Tank, page 18
“Then who did?”
“I don’t know. But someone set them alight in their sleep. I had a pizza delivery job. When I turned down my street, I saw the trucks parked outside on my front lawn. I dumped my bike and ran past the barricades and do you know what I heard?”
I don’t answer; I just keep my eyes glued to the road. In my experience, people are so much quicker to divulge their secrets when I keep my mouth shut.
“I heard my mother screaming. And the fire roaring all around me. It was like music. I was convinced I was made of it, and that it wouldn’t hurt me if I just stepped into it. So I did. Only the firemen who weren’t doing jack fucking shit to help my family because the flames were too intense to breach? They pulled me back. They took away the music. Now the only way I get any piece is when my Zippo sings to me again.”
I swear to Christ, the more I get to know people, the more I like my fuckin’ dog.
He’s lying. He knows who killed them. I do too. Crazy wants Ryzhanov’s right-hand man, Lagransky, and Prez needs his head checked for agreeing that Crazy should tag along on this job. And this excuse about not bein’ able to spare anyone else is wearin’ real goddamned thin. That bitch of Kick’s better be fuckin’ worth it.
“Jesus fuckin’ Christ. I need a goddamned therapist after listening to the shit you boys go on with,” I say, playin’ along. That little cocksucker’s gonna screw me royally if he moves from this van.
“You asked.” He shrugs, and points to the limo. “They’re turning.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” I say, and take the same exit. I ease on the brakes, because there are only two cars separating us now, and the maniac riding my arse is giving me the fucking shits. Tailgaters make me fuckin’ twitchy.
Twenty minutes later, the limo pulls up to a ritzy whiskey bar owned by Ryzhanov, and we continue driving through Mosman. The houses are huge and have big wrought-iron gates. Nice to look at, but not much help in really keeping people out. Especially not people like me.
We pull to a stop outside a house next to the Cold King’s mansion. Crazy and I don our special blue caps, and I roll the window down and press the buzzer for the intercom, declaring that I have a package for the Robertsons. People really need to stop putting their family name on the front gate of their fucking house. The gate opens, and I give the security guard posted outside the Russian’s residence a salute and drive on through, pulling up in the circular drive in front of the house.
The gates close and I get out in my navy blue and red Fast Send uniform and pull an empty cardboard box from the front seat. I even shaved for the occasion.
We’re not hitting the Russians; we’d need a lot more firepower than me and the geriatric fire bug for that. We’re only gaining access to the Robertsons’ property so I can plant a couple of cameras and survey the Russians’ backyard. We’ll only hit a joint once we know we can get in and get out and that there are several escape routes as a last resort.
“Stay here,” I say to the crazy fucker occupying my front seat.
His dark eyes narrow. “Where the fuck do you think I’m gonna go? Have tea with the Joneses?”
“Just making sure you’re not gonna light someone’s house on fire so you can ‘hear the music’ again,” I say with air quotes, and take the package from the seat between us. I pull the cap lower on my head and angle my face towards the ground, so any outdoor security cameras won’t make a positive ID as I walk to the front door, press the bell and wait.
The maid had answered the door, ready and waiting to take my package. She was a sweet young thing, had that Catholic virgin quality about her, and she’d blushed to the roots of her hair when I’d told her I had a big one for her. She’d still been biting her lip when I’d reached in my back pocket, pulled out the foul-smelling rag and covered her face with it. She’d gone out like a light, and I’d gently eased her down on the marble floor. I’d searched the house and found only an ancient-looking woman sipping tea in the yard by the pool. She’d been just as easy to take care of.
Chlorophyll. The friendly sedative aiding killers and psychopaths since 1814.
But you never know how long someone will be out on that shit, so I’d worked quickly setting up three tiny cameras under the eaves of the upstairs bedrooms, all of them overlooking Ryzhanov’s property.
When I reach the front door, the maid is still laid out on the marble where I left her. I carefully step over her sleeping form and jump into the van, only Crazy’s not here.
