Dead Man Walking (The Fallen Men #6) - Giana Darling Page 0,7
arms over his chest, bracing his feet apart in a physical display of his desire to stay. “Asked Prez if I could come by. Figure I better start earnin’ my keep if I wanna stick around.”
“As I said,” I repeated coldly. “I got this covered.”
He ignored me. “Motherfucker dealers, eh? You think it’s a requirement they’re dumb as fuck or just coincidence?”
I didn’t have an answer for that. In my opinion, most people were stupid.
“Sellin’ drugs to minors, gettin’ girls hooked on coke to lock them into prostitution. We gave them a warnin’, they chose not to heed it.” My voice shifted seamlessly into the language of my brothers. I was a chameleon, if chameleons were armed with teeth, claws, and deadly intent. “He deserves to die. They all do.”
“How’re you doin’ it?” Wrath asked with mild curiosity, like we were discussing the weather.
He was the former enforcer for the disbanded Berserkers MC so he knew a thing or two about killing.
But he was a blunt force instrument, all muscle and fury. No finesse in his torture, no art in his murder.
He would never be as good as me.
Not many could be, no matter how hard they might try. Most people, like Wrath, had some kind of social conscience, a voice in the back of their head that whispered what other people might think or feel about them.
I didn’t have that voice.
Just my own dark whisperings echoing in a vast, black abyss.
“Car bomb,” I told him, looking down at my hands to see what they were fashioning. It was, unsurprisingly, a tombstone. I had a habit of carving them and anointing them with the name of the victim I was going to murder. There was peaceful satisfaction in burning them after the deed was done. “Make it seem like there was a malfunction in the exhaust. It’ll blow out the windows, the engine, and then, finally, explode.”
“Not even a body to bury?” Wrath surmised with mild respect. “That’ll send a fuckin’ message.”
I didn’t respond because that was obviously the point.
“You gotta hand it to the Irish fucks, they’ve got balls,” Wrath mused as he shifted from foot to foot and cracked his knuckles. He was always moving, overfilled with restless, angry energy. The air around him buzzed like static and made my skin itch.
“The Irish usually do.” I had no loyalty to my Irish kinfolk. We may have originated in the same place, but I left for a fucking good reason and put that version of myself behind me.
Wrath’s eyes were hot on my cheek as he studied me, but I didn’t flinch or flap my gob just because his stare asked a question he was too chickenshit to give voice to.
“You ever get nightmares, man?” he ventured finally. “You ever mourn the people you’ve killed?”
“No,” I said flatly.
Silence and then, bitter as coffee grounds at the bottom of a cup, “Never lost someone as a consequence of your violence. You do, you’ll dream of horrors.”
“You need to sleep deep for dreams.” My voice was metallic, the clang of my robotic heart sharp in my speech. “I skim the surface of sleep, and I never fuckin’ dream.”
“Lucky you,” Wrath muttered just as the sky opened up and rain began to float down.
If I’d had a metaphorical heart, the kind poets and artists wax on about, I might’ve felt a pang in my chest of something like sympathy for my newest Fallen brother. He’d loved a woman who had been ripped away from him ruthlessly by his enemies. They’d tried to kill them both, but only succeeded with Kylie.
It was a waking nightmare I doubted he had to sleep to dream of.
I could understand this, but I couldn’t feel it.
Simply it had nothing to do with me so I couldn’t bring myself to care very much.
“It’s been a year and a half,” I said blandly as my ears caught the faint rumble of a vehicle barreling down Everett drive. “You should get over it.”
Wrath startled slightly, his muscles flexing with a surge of fury, the instinct to pummel me to release some of his angst. Then he stilled, logic dousing the inflammatory response.
He would not win if he tried to fight me and I would never forget that he’d tried.
So he froze beside me and chewed through the surge of passion until it passed.
“You’re a fuckin’ asshole,” he mumbled finally before letting loose a ragged sigh. “Shits me, I like you anyway. Every other fucker treats me like a rabid beast