"Not feeling is no replacement for reality. Your problems today are still your problems tomorrow."
—Larry Michael Dredla
LISA
As I entered our bedroom, I immediately tripped over Jen's shoe. Catching myself, I picked up the red heel, and threw it into the corner.
"Your shoe almost killed me," I called out to the closed bathroom door while tendrils of steam snaked out at its base.
Turning on the television, I pulled off my tie and removed my shoes.
"Good evening, I'm Andrea Salvia, and tonight we bring you more in the ongoing investigation regarding the recent FBI debacle. In only a month, five federal agents have either been murdered or charged with felonies. Meanwhile, the head of the FBI, Avian Doers, was spotted rubbing elbows with D.C.'s one percent at the Opera."
"It looks as if the public has finally caught on," I yelled, as I stood up to take off my shirt.
I listened to the silence and paused when she didn't yell back in reply. She always yelled back, and nine out of ten times it was with an invitation to join her.
"Jen?" I moved to the door.
She still didn't answer.
"Jen." I opened the door and froze the moment I stepped in. She stood in the shower, fully clothed, as the water poured upon her. Rushing towards her, I turned the shower off, thanking God that it wasn't scalding hot, yet she remained standing there, not moving.
"Jen!" I yelled directly in her face, as I shook her.
She blinked a few times and wiped the water from her face before she looked at me confused.
"What are you doing?" she asked me.
"What am I doing?" I tried not to yell. "What the hell are you doing? You're fully dressed and standing in the shower."
She looked herself over with no expression, then moved to take off her black dress and underwear before she stepped around me. Grabbing one of the white towels for her body and a smaller one for her hair, she wordlessly left the bathroom.
"I'm fine Lisa," she said as I followed her.
"Bullshit. What happened to you?"
She said nothing as she continued to dry her hair.
"Jennie."
"Will you stop saying my name as though I'm a child?!"
"I will the moment you stop acting like one."
"I said I was fine!" she screamed at me.
"And I call bullshit!" I yelled as I reached for her but she pulled away. "Someone who is fine does not stand in the shower, spaced out and fully dressed."
"Keep yelling, Lisa, the whole damn city hasn't heard you yet!" she snapped, as she stormed off towards her closet and slammed the door behind her.
With a sigh, I moved to the door and rested beside it. I jiggled the handle, trying to open it, but she must have been leaning against the door.
"Wife, open the door and let me in. This is not the type of fighting I like to do with you," I whispered.
"Lisa, I'm fine."
"Every time you say you're fine, I get more pissed off because I know you're lying to me. I thought we were over with this? I thought we were partners; that you would—"
She opened the door and glared at me. "Don't try to guilt me into anything."
"I'm trying to be honest with you."
"Lisa." She sighed deeply as she turned away from me and grabbed a clean set of underwear. "I had a moment."
"A moment?" I asked slowly, waiting for her continue.
"Yes, Lisa, a moment! A lot has happened and I couldn't breathe, okay. Sometimes I feel like I'm—" she stopped before turning to me. Dressed in only her underwear, she propped her hands on her hips but didn't look at me. Instead she looked up at the light fixture, as she chewed on her bottom lip.
"Sometimes you feel like what?" I whispered, taking a step forward.
"Like I'm still running across Europe, still fighting for my life. I wake up sometimes and I have to sit and hold myself together. There are other times that I remember things and my skin burns, my veins feel as though they've been lit on fire, and I have to cool down," she confessed. I found myself speechless.
How in the hell had I missed that? She was still fucking suffering? Jesus Christ.
"Jen—"
"Do not look at me like that, I'm handling it. I just need time, okay? You haven't caught me before and they're becoming less frequent. It's only when I'm stressed—"
Wrapping my arms around her, I held her close.
"I don't need a hug."
"Jen, shut up and just stand here with me."
"Lisa—"
"You're still talking."
With a sigh, she stood in my embrace, tense and annoyed, but soon her body relaxed and she laid her head against my chest. A few moments later, she wrapped her arms around me.
"You should have told me, Jen."
"There's nothing you could have done," she whispered.
"I can be there. Why is it so hard for you to let anyone be there for you?" It always came back to the same issue.
"I'm trying, Lisa. You have no idea how hard this is for me. It's always been me, it's going to take me time, but you can't treat me differently or pity me." She pulled away from me. "I can still do my job, and that includes seeing our son before we go."
I let go of her as she grabbed a pair of pants and one of my dark t-shirts.
"What are we planning?"
