Page 31 of Refrain (Beautiful Monsters #2)

CHAPTER TWENTY

ESPI

Fuck.

I never used to smoke in bed, making it the one place that didn’t reek of ash. Better to be safe than sorry. I knew a druggie once who lit up half-asleep and set himself on fire.

She changed that. I wake up with a cig already in my mouth. The first thing I do is feel around for my lighter and flick the flame with my eyes still closed. One puff and the risk is worth it—I’d burn alive rather than feel what I do when I see her face. When I hear her voice.

In a way, she makes me feel like Dante. Out of fucking control. Or maybe more like him … Sick. Deluded. Like father, like son.

A cold shower is the only weapon I have against her. I stagger into the bathroom while I inhale the rest of the cig, and then I wrench the showerhead on, grappling for control. The shitty water pressure won’t help much. I need a damn tsunami to knock her out of my system.

The reaction doesn’t make any damn sense. I’ve had women come onto me before. I’ve seen them naked. Barely a night can go by at Mulligan’s without someone shaking their ass in my face .

But no one looks at me the way she does. Hell, most people wouldn’t dare. Little Miss Yellow. She’s a cigarette, demanding my sole attention or she’ll set my ass on fire.

Kind of like the one I’m smoking now. I flinch as hot ash trickles from the overgrown end and burns through my sweatpants. I flick it off and pat myself down, but the pain lingers. Like her scent. Like this hard-on.

The burn of nicotine doesn’t diminish the ache in my stomach.

I’m too damn wound. I have to toss the cigarette into the toilet bowl and slide a hand beneath my waistband.

I roughly grab my dick, squeezing it at the root, desperate to cut off all fucking feeling.

It doesn’t help. I pump my hand along the shaft, squeezing my eyes shut to block my surroundings out.

The physical touch does nothing. I have to envision it… I have to see her riding high on the pole, her legs splayed, her breasts swaying. It’s not even her body that gets me off though. It’s those eyes. The hunger in them. That need. Like she might actually feel whatever the fuck I do.

“Shit.” My hand flies out, my palm hitting the wall. The fire building in the base of my stomach spreads, but it needs more fucking fuel. Like the feel of her skin. The gasp she let out when I touched her. The feel of her nipples grazing my palm. And then her pussy…

A grunt rips from my throat. My hand keeps moving. Faster. Harder. I only have to imagine what it would be like to thrust inside her and I come so hard that my ears pop with the force of it. I’m still in a daze when I shake the hot cum from my fingers and climb into the shower.

I stay here until my teeth start to chatter.

Until every inch of me is numb. Then I climb out, get dressed, and head out.

When I reach Mulligan’s, Arno is already there, taking up a stool near the bar.

When he sees me, he just grunts and lifts a shot glass in salute.

Domi’s at the bar counter behind him, and Ksei…

She’s in the corner, a broom in her hand. The bruise around her throat looks even worse in the daylight, but she wears it like someone who’s been through worse— healed from worse.

I turn my back on her and seek out Francisco. I need a job. Something to take my mind off Dante. Arno’s no fucking use when he’s this deep into the bottle, but Frank already has a task in mind.

“I need your expertise,” he tells me when I find him in the back, moving crates of liquor into the basement, where Arno stores the good stuff. “Arno won’t like it, but the fucker won’t talk.”

“What is it?” My stomach clenches the same way it does at the mention of any new “side job.” I’ve tried to rationalize it in so many ways. At the end of the day, it was even a hobby of sorts. Some people fix cars in their spare time. Mow lawns. Clean gutters. The busywork no one else wants to do.

We all have our quirks, I guess. Mine’s no different—I tell myself that repeatedly. Whatever helps me sleep at night.

“One of our Russian friends survived Arno’s fun and games,” he says under his breath. “He knows something, but he won’t fucking talk. I think you should try to convince him before Arno gets bored and snuffs out this lead.”

“A lead,” I echo. “This have anything to do with the real reason why he had me try to get up Vlad’s ass?”

He might have lost his shit even more than usual, but Arno’s not entirely insane.

He wouldn’t push me toward the Russians without a reason—a much better one than the gun-running excuse he fed me when I asked.

It has to be something deeper than that.

Something he couldn’t ask the Russians outright. Something more than just Dante.