“Jesus fuck!” I’m going to strangle that little cocksucker the second I find him. I open my door when a movement in the rear-view mirror catches my attention. I glance up and freeze as something sharp and cold jabs me in the neck. I swing my elbow back, attempting to hit the fucker in the face, but the interior of the van swims and my eyelids grow heavy as I fight the drug coursing through my veins.
“I don’t like it when people touch my things,” a man says from the back of the van. The voice is unfamiliar, and yet there’s something in it, a cadence I know well. And the green eyes that accuse me in the rear-view? I know those too. They belong to Ivy, only it’s not her small hand resting on my neck and easing the needle from my flesh, it’s her father’s.
The man I’ve been dreamin’ about eviscerating for years now. And here he is, right behind me. I hadn’t had to look very far at all. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? I hadn’t been lookin’. I’d been knee-deep in Prez’s dirty work. I hadn’t been payin’ attention, and now I’ll pay for it with my life.
I don’t know how much longer I’m left alone. It seems like days, but is more than likely just hours. I’m still naked, but I’ve pulled the sheet from the bed and wrapped it around myself like you would a towel after stepping out of the shower. It hurts every time the fabric brushes over my wounded abdomen. I think it’s infected already, or maybe it just hurts—either way, it’s seeping blood and yellow plasma every time I move. It’s easier and less painful just to lie here.
I’m jonesing for another fix. I want it so bad my entire body shakes, and the only thing that distracts me long enough to forget is Tank. Will he ever know what happened to me? Will he ever know that I was an idiot all that time, and too stupid to realise that I was in love with him? Where Kick was a crutch, a bad habit, a distraction, Tank has been my anchor. He’s been the one watching my back and fighting for me when I couldn’t fight for myself, and most days I treated him like he was beneath me, when the opposite was true.
Maybe it’s for the best that he doesn’t know. Maybe then he can cut his losses and find a girl who’ll put him first. And it’ll be as if I never existed. I’ll leave his life the way I came into it—with a bang and a sour taste in my mouth.
I know Tank, though, and I know he won’t just let me go. He’ll search forever; he’ll tear cities apart to get what he wants. I’ve never met a more determined man, but I’m not holding out hope that he’ll ever find me. I’ve never given him my father’s name. I’ve never told him about the house I grew up in, what suburb, what street. I’ve never even told him my last name. Seems odd that you could know so much about a person, be so intimate and share nothing of who you are, of what made you you, while you share your body.
I might know his mind, his determination, and exactly what to do to his body to have him begging me for release, but Tank is still as much a mystery to me as I am to him. What I do know of him, I love. Not just in the platonic sense, and not just because of the way he makes me feel when he’s inside me, his hands all over me, and his lips at my ear coaxing me to let go, to fly. He annoys the shit out of me most of the time. He likes to push my buttons and I push right back, but I know wholeheartedly that I love that big, arrogant arse of a man. Not that it really matters. None of it matters now.
Footsteps echo down the stairs leading to my room. I remember that sound so well. I hear it in my dreams, the heavy footfalls and turn of the lock, the creak of the door. Only now it’s all off; it’s different. There’s a loud thudding accompanying the steps, surpassing them. And the locked door rattles on its hinges as something slams into it. My father curses, and it sounds as if he’s running down the stairs. The key slides in the lock and turns, and then the door is flung wide and he hefts a very large body into the room.
“Tank.” I gasp and try to sit up, but the rope around my neck holds me down. I claw at it, struggling to be free, winching it tighter and choking myself like a dog on a chain in an effort to get close to him. To see him.
“Knock it off, Ivy,” my father commands, and I do, because old habits die hard.
I lie back against the mattress, turning my head as far as I can without choking again. He’s not moving. Dread washes over me. My eyes prick with tears and I can’t swallow down the lump in my throat. “Is he still alive?” I ask, on a tremoring voice.
My father lifts Tank’s inert arms and drags his body across the room. Tank sags against the wall with a thud, and my father handcuffs one arm to the steel pipe bolted in the concrete floor. He’s cuffed me to that pipe a number of times, and no amount of yanking had loosened it in the slightest. I’d cut my wrist to shreds just trying.