"Tonight, we're going to stalk Avian." She donned her boots before she pulled out not one, but two guns, and threw them to me.
"Stalk him or kill him?" I was fine with either option.
"For now, stalk. We're going to the White House tomorrow and I'm sure he's going to try to kill us again. Change your shoes, we might be running," she demanded.
"Don't we have men for this?"
"Wouldn't you rather make sure it's done properly? Or are you above all this now, Ms. Manoban?"
Rolling my eyes, I checked the chamber of the gun. "Remember when all we used to do was handle drugs? I miss that."
"We can get back to that the moment we kill my dear grandfather. But until then, we do whatever we need to, even if that means jumping across buildings."
"Why the hell would we be jumping across buildings?"
She grinned. "Just think of it as my version of a date."
"You're enjoying this?" What the fucking hell?
"I used to do this for my father. How did you think I stole that red diamond when I was eighteen?"
My brain worked overtime to follow her logic.
"So what you're saying is, if our dates were more Mission Impossible, and less candlelight, you wouldn't bitch so much at me?"
Her eyebrow twitched. "I'm going to see Ethan now, get ready."
"Yes, ma'am, would like to me to roll over too?" I was starting to enjoy pushing her buttons.
"Perché non basta giocare morti, ass." She snapped at me.
"Why don't I play dead? Ora che non è cosa piacevole dolce."
She looked at me in complete surprise as I grinned. "Five months in the joint, I had more than enough time to learn your language."
"Firstly," she said a little too seductively, "never say joint. Secondly, you said 'Now that is not nice thing sweet' but good try."
She winked before she turned and walked out.
Damn I loved her.
It was moments like these that make up for everything else.
JENNIE
I took a deep breath as I stepped out of our bedroom. I was torn between smiling at the effort she'd shown, and slapping myself for allowing her to worry. I'd never wanted her to see me like that. I don't know what happened, one moment everything was fine, I was checking over my plans for tonight, and the next moment, I was standing in the shower. I hadn't lied to her, over the last few weeks moments like that had all but faded away. I just needed to be with her and Ethan. When I was, the rest of the world seemed to drift away...I'd been feeling so unlike myself, and truthfully, I liked it.
I headed down the hall towards the back door, Evelyn had taken Ethan out to sit under the stars. The whole back yard was surrounded by high hedges to block any line of sight in.
They'd thought that we were insane for blocking the view of the city when we'd had the hedges planted. But my gut told me to be mindful of snipers. All of Ethan's clothes, including his beanie hats, were custom made with Kevlar. If I could, I would've placed Ethan in a safe room until this was all over.
When this was over, I needed to spend more time with him.
Reaching the back of the house, I stopped at the glass doors where Mina stood. Her arms were crossed and her face displayed no expression as she stared at Ethan in Evelyn's arms. She wore a floor-length red gown that had a slit that ran up to her thigh, and white heels. From where I stood, she didn't even look like she was breathing. It was haunting, in an odd way.
"Can I help you with something?" I asked, as I walked up beside her.
She said nothing for a moment before she wiped away a single tear.
How sad.
"I was good to him," she whispered, without looking at me. "While you were gone, I made sure he wanted for nothing. I sat by his side, I read him to sleep, I cried with him when he had his ear infection. I was there and then you came back and you do what you always do. You treat me like shit. Why?" Finally, she turned to me. "Why do you hate me so much?"
"Because you are a liar, Mina." I took a step towards her. "You want things that are not yours. You are a spoiled child. At first I thought the problem was your morality. You go on and on about how horrible Lisa and I are. How horrible this family is. You almost had me believing that you didn't want this life. If that were the case, I think I could have almost come to respect you in time. But sadly, it isn't."
Again, I stepped towards her and she flinched, but didn't move back.
"Instead, Mina, every time you told me how horrid I was, you were trying to convince yourself that you did not want to be me. For some reason, you can handle men being in control, but you have to outdo all the women in your life. It's why you tried to keep Victoria below you, and why you cozied up to Evelyn. I'm guessing it's the rape, they broke you and you chose not to fix yourself. Instead, you married into a big, powerful family and hid behind Bambam.
"You thought that was strength. But I entered your life and I shattered your pathetic little world. I tried to make you stronger, I helped you get your revenge, but you resent me, not because you disliked it, but because I gave you that power. I have the child, I have the family, and I have the power. My hatred for you is a direct consequence of your lust for what is mine, even those shoes," I said and pointed to the white shoes that she wore upon her feet. "You started a war. So don't cry because you're losing."
