone-deep exhausted.”
I paused, my fingers wrapped around a white pawn. “Have you seen a doctor?”
“Yes, but I hate taking pills.” She shrugged. “My sleeping patterns have gotten a bit better over the last few weeks, but sometimes I have nights like these.”
That eased my worry a smidge.
“Sometimes reading helps.” Romero was right. I was fucking transparent.
“Hm.” She moved a pawn forward. “And what do you read?”
I focused on the blood speckles inked into the blackness of my dress shirt and the cross hanging down my neck to avoid looking at her. “Your stories.”
The air between us heated like a growing balefire.
Darla peered at me through her lashes, looking hurt. “Are you mocking me?”