Alex sat facing a dark row of hedges, his back against the neighbor's side-yard shed. He and Nick watched the lit windows of their target's house. A sort of play was being acted out by the inhabitants in silhouette. And much like at an actual play, they were having a hard time mustering up enthusiasm from the audience.
"I think I have mud on my pants," Nick said.
Alex preferred to focus on the task at hand: the tense waiting, the fear of being discovered and even the chill that crept in through the mud they were likely sitting in. Anything, if it would tune out what he feared was his final interaction with Octavia.
"There," Nick said, pointing. "The bedroom light just went out."
Alex set the timer on his watch. The average person fell asleep between twenty and thirty minutes after going to bed. At least the wait was nearly over.
"Is Octavia trying to leave with Victor?" Nick asked.
"It makes sense," Alex whispered. "He's already proven to her that he can break out. It doesn't force me to disobey Dominic. She gets to live and better than that – she's free."
"Dominic wouldn't let them go, and even if he did, she'd still be with Victor. At best, she's right back where she started."
Alex pictured Octavia, her hands stuffed in the pockets of that sweatshirt. "Does she have any resources, if she wanted revenge on him?" he asked.
"I gave her my keys. She needed a place to crash this afternoon and I didn't feel right turning her away."
"Just your room key?"
"I knew we were taking your car tonight, so I gave her the ring. She can't use the car key unless she gets outside, and I don't see how Victor could get her out of there without the two of us to manipulate." He looked down, considering the blow his words dealt. "Did you give her anything?"
"Just the clothes she's wearing," Alex replied.
"She didn't sneak the gun from your holster again?"
Alex smiled reflexively, remembering the early night in which she'd frightened him with her resourcefulness. An alarm clock, a pocket knife and a gun, all stolen in one evening. He hadn't even known—
"Shit," Nick said.
"What is it?"
"There is a spare piece hidden in my room. She might have found it by now."
"If she has it, Victor has it." Alex was starting to panic, checking the clock on his phone and debating trying to race back.
"Or it could protect her from Victor," Nick insisted. "She knows how to handle a gun."
A new light came on in the kitchen window next to the garage. A much-needed lucky break. Alex looked down at his timer, which hadn't quite hit fifteen minutes yet, but the head and shoulders of a robe-clad figure appeared, opening the refrigerator. "He knows," Alex said.
"He doesn't know. Sometimes I think they feel it."
"Like animals before an earthquake," Alex replied.
Nick began to rise, brushing himself off. "Or he could just be hungry. Let's move."
#
Victor hadn't spent much time creating a viable excuse to see Dominic, which was good, because he didn't end up needing one. He just forced himself to knock politely at Dominic's office door at the appropriate time – a solid thirty minutes after seeing Nick and Alex leave – and tried to stay calm.
Dominic opened the door, the scent of expensive whiskey on his breath. "Are you ready to talk about what you did?" he asked, then smiled a tight, close-lipped smile.
"Of course," Victor replied.
He took a seat in front of Dominic's massive desk while making internal predictions: would there be a gun in one of the desk drawers, or was Dominic the sort of man who always kept one on him? Did other men have the resources to open the door if there was a commotion, or would they be helpless, listening as harm befell their boss? Victor quietly placed his bets.
"Let's hear it," Dominic said.
"Last time I suspected. This time I know what you did."
"Your apology isn't off to a very good start. But also, I do more than one thing in a day, so would you care to be more specific?"
Victor rubbed his hands over the arms of the chair, warming them. "You raped my fiancé. Is that specific enough, or do you do a lot of that in a day? She has black hair, if that helps. She was the one screaming for you to stop."
Dominic cleared his throat, leaning back in his desk chair. "What's your angle here, Victor?" he asked. "What are you hoping to accomplish?"
"Deny it, you son of a bitch. I dare you." Victor had to admit, he was thrilled. His arms broke out in goose bumps. He itched to get down to it but at the same time, he wanted the anticipation to last forever.
"Who's your source?"
"The only source that matters. She told me herself."
Dominic hummed an unfortunate note, shaking his head. "She's not as trustworthy as you want to believe. Let me show you something." He cued a program on the laptop before turning the computer around. On the screen, Octavia was naked and stretching on the tips of her toes, kissing Alex on the mouth. Victor would have looked for a timestamp except he could see the fresh cuts on her legs and stomach in the freeze-frame. "This happened after you got back the other night," Dominic said.
"I can see that."
"But this isn't the worst of it." He tapped the keyboard and the black-and-white footage started to roll. Alex wore the suit Victor had seen him in when he and Nick broke into the hotel room. In the video, he appeared to gently reject her advances. He was still playing the gentlemen and it stung because she wanted him, even when he didn't appear to want her back. Victor would have killed for that kind of attention. He was going to.
