The King and the Courtesan (48 page)

I could have gotten out of there without being noticed, but the girl saw me and screamed, “Help!”

Blade whipped around and saw me. His rage almost evaporated on the spot. With a sleazy smile, he grabbed the girl by the hair and smashed her face against the car window. She shrieked and then collapsed to the asphalt, her breathing ragged. There was blood all over her face—probably from a broken nose. Blade never killed women, but he certainly never left them unharmed. Luckily, he’d never beat up on me much. As Ezekiel said, I had a talent for being a good, obedient girl.

“Melissa, how good to see you,” he said. “Long time no see. It’s been a few weeks now, hasn’t it?”

“I need to find Kayle,” I said.

“Kayle?” Blade kicked the girl when she whimpered, then turned back to where I still stood at the end of the block. “Haven’t seen him in a while. Who knows what he’s up to. Maybe he skipped town.”

“That isn’t possible,” I said, fear closing up my throat.

“There’s always Nebbie,” Blade said with a grin.

“No.” Nebbie was cheaper than Kayle, but I’d heard so many horror stories. Girls traumatized, girls scarred, girls
dead
three days later. Hell, I’d heard that a few had died on the spot, and in order to cover his own ass, Nebbie dumped them into the river. Kayle at least tried to keep his patients alive.

“Where’s Mimi?” Blade’s grin widened. “Isn’t she the one with the little…problem?”

“Whatever.” I turned to leave.

“You owe me money!” Blade called at my back.

“I don’t have it,” I said back.

Blade shrank the distance between us, snatching up my arm right before I finished crossing the street. He whipped me around and brought me close enough to smell the cigarettes on his breath. But I wasn’t afraid of him. In fact, I almost wished he’d shoot me. It was the only way to get out of this mess, and death had never seemed less scary than it did now.

“You owe me money,” he said slowly, in a low voice.

“I don’t have it,” I repeated, my voice just as even. I couldn’t believe it.
I wasn’t afraid
. I was always afraid. Ever since Mom’s boyfriend came into my room when I was little…I’d been afraid. For the first time, my heart didn’t race. My skin didn’t itch. My breathing didn’t grow heavy. No, I was calm. With my eyes, I challenged Blade to throw me down and put a bullet in my head. He could. I’d seen the gun poking out of the back of his pants.

He snorted and started hauling me toward the spot where the other girl still cringed. He threw me against the car, and I think I stepped on the girl’s fingers. She let out a long moan, mingled with a sob. I wanted to reach down and help her up, but I began to wonder if death was better for her, too.

“You’re a
stupid
bitch, you know that?” Blade shouted at me, finger in my face. “Don’t think you mean anything more to me than that slut does.” He pointed to the girl under my feet. “You’re all the same. You take my money and then you act like such fucking
snobs
when I ask for it back. I gave you time. Now I want my money.”

“You aren’t very original, are you? Honestly, Blade. Do you practice these lines in the mirror?”

Smack
. My head whipped to the side as Blade’s blow stung my cheek. I started laughing.

“Oh!” I chuckled. “
How original
!”

“Crazy bitch!” he shouted, pissed now. No one mocked Blade, e
specially
not a woman who had given him sexual favors. I was his dog, or perhaps his blow-up doll, something plastic and lifeless to be used for his own satisfaction. Blow-up dolls didn’t talk back. They were silent—always silent. If they talked, they became human.

He smacked me again. That one actually hurt. I bit the inside of my cheek, and blood dribbled down my chin.

“I’ll kill you, Melissa.” His hands closed around my throat, his pupils blown wide with rage. “You give me my money, or I’ll fucking
kill
you!”

“Go ahead,” I said, spitting out the blood that filled my mouth. “You’ll still be out two hundred bucks. So, who gets the last laugh?”

“You won’t live to laugh, slut!”

“Slut, whore, bitch. That’s like calling grass green and expecting it to get offended.” Hibernating anger began to wake up inside of me. It rose like a great lumbering bear, shaking off the snow and rubble to rush out into the sunshine. “You kill me, and you kill her. Nothing changes. You’ll still be the same exact piece of scum you always are, living off the leftovers of the rich and pretending it makes you one of them. But…you’ll always be Metro trash like the rest of us.”

Blade could only do what he knew—hit. He swung a leg up into my stomach, forcing a thin stream of vomit from my lips. I went down and he started kicking me—in the ribs, in the stomach, in the face.