"You're insane." She shook her head as her pink lips quivered.
"Mina. Sweet, Mina," I said as I placed my hand on her cheek. "You haven't seen anything yet."
Moving away from her, I stepped onto the porch. Ethan giggled and reached for me the second he saw me. I took him from Evelyn's arms and spun him around.
"Ethan!" I laughed. And we both giggled as I pulled him to my chest. I kissed his face as he smacked my own.
"I vaguely remember a woman once telling me she doesn't know how to be a mother," Evelyn snickered as she studied me.
I looked to Ethan, who happily sucked on his pacifier while watching my face. "I have no idea what she's talking about," I told him.
"Of course not," Evelyn said for him, as her eyes softened at the sight of us. "You remind me of myself when I first had Bambam."
"Is that a good thing?" Knowing Bambam, that could have been taken both ways.
"Yes, it is. Are you going out?"
I nodded, not wanting to release Ethan.
"This will be over soon and I'll be back to tuck you in," I whispered into his ear. Lisa came out as I spoke, dressed semi-casually with better shoes. She came over to us and Ethan rolled in my arms, trying to grab her daddy.
"Well, I can see who your favorite is," I said as I frowned and handed him over to Lisa. Not a second later, Ethan was pulling on Lisa's hair.
"Nice to see you too." Lisa winced, as she reached up to separate Ethan's little hands from her hair.
"Are you both heading out with Bambam and Mina?" Marco asked as he came out to join us.
"I wasn't aware that they were leaving," I said, as I looked towards Lisa who nodded, as Ethan smacked her lips.
"Apparently they're having a date night," Lisa informed me.
"A date night?"
"Can't be blood and gore all the time. The moment this is all over, Marco and I will be going back to Thailand for a while," Evelyn said with a grin while Marco kissed her cheek.
"A long while," he added.
"Before we take any victory laps, let's win the war," Lisa responded, as she placed Ethan into their arms. He reached for us again and I kissed his little hands goodbye.
"Be safe," Evelyn said.
Nodding, we both left them and walked towards the garage where Lisa had an old Ford 1963 Mustang waiting for us. It looked so misplaced parked behind the mansion.
"This is new," I said, as I ran my hands over the dark blue paint.
"It is," she replied, taking the driver's seat. She drove off the second I got in without even giving me the chance to buckle myself in.
"What's wrong?" I asked, leaning back.
She pulled out her phone. "Play it."
Taking it, I listened.
"Hello, Bambam?"
"Victoria..."
"Bambam, what's wrong?"
"Everything, Victoria."
I wasn't sure if I want to laugh or throw the phone out the damn window after I'd finished listening to their whole conversation. Looking to Lisa, her jaw was tense and she gripped the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles whitened.
"Is é mo dheartháir amadán." (My brother is a fool.) She snapped in a rage.
"He's chosen to be loyal," I said and she snorted.
"What good is loyalty when he's weak, thoughtless, and a motherfucking pain in my ass? I've been trying to wrap my head around why he thought it was a good idea to use our anniversary as a test for Mina. His stupidity once again almost cost us our fucking lives. And Victoria, who gave her the right to keep this from us? Since when did they have to right to even fucking think for themselves? They wait for our directions and then acted on our accord, not their own. It's as if they were children!"
She stopped at the light and pinched the bridge of her nose before she took a deep breath.
"Are you pissed that they acted on their own, or pissed because they ruined our anniversary?" I asked.
She looked to me and frowned. "Do you know how long it took me to plan everything?"
"So it's the anniversary."
"Why aren't you more pissed about this?"
"Because if you'd stop barking at me for a moment, you'd see that this works in our favor. Bambam, stupid as he may be, still chose this family over Mina. We know now for a fact that Mina is against us, though it was hard to deny it before. If we allow Bambam to give us more, we now have the ability to fuck with Avian."
"Do you really think he can accomplish that?" she muttered. "Mina has been holding his balls for years."
"Only time will tell, but right now we have our proof. As for Victoria, she's shocked me."
She snickered, as she shook her head at me. "Someone's managed to shock Bloody Jen?"
Rolling my eyes, I placed my feet on the dashboard. "Yes, I might have a plan for her later."
"Care to share?"
"No. Now, do you know where we're going?" I asked her as I looked out the window. It was as though she was just driving around for the sake of driving.
She a glared at me and I waited a moment before I pulled out my phone and opened the GPS.