Dominic's view was of the back of the computer, but he still looked uncomfortable at the whispering of the sound feed from the computer's speaker. "I don't want to see this kind of thing," he told Victor, "but the cameras are a form of roll-call. They tell me who's here and who's out, at a glance. I don't get anything out of this."
"Is there footage of you in her room, too? Is that what you're telling me?"
"No." Dominic's jaw hardened. "I'm asking you if this looks like the wounded veneer of a victim of sexual assault."
Victor didn't want to watch the screen but this candid look at her infidelity compelled him in all of its grainy, monochromatic glory. It was like watching a different woman. She was boldly peeling away the layers of Alex's suit, dropping them to the floor. Victor locked his hands on the chair under him so they would stop shaking. "Maybe," he said. "You think you're such a man that you ruined her for life? That she would never sleep with anyone ever again? She told me what you did and I believe her."
"I can see that I'm not getting through to you. Maybe I should say this more slowly." Dominic leaned forward and began to close the laptop when Victor's palm-heel strike came across the desk and crashed into him. Dominic was launched back a short distance to the wall. He landed with a crunch and his knees buckled. Quickly, there was blood. It trailed out from under his hand where it cradled his nose.
There was a momentary look of confusion, disbelief, and then the next blow came.
#
There was no reason this job should have felt any different from a job he'd done two or six months ago. Alex had gone into private residences when jobs called for it; he'd even taken out targets with innocents on site. He had to be faster and quieter, sure. Sometimes he would take his gun in one hand and a decorative throw pillow in the other and make one swift movement to shield the sound. To make sure he could extract himself, unnoticed, afterward. Maybe it was the throbbing pain, re-emerging, from his orbital bone and radiating across his skull; maybe it was the aftereffects of the medication.
Nick grabbed his arm, pulling him sharply away from the kitchen window. "I did not waste an hour of planning so you could improv this thing," he whisper-shouted. Behind them, the yellow rectangle of the window and its sheer white curtains bounced away.
It shouldn't have been any different. Alex just knew that it was, that it could ruin his performance. They crouched at the door on the side of the garage while Nick inserted his lock pick gun.
"He could be back upstairs by the time I get in," Alex said.
"Imagining the worst will not make this go any faster."
There were a lot of worst-case scenarios, though. The target's family was asleep upstairs – a wife, a teenage boy and a little girl. A high-stakes game of Operation, where everything outside of the thin shape of their man meant failure.
The final pin clicked into place and they were in the garage. Nick took out a flashlight and waited while Alex pulled the Walther PP from his ankle holster and added the suppressor. "The kitchen is basically the next room," Nick told him, "so I won't go in unless you signal me."
"If he's still in the kitchen, won't he hear your lock pick gun?"
Nick put a finger to his lips, then tested the knob with a half-turn. It slid easily. "Good luck," he mouthed.
#
Victor scrambled out of his chair and around the desk. His first bet had paid off: Dominic reached under his suit jacket with his good hand, but Victor got there first. He was rewarded with an M11 handgun and, after some searching, a cell phone. He dumped them onto Dominic's chair and rolled it away roughly with his foot. So what if the anticipation was done? There was still joy to be had.
He hefted Dominic off the ground, throwing him over the edge of the desk. It wasn't easy – Dominic scrambled and fought him – so he grabbed what he could of his grey-brown hair, lifted his face and cracked it against the desk until the fight went out of him. He was still awake, which was important, and moaned into the polished mahogany.
There was a knock at the door and a muffled question, but no one came in. He'd been right about that one, too. It made sense. Dominic didn't trust anyone and seemed to hate company.
"Hey," Victor said. "Can you hear me?"
A groan in response.
"Take off your belt."
There was a long moment in which Victor wondered if Dominic was processing information at all. His back rounded as he breathed, his hands dragging over the desk to protect his face.
Victor wrenched them behind his back. "You had to do it like this. She would have never stopped fighting you from the front." He reached under Dominic, wrestling until the leather belt came loose. He slapped it across the desk next to him, then tugged back Dominic's dress slacks. A pair of fine, silk shorts. Dominic twisted and wrenched under Victor's hold, spitting soundless words against the desk. "Don't worry. I don't want to see this. This does nothing for me," Victor told him. The elastic waist of the shorts snapped back, revealing a pair of skinny, white buttocks.
The moaning was louder then, defiant. "Stop."
"What's that?" Victor asked.
"Stop." The blood formed a gooey puddle under his face. "Please stop."
"I know what you're thinking, Sir, but I wouldn't hurt you like this. Not when you're bent over and vulnerable."
A sigh of relief.
"Do you know why?"
Dominic's ragged breath fanned the blood. "Why?"
"Because sex isn't a weapon, you piece of shit. It's something you do with the person you love."