A gun went off. His deltoid suddenly sprayed blood, and Blade stumbled away, cursing and holding a hand to his torn arm. Blood gushed down the tattooed skin.

I raised my head. All the bravery that had resurrected a fort inside of me vanished in a cloud of vapor. The fear came back, heavy and cold like a wet blanket, covering me and squeezing me tight.

At the end of the block was a black sedan. And not the one Victor had used to take me to Mimi’s. This was Ezekiel’s car, one of the few he actually drove on his own. There were two figures standing by it. One was in gray—Victor.

The other was undeniably Ezekiel.

It was surreal, seeing him there. Ezekiel was bathed in neon green light from a dingy bar sign, gun raised, wearing a suit so black it blended into the night around him. He was a spirit or some otherworldly creature, surrounded by that sick glow. I couldn’t see his eyes from here, but I could bet they were dead, blank, and still blue as the sky.

“What the fuck…” Blade whispered. He knew it was Ezekiel, too, but he probably didn’t want to.

Victor and Ezekiel came closer. Victor was taller, but no one was more intimidating than Ezekiel at that moment. Blade backed away and looked ready to run, but Ezekiel shot him in the knee, and he went down with a howl.

Victor stopped beside me, but Ezekiel kept going until he reached Blade. I’d never seen Blade truly afraid, but he was crying now. He tried to rise, tried to keep crawling, but Ezekiel raised a foot and stomped on the torn knee he’d shot. Blade wailed. Before Blade could even manage to form a plea, Ezekiel bent over and slammed the butt of his gun straight into Blade’s nose. There was a sickening
crunch
, and blood gushed down his face. Blade continued to scream. Ezekiel hit him again. And again. He beat down on Blade’s nose until Blade stopped shrieking—until blood, bone, and broken flesh covered what was left of Blade’s face and Ezekiel’s arms were completely saturated in fluids. Until Blade’s form was still.

The girl lying in the gutter by my side tried to get up, her breath coming in terrified gasps. I tried to grab her, tried to keep her down. But my fingers barely brushed the back of her leg by the time she was up.

She didn’t stay up for long.

Ezekiel whipped around and shot. The girl flew backwards, her back hitting the hood of the car, and then landed with a dull thud on the pavement. There was a bullet wound just to the left of her forehead leaking a trickle of blood. I stared at her dead body blankly, incapable of feeling horror—it would surely show up in a few minutes.

There was a long silence. If anyone had been on the street, they were gone now. It was just us, and I was too terrified to move. Victor still watched, emotionless, facing his employer with the same sort of look he’d been wearing before Blade’s gruesome murder.

Ezekiel was standing, panting lightly with his arms and legs slightly spread, still holding the gun. His eyes were on the ground, widened by the adrenaline of the hunt. Then, as if remembering where he was, he suddenly straightened, closed his eyes, and pushed a few errant hairs back in their place with blood-covered hands. He became a businessman again, the madman gone in a flash. He turned to Victor.

“That was unwise,” he said, his voice as cool as always.

“You were going to dispose of him soon anyway, sir.”

“Yes. Yes, I was.” He glanced down at his stained suit with a slight disdain, as if looking at a few wayward breadcrumbs in his lap. “This will need to be burned.”

“The bodies, sir?”

“Call Bruce and Garrett and the other boys. I want everyone on this street bribed well and kept quiet. What did you see tonight, Victor?”

“Nothing, sir. Just a quiet evening at home watching sitcom re-runs.”

Then Ezekiel finally turned to me. “And you, Melissa?”

I realized I had blood and a thin stream of vomit drying on my chin. I wanted to wipe it off, but I feared just smearing it. “Nothing, Ezekiel. I saw nothing.”

Ezekiel had been trained in the art of silence. Some took classes on public speaking. However, Ezekiel always seemed to speak volumes while saying no words at all. This was blatantly clear as we drove back to his penthouse, because while he did not utter a word, I knew exactly what he was saying—I was in very big trouble.

At this point, did I even care? All I could hope was that when Ezekiel murdered me, he did it with a gunshot to the head. I would prefer not to be beaten and bloody. Then again, who was I to be making demands?

Once we reached the penthouse, I decided to be daring and speak. “Ezekiel, I…”

“Yes, Melissa?” He had just exited the car, so when he turned to me, he looked down at me from above.