“Would I drag his sorry arse down here if he wasn’t?” he says.
Yes. Yes he would. He’d do that and so much more. Terror worms its way through my gut because I’ve seen what happens when people get too close to me. I’ve seen what happens to people who try to tear my father and I apart.
“Please don’t kill him. Please?” I sob. If I could get down on my knees right now I would. I’d do whatever he wanted. “Don’t kill him, Daddy. I’ll stay. You can take off the rope. I won’t run again. You don’t have to hurt him. Please?”
“He fucked my little girl!” he roars, turning on me. His face turns puce, and spittle rains down on me.
“No.” I shake my head. “I fucked him; I wanted it. I begged him to fuck me. I made him do it.”
“I was fuckin’ there, at his cabin.” He grabs me by the throat, squeezing, choking me until my own face flushes furiously with heat and a lack of oxygen. Livid green eyes bore down into mine and his face is just inches away when he snarls, “Did you forget that? I fuckin’ saw the two of you. So don’t fuckin’ tell me you made him do it.”
He lets go and I cough, gasping like a fish.
“He has nothing to do with it.” I sob. “Please. Just let him go. Punish me. It’s me you want to hurt, not him.”
“No,” he says, hooking his fingers in the rope tied around my neck and yanking it so hard I choke. My fingers claw and scrabble for purchase on his arm, but he doesn’t loosen his hold. “I want to hurt both of you, actually.”
Tears roll down my cheeks as he rips away the bed sheet covering me. He pulls out a knife and slides it between my neck and the rope. I turn my head and hold very still while he saws through it. There’s a good chance he’ll slip anyway and pierce me in the jugular.
One can only hope.
Earlier, I might have run the second that noose slipped free. I might have fought and screamed this house down and attacked him, but now that Tank is here what can I do? There is only submission, and bargaining, and grovelling now. Tithing my pain, so that Tank won’t pay the ultimate price. My father might be sick and twisted, but he’s never wanted my death on his hands. Just my surrender. And I’ll give him that. I’ll give it gladly if it means that Tank can walk free.
I glare up at the man in front of me, the man who raised me, and I spit in his face. He seizes my throat again, crushing my windpipe, forcing me to gasp for breath that isn’t there.
If I had the voice I’d tell him to kill me, to finally put me out of the misery I’ve felt all these years. But I can’t do that either, because that means risking Tank. And I won’t do that. I’d rather lie down on this bed and offer myself up to my father’s mercy than have him hurt Tank.
He throws me back on the mattress and unbuckles his belt. Slowly he slides it through his belt loops until the length of it swings free, and then he gathers it up and snaps it tightly together.
“On your knees,” he commands. I push myself up, and with a shaking breath I kneel up on the bed the way I did so often during my childhood, with my arse in the air, naked and completely exposed to him. The first lash is always the hardest. He always has me wait on trembling fours and strikes hard across the upper buttocks, right where my tailbone is.
I scream the first time.
I always scream the first time.
And then I take my punishment with shallow breaths and silent tears that glance off my cheeks and stain the worn sheet beneath me. When he finishes, I collapse face down on the bed, ignoring the burn from my abdomen as I lie on the flesh he carved out of me just a few hours ago. My arse smarts, my whole body aches from being clenched too tightly, from anticipating his next blow, and I bury my face in my hands so I won’t see the sheer delight on his.
He steps away from the bed and I’m suddenly so consumed with fear that he might still hurt Tank, despite me distracting him. He doesn’t do anything though, just sneers at Tank’s unconscious form as he approaches what used to be my clothes dresser. He opens the drawer and pulls out a length of rope. I scramble away from him, try to curl myself up in child’s pose, but he yanks out my leg from underneath me and binds the rope around one ankle. I kick and claw at the sheets with my hands in an effort to get away. I try everything I can to make it more difficult for him to tie me down. But my father grows tired of my antics, and I can only stare up at him in confusion as he drops the rope and pulls the knife from his pocket. I shake. He smiles and takes a step away from me, and a few more towards Tank.
