Tonight’s events have accelerated my plans.
I stopped by here tonight for her—to look at her one last time from this vantage point. And that’s when I found the jackals up here, waiting to pounce. They weren’t expecting me, they were here for her. And that could only mean one thing—that despite my careful planning and covering my tracks and my plans, the Lucretas found out. Somehow, they got wind of my plans to get the fuck out of this life, and that’s why their goons were here for her. To get to me.
Why her? Why the anonymous, random little blonde temptress who’s been haunting my nights as I sit here like a silent shadow watching her night after night?
Easy. Because she’s not anonymous. Because it’s no accident that it’s her that I’ve watched and lusted after and craved these last six months. Because the girl both innocently and temptingly dancing to Peter Gabriel across the alley, the girl I’ve been obsessing over, isn’t random at all.
That girl is Abby.
…That’s my wife.
They thought they could hurt her to get to me. They were very fucking wrong. They underestimated me and what I’m capable of. But more importantly, they underestimated the beast of fury inside of me. And now, there’s going to be hell to pay.
The mob sowed the wind with fire. Now, they’re gonna reap the whirlwind.
But first, her. First, my one and only. My heart and soul. My primal addiction, my craving. My everything. Tonight, I’m correcting what I should have corrected months, or years ago. Tonight, I’m fixing what I broke.
Months ago, I let the only goodness in my world—my literal guardian angel and saving grace—walk out of my life. But tonight, I’m taking her back. Tonight, I’m making her mine all over again. Tonight, I’m going to remind her of the vows we spoke. I’m going to remind her how mine she is. I’m going to prove to her that she’s bound to me, and I to her.
I never should have let her leave, and I never will again.
Not ever.
2
Abby
The song ends, and my body stops moving as I take a deep breath. I push my fingers through my long blonde hair, stretching and feeling the blood pumping through my body. Four songs in a row have me feeling alive, if not a little winded. But damn it feels good to move, and to dance, even if it’s alone.
I pluck my wine glass from the side table next to my couch, taking a few sips of chilled chardonnay before setting it back down. I turn to the window, stepping over to it and sighing as I look out at the building across the alley from my Brooklyn apartment—empty and abandoned and boarded up.
It’s one of the reasons I moved here after… well, everything that happened. I like having the wall of faceless boarded windows across from my view. I know, it seems bleak, and maybe even creepy to some. But to me, it just feels like a wall, I guess. It feels like protection, and that’s a feeling I’ve been needing since I left him.
…Since I walked away from my husband, and since he vanished.
I turn away, going to put a new song on.
I want to roll my eyes—for all of it. For drinking wine alone in my apartment in my damn underwear and having a little private dance party on a Friday night. And when I put on that song—our song, it just makes it worse. Because now it’s a solo, wine-soaked pity party dance party.
But screw it.
The song comes on, and I down the last of my glass of wine and set it down before I start to dance. Dancing, like my painting, is an escape. Just like the empty building across the street is a protective wall from the world. No, it’s not from him I felt like I needed protection. The opposite, really. When I was with Colm, it was like nothing could touch me. It was like having this fiercely protective, ever-present force guarding me, always. Even with the work he did, I never felt unsafe.
And when I left, it wasn’t fear for me, it was fear for him. It was seeing the darkness consuming him, and knowing I couldn’t drag him out of it. I left because it was the only move I thought I had left. I thought it would trigger him into following, and we could both get out of the world that was slowly killing him inside and start fresh.
But he didn’t. And a few days after I’d walked out, he was gone. Vanished, disappeared. He’d gone dark before, with the work for the mafia he did. But I always knew when he was going dark. This time though, I got a taste of what the rest of the world must have felt when he dropped off the face of the planet.