Page 8 of Thrown to the Wolves
All that work down the drain. All that carefully gathered intel. All those Syndicate members killed in an effort to draw out the Wolf, and when I finally did…I fucked up.
Fucked her.
Sex can be a weapon.
Grandmother has told me that time and time again, urging me to use any and every tool I needed to in my hunt to kill the Wolf, but my body betrayed me.
My mind did, too. The second the Wolf kissed me, all the rage inside me just…
Died down.
And that’s fatal. If I don’t hold on to my anger, I won’t ever get justice for Adam.
This cannot happen again. I’ve remade myself since Adam’s murder, forged myself into a weapon in the hellfire of Grandmother’s house. And it was all with one purpose: to deliver justice.
To kill the Wolf.
But my mind drifts treacherously back to the shower. The scorching press of her body against mine. The hungry intensity blazing in those unreadable brown eyes as she ran her hands over me, making me arch into her touch. The way we seemed to fit like pieces of a cosmic puzzle snapping perfectly into place…
I snatch up that pair of scissors I should have cut her open with in the shower, the cold steel biting into my palm as a vision takes lurid shape behind my eyes. It would have been so easy to end Lyssa’s miserable existence for good. One neat stab and twist, one shocking gush of hot crimson…and the Wolf’s life would have drained away with the shower water.
I replay the twisted fantasy in vivid detail, stoking my rage, making each iteration more depraved than the last. At its macabre climax, I imagine standing over Lyssa’s lifeless husk as it gurgles its last ragged breath...
I gasp, jolted from the waking nightmare as a burning line blossoms across my palm. The metal scissors clatter to the floor as reality slaps me across the face this time, instead of my own hand.
What have I become?
The violence and the bloodshed…it’s rotting me from the inside out, stripping away all those ideals and convictions I once held so dear. I was going to be a surgeon, working to ease suffering.
Not this twisted monster I’ve been warped into.
I hurl the scissors across the room. They crash into the tiled wall with a clatter, then fall to the floor.
I’ve come too far now. I can’t go back, and I can’t lose myself completely. Not yet. Not while Adam’s death remains unanswered. I have to be stronger than my base urges and stronger than the darkness festering within me.
Because if I let it continue consuming me…I’ll be just like her. Like Lyssa. An unfeeling killer, devoid of humanity or mercy. And it’s not just me who thinks that; the Sokolovs were more than ready to assume Lyssa killed their buddy Yuri, even though he was Syndicate himself.
Killing Yuri turned out to be a useful move, even though it shook me up. His eager, smiling help when I asked him to walk me back to my car…
He didn’t even see the switchblade stiletto. Probably didn’t even feel it. It was in his heart before he would have had time, and he was dead before he hit the ground.
Just like Adam.
The next morning, I report for my shift at the cafe job I took for cover while I watched Lyssa from afar. She never comes in here. None of the Syndicate members do. But it’s close to the hotel where they’re staying, the Empire Grand, which Grandmother tells me is owned by the Bianchi Family of New York. I’m wearing a brittle, plastered-on smile as I try vainly to lose myself in simple routine. For a little while, it works—preparing drinks, chatting with regulars, and basking in the simple, low-stakes dramas of my coworkers.
It’s all so…normal. So far removed from the bloodstained shadows of last night. Of my real life, these days. A stark contrast that occasionally lets me pretend to be the happy, well-adjusted young woman I wish I could be.
But it’s a paper-thin front. It only takes one comment, one disrespectful insult, to tear my composure into confetti.
“Hey sweet thing, how about pouring me some of that special service with a smile?”
The words are crude but commonplace. Just another dirtbag who can’t keep his caveman urges in check. Normally I’d ignore it. Flip him the bird, even, or tell him to watch it.
But distorted rage rips through my vision. All I can see is the customer’s punchable face and imagine my fist in it.
The plastic pitcher handle creaks ominously in my white-knuckled grip as fury blots out all reason. I picture launching the scalding hot coffee into this pig’s yellow-toothed grin, blinding him with boiling liquid before silencing his anguished howls with a well-timed slice to the neck. His cries choking off; his hands clawing uselessly at his gushing throat…
A lurch of my gut wrenches me back to reality just in time. Bile surges up and I slam down the pitcher and mutter an excuse to my co-worker.