We gazed at each other a moment before I bowed my head. “I’m sorry.”

He turned away and headed for the building’s entrance. I meekly followed, with Victor trailing behind. Since Ezekiel was so far ahead of us, I dared to mutter to him under my breath, “Did you always know?”

“I am a trained assassin, Melissa,” he said back. “Did you really think you could sneak out without my knowledge?”

I pressed my lips together. “But the first time…”

“Ezekiel wanted to see what your next move would be.”

Great. So these two had known I snuck out. That small triumph, that tiny bit of freedom—it had all been a lie. Victor was right, though. Had I really expected to get away from this? I was up against Ezekiel and his men, who were all trained in various violent disciplines.

All I knew was how to spread my legs and keep my mouth shut.

“Was I wired?”

“No, you were very successful in that regard. I waited at a distance during both occasions, so the
details
of your little escapade are still secret.” He gave me a pointed glare. “I hope you resolve that quickly.”

We went up to the penthouse, shrouded in more silence. I started shivering but tried to hide it. My body was going into lockdown as I attempted to memorize the interior of the elevator. It could very well be the last thing I ever saw. I began to fish for happy memories, unwilling to die consumed by fear and regret. Maybe if I harbored thoughts of my mother and my sister, this would be easier.

I highly doubted it.

Ezekiel went to the living room, and I followed. Victor vanished, an even worse sign. Even though Victor betrayed me and landed me in this situation to begin with, I’d prefer his company to Ezekiel’s. Victor wasn’t the threat. Ezekiel was the one with the gun and free reign to use it.

Ezekiel sat down. I didn’t.

“I want to know—” Ezekiel started calmly, but paused when Bruce came forward with a bottle of wine and a glass. Ezekiel took it from him and Bruce left.

“I want to know,” he began again, taking a sip from his glass, “why you borrowed money from Blade.”

The question was strangely straightforward, but I shouldn’t have been shocked. Ezekiel didn’t waste time on small talk. I had been calculating an answer in my head the entire trip back, so I felt somewhat prepared to reply.

“It’s for Cordelia.”

“Cordelia?”

“A-a friend of mine. She’s in really bad trouble. Money trouble, drug trouble, prostitution trouble. She said if she didn’t have two hundred in cash by a certain day, her pimp would track her down and kill her.”

“And you didn’t tell me about this because…?”

“I knew you wouldn’t help her.”

Ezekiel didn’t deny it. He just tapped his fingers against the couch armrest and stared at me. I continued out of apprehension.

“I-I couldn’t just let my friend be killed, Ezekiel.”

“And there was absolutely no one else she could borrow money from?”

“She’s lost a lot of friends lately due to her…erratic behavior.”

“Then she doesn’t deserve you as a friend or your money. Did she know what it would cost you?”

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“Did she know that you would have to deliberately betray my trust and go to one of the most disgusting men I can think of to retrieve this money for her?”

I bowed my head. “No.”

“Are you, Cordelia, and Blade the only ones that knew about this transaction?”

I nodded, staring at my shoes.

Ezekiel nodded. “Very well. You may go.”

I blinked like an idiot again, unable to understand. I was expecting a bullet to the head, or at least some bruises to cover up the next day. Hell, he made Roger beat me for a lesser transgression. This wasn’t right. He was definitely planning something, and this terrified me more than the idea of direct punishment.

“But—that’s all?”

“Do you know Cordelia’s last name?”

“No…I don’t even know if that’s her real name.”

“And what does she look like?”

“Why…?”

“I’ll have to find her, won’t I? Get back the two hundred she took from you.”

My throat squeezed shut, and my heart rate jumped. “But—I gave the money to her. I should—it’s my fault. Please don’t bring her into this. She’s been through so much lately—”

“Melissa.” Ezekiel stood, and I stepped back. I knew that icy look in his eyes. “Let me tell you something. This is not my money, no. But it passed through your hands, and since you belong to me, then in a way, she
did
take it from me. Whether you gave it to her or not is irrelevant. Do you really think she’ll spend it on repaying a debt? Women of her kind blow it on drugs, and I’m sure that in another week, she’ll ask for another hundred from some other distant friend, crying about how she’ll die if she doesn’t get it. And maybe next time, she’ll tell the truth, but it won’t matter, because trash like her doesn’t deserve to live. What do they do for you and me? Nothing.” He stood.