Francisco knows what, at least more than I do. He’s not willing to tell me though. His loyalty to Arno goes deeper than any favors I could ever deliver. “Just trust me on this. You know how he gets when he’s desperate. ”

I know, all right—better than anyone. “He gets sloppy. I’ll do it. I just gotta get my kit.”

“Thanks, kid,” Francisco says. He’s smart enough not to sound too grateful though. He still has a soul in there somewhere. Maybe in any other situation, it wouldn’t come to this. “I know it isn’t easy on you. But this fucker is a real piece of shit. Trust me—He deserves it—”

“I’ll get my kit.” The excuse takes me away from him, but not far enough. If I had to get the stuff I keep at the house, maybe I would change my mind along the way. But, whether out of convenience or guilt, I’ve learned to keep a spare kit at the bar.

When I approach the counter, all of those old concerns I’ve pushed to the back of my mind rise again. I’m running low on equipment. I need new thread. New narcs…

“Hey!” Domi flashes me a smile when I slip past her and snag a black case from underneath the sink.

Someone, probably Francisco, wrote FIRST AID KIT, DON’T FUCKING TOUCH on the plastic surface, and I have to snort at the irony as I return to the back.

Francisco’s already waiting for me near the basement. When he opens the door, moaning mixed with laughter wafts out. I can tell just from the stench alone that Arno’s done a fucking number on this guy already.

“You ready?” Francisco asks as his gaze flickers over his shoulder to make sure we’re alone.

I just shrug and fish a cigarette from my pocket. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

It takes ten minutes. That’s the funny thing about the human psyche.

Some people break in seconds. Some take hours.

The length of time reflects nothing on the strength of the person though.

It just shows how much shit they’ve already suffered through.

Endurance is like scar tissue. It builds up over time, uglier and cruder than normal skin.

A knife can easily tear through most flesh, but when it’s scarred, you might have to saw a little.

As expected, the sawing can get messy. There’s blood everywhere, speckling the floor and the table like sloppy graffiti.

I fucking taste it whenever I lay off the cig hanging from the corner of my mouth.

So I drag again, flicking ash onto my knee.

The shit burns, but my hands are too busy to swipe the embers away.

The left one adjusts the knife in its grip while the right pins a trembling wrist against the table.

“Last time,” I say. There’s no point in putting any ice into my tone. I just sigh when the bastard sitting across from me doesn’t answer.

He’s gritting his teeth together so hard that a vein’s pulsing in his forehead, but the pathetic sounds he makes slip out. He won’t take his eyes off his hand. What remains of it. Shock will set in fast if he doesn’t talk soon.

I tell him as much. “I’d say you got about an hour before you really start feeling the blood loss.”

The bastard whimpers, turning his head away.

“Fuck this shit.” Francisco’s at my shoulder. He’s impatient. The longer this takes, the more likely it is that Arno might stumble down here and crash our little party. “Do what it takes to speed this up,” he grunts in my ear.

The magic words. One more drag on my cig gives me enough of a hit to drown out the scent of salt.

As the butt glows red, I lift the knife.

The tip gleams, even beneath a smear of ruby liquid.

I lower the edge close to my handiwork. The guy has one-third of his pinkie finger left, clinging by a sliver of sinew and a chunk of bone.

It’s not the most elegant of jobs, but it gets the point across.

As long as the fucker talks, he’ll keep the finger. If not…

“Wait! Wait, wait!”

So the asshole speaks. Whatever he has to say, I don’t want to fucking hear it. Instead, I push back from the table, letting Francisco take my seat. He takes the knife without a word; we’ve played this game before.

“I’ll take it from here,” Francisco says.

Two other men lurk in the corners, ready to jump in if shit goes off. Stitching the guy up can wait until later.

It takes a shot of whiskey, and a few good drags on a fresh cig before I can push the images out of my head—far enough away, at least. The icy air helps when I shove the door to the bar open and step outside.

My fingers are cramping, but clenching them into fists doesn’t help.

Neither does slamming them against the rusted dumpster outside Mulligans.

I have to drag my bruising knuckles against the first brick wall, the skin ripping off from the friction.

The faster I walk, the deeper the pain. The reddish streaks I leave behind are a new form of graffiti.

They tell the story of a pathetic punk too stupid and weak to skip town. So what does he do?

He sells his fucking soul.

“Fuck!” I shout, startling a woman gazing from an apartment building across the street. Evading her curious stare, I cut through an alley. Then another. Another.