He kicks Tank’s leg, toes him with his boot, and then brings the glinting silver blade to Tank’s face. The room whirls around me. The words are frozen in my throat, stuck there like a sharp piece of food that I haven’t chewed properly before swallowing. It’s only as he shoves the very tip of the knife into the corner of Tank’s mouth, and I see the first trickle of blood, that I find my voice again.
“No. I’ll let you tie me up. You can do whatever you want. Just don’t hurt him,” I cry. My father smiles like he’s won a great victory, and in a way I suppose he has, because I just laid all of my cards bare, and he’s going to take me for everything.
He wipes the knife on Tank’s shirt, and he casually strolls across the room with the ease of a man whose conscience doesn’t burden him one bit. I hold still as he picks up the rope and winds it around my ankle, tying it off in a series of complicated knots before tethering the other end to the leg of the bed with just as much skill. He tests his handiwork by pulling the length of rope that’s dangling off the bed, and with a satisfied grunt he turns and leaves the room, slamming the door behind him. The locks slide home, and my heart beats heavy with the finality of it.
I should try to rouse Tank. I should get up, and see how far my new leash will carry me before it cuts into my ankle. I should try and find a way out of here, but I can’t. I can’t move from fear and exhaustion, and the terror that has seeped a little further into my bones with every lash of his belt.
If Tank weren’t here, I’d find a way to end it. Right now. But he is here. So I need to find a way out. Before it’s too late.
I never wanted to disappoint Mummy. Daddy seemed to hurt her enough. I tried to be good. I didn’t cry when I told her mine and Daddy’s secret—the one he said we mustn’t ever tell because no one would understand. I didn’t cry, but she did. She howled like those wolves I’d seen on TV when they lost their little wolves. And then she’d squeezed me so tight I’d thought I’d explode all over the bathroom.
I’d been sent to my room then, and when Daddy came home the yelling had started. It’s still going. There’s a storm outside too, and the thunder monsters are yelling and stomping as loud as Daddy is downstairs. I cuddle under my blankets with Banjo, because he doesn’t like storms. When it rains heavy like this, we go into Mummy and Daddy’s bed and Banjo and I get cuddled, and he’s not so afraid. But no one is cuddling us tonight.
I wish I’d never told Mummy about our secret.
When my eyes get too heavy I fall asleep. My door creaking open wakes me, and I let out a tiny fearful little scream when someone sits down on my bed.
“Shh, baby it’s me,” Mummy says, and I pull back the covers and feel her tears as they splash onto my hands. “We have to be really quiet, okay? You and I are going to take a little trip.”
“Is Daddy coming too?” I whisper.
“No, sweet girl. Just you and me.” In a flash of lightning from outside the window, I see her face crinkle with pain, her eye is all puffy and closed. She pulls me from the bed and whispers, “Okay come on. Two brave girls off on an adventure—what do you say?”
I nod and she smiles, but then she starts to cry again. “Good girl. We’re gonna need to be real quiet so we don’t wake Daddy, okay?”
“Okay. But Mummy … why are we leaving Daddy behind? Won’t he be sad without us?”
“No. He doesn’t love us, baby. He wants to hurt us.” She sets me down and crouches in front of me, holding my hands in hers. “What he did to you wasn’t right. No one has the right to touch you like that, do you hear me?” I stare at her. My chest feels tight and my eyes start to leak just like hers. “Now, come on, let’s get your robe on and go.”
“But it’s raining,” I say, tugging on her hand and pointing to the window. “Shouldn’t we wait until it stops?”
“It’s just a little rain. Drizzle, baby. Nothing to worry about.”
It isn’t drizzle, though; it’s pouring down so loudly I can hear it pinging off the roof.
I let her carry me down the stairs, and I feel safe and warm in her arms. I don’t like that I upset her. I don’t like that Daddy has hurt her. I don’t like leaving in the middle of the night during a rainstorm, but I go anyway.
When we get in the car, I realise that I left Banjo behind. “Mummy, wait. Banjo.” I cry.
