Page 76 of Her Mercenary
“You two really ... struggled, didn’t you?”
“We were poor. You can say it.”
“How poor?”
“No-electricity poor. No-heat-or-air-conditioning poor. Stealing-scraps-from-dumpsters-behind-restaurants poor. My mom worked two waitressing jobs just to put a roof over my head and provide enough food to survive. She drove this old extended-cab red truck that took her three years to save up for. The thing barely ran, but she loved it.”
He paused and tossed another stone.
“My mom got pregnant with me at fifteen. Her parents were drug addicts, and she was well on her way to following in their footsteps. When her parents found out she was pregnant with me, they kicked her out. She had to drop out of school, lived in a halfway house for a while. Needless to say, this kind of set the tone for struggle.”
“I’m so sorry. Where was your dad?”
Roman shrugged. “Who knows. I’m not even sure she knows.” He scowled at me with a cross expression that dared me to judge her. “She made mistakes, but she was a strong woman, Sam.”
“I don’t doubt that. She must have been strong—she had you.”
His jaw set, the twinkle in his eyes long gone.
“My mom was raped multiple times a day by her pimp—the guy who kidnapped me and held me for ransom—if she didn’t work for him. Sometimes she was raped in the house while I was there, and other times they would take her overnight. When it happened at home, I would pull the covers over my head and cover my ears. I would never sleep on those nights. Just lay there, staring out the window until the sun came up again.” The pain in his eyes was breaking my heart. “You want to know what’s fucked up?”
I didn’t answer as the question was rhetorical.
“Despite being raped every day, my mom would hold me, hug me, and make me feel safe. She always talked to me about anger, as if she somehow knew that someday, I would find out what was really happening to her. Or ... I don’t know ... sometimes I wonder if she knew she wasn’t going to survive it, and she was preparing me for it. She would tell me that no matter what happens in life, revenge is never the answer. Rise above it, solve it, she would say. Solve the problem, don’t be the problem.”
Studying him, I frowned. “Do you realize you’re doing exactly what your mom didn’t want you to? You’ve dedicated your life to finding and killing Conor Cussane and getting revenge for her.”
“It’s different.”
“Is it?”
“Conor Cussane is never going to stop. He gains more power and more followers every day, and every day, more and more women go missing. He’s done to hundreds of women what his father did to my mom. He is never, ever going to stop.”
“So, solving this problem is killing him?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever considered simply capturing him and then delivering him to the FBI or CIA? Is that too tame for you?”
“The man deserves to die, Sam.”
“That’s pretty high-handed of you to dole out life and death like that.”
“It’s pretty high-handed to assume another human being as your own property, Sam.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes, staring at the vast jungle that lined the side of the mountain ahead of us.
This time, I picked up a rock and tossed it. “So, you drop me at the airport tomorrow, go back, kill Conor Cussane ... and then what?”
Roman said nothing for a minute, and I got the feeling that he’d spent many hours contemplating this very question.
I pulled my legs up from the side of the rock, turned toward him, and settled in cross-legged. “Then what, Roman? Seriously? You’ve dedicated your life to this. Once he’s dead, then what? What are you—”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“You need to think about it. Your entire identity, your drive, has been built around this one single goal.”
Roman exhaled loudly as he dragged his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know, Sam. I don’t know ... I ... fuck. Never mind, just forget it.”