LISA
Three hours passed and I'd only been able to calm down a little bit. We were now in view of Avian's penthouse. But I couldn't stop thinking about Bambam. I wanted to take him by the neck and knock his motherfucking face in. I was eighteen when my father told me that I, not Bambam, was going to take over for him. When I asked him why, he said that one day I would understand. I'd always thought it was because I was his favorite, but I now understood. Bambam was literally incompetent. I could already see myself spending the rest of my life cleaning up after his utter stupidity. Part of me almost wished he had betrayed me so that I could just kill him and be done with it...only a small part of me did though.
But he chose family. He's loyal.
That made up for a lot. Almost everything.
"I'm counting six agents," Jen whispered, as she looked through the scope of her sniper rifle.
Looking through the binoculars, Avian's penthouse apartment was in perfect view from the skyscraper we'd broken into. We could see right into his Italian styled home. The entire penthouse was surrounded by large, open windows. It was as though he was daring us to try.
"The glass is a quarter inch thick, and I have no doubt in my mind that it's bulletproof." She added, as she remained hunched over. As far as I knew, we weren't going to kill anyone tonight, but she insisted on wasting our time by doing this.
When I didn't speak, she looked to me, eyeing me carefully. "You think this is a waste of time," she stated.
"If we aren't going to kill him, I see no point in watching him solve crossword puzzles all night." That was all the man did; he sat in his silk robe and finished crosswords in old newspapers. Every few hours he walked to the window to smoke a cigar, and then he moved on to the next fucking crossword. If he was trying to drive me insane, it was fucking working.
She released the rifle, and it looked as though she was trying to think of nice way to bitch at me.
"Lisa," she said gently, and I wanted to laugh, but instead I smirked at her, as I sat against the wall next to the window.
"Don't go all 'sweet wife' on me now. Go on, I can take it," I said.
Her eyebrow twitched. "I'm working on trying to be kinder to you, but you're a pain in my motherfucking ass sometimes, Manoban. Why in the goddamn hell is it so hard for you to sit down, shut up and just—"
"There's my Jen. I thought you had drowned in a vat of rainbows and pixie dust."
The look on her face as well as the fact that her hand was now twitching towards her gun made me smile. As if I didn't already have enough bullet scars from her.
"Do you enjoy pissing me off?"
"In the beginning, your mood swings drove me crazy, now I find them kind of hot."
That did it; she drew her gun and pointed it at my head.
I grinned. "Put that away before you hurt yourself, love."
Her hands clenched into fists and I waited for it, but she stopped, pulled her gun back, and shook her head at me.
"You son of a bitch. You're trying to entertain yourself because you're bored. If we fight, you'll end up fucking me on the floor."
"I'm definitely not that desperate," I lied and she knew it.
She sighed loudly. "He's been watching us for years Lisa. He knows when we sleep, when we eat, he's watched us fight and only God knows what else. The man has basically been living with us and we were blind to it. Yes, I know this is not your forte, and if you want, I can do this part alone. But when I said I was done with this motherfucker, I meant it. I'm going to be better at his game. He got into my head, but I'm going to get into his very soul. I want to know what he does and when he does it, even if that means I'm out here every night. I'm going to be his fucking shadow. He doesn't get the right to sleep soundly at night. He fucked with our family and I'm going to fuck with his legacy, with his life."
She looked back into the scope and watched him again. Rising, I looked out the window, staring at the man who was once again smoking a cigar. The smoke came out of his mouth in rings. He looked deep in thought, and perhaps this was how he came up with all his fucked up ideas of how to kill us. An agent stood right in front of Avian on the balcony, watching the surroundings from all angles while sporting a bulletproof vest.
I wonder if they know what type of man they're protecting.
At least with our men, they knew who we are and what we did. Avian was a different type of monster.
"Kill the agent," I demanded.
"He'll know—"
"I want him to know. I want him to feel us closing in on him. Kill the agent."
She pulled the trigger, and hit the agent between the eyes; the man fell back against the glass before sliding down it. Avian, still safely inside, let out one more puff of smoke. He tapped the bullet in window before he looked around, scanning the buildings. He didn't seem fazed by his agent's death; however, the other agents around him scrambled.
Jen broke down her rifle in seconds. "That's our cue to leave. I give it an hour before they start checking all of these building."
"The shot heard around the world," I said, as I looked into Avian's home. "I want to know where he's going next."
"Look who's joined the party," Jen said as she stood at the door and waited for me to follow.
I couldn't wait to shake Avian's hand tomorrow when we got back to the White House.