Debt Read online

  And then I would dig the knife into her throat and slash.

  Part two of this plan was to buy Alea, and then close it. Yup, just shut that shit down. Why? Because I know she loves working there. It was something she helped build and I wanted to remove any trace of her legacy. I wanted her to be responsible for the pain of the people she cared about the way she made me responsible for Jude’s suffering. Vindictive? You bet your motherfucking ass I am.

  Except, I fucked up.

  It started with her pathetic drunk dancing. I’ll admit it, it was cute. It humored me.

  It was also the fact that she is even more beautiful than I remembered. In pictures, I could distance myself, but in person, up close, she makes my dick rock-hard.

  When I pressed against her, felt the suppleness of her curves and her velvety skin, my cock ached. Something about her scent, and the way she arched towards me as I grabbed her, made me lose focus. She melted into my arms, she just gave into me. She craved me.

  And then she begged. That wasn’t part of the plan, I wasn’t going to give her my cock. But in that moment, having complete and total control of her, the way she looked at me like I was the only person in the world who could give her what she needed, I caved. I wanted to make her scream my name like the slut she is. I wanted to come inside of her as she pleaded.

  And goddammit it felt incredible. Her tight, wet pussy clenched around my dick, her body shaking as I came inside of her. I’d never come that hard in my life, and I’ve done a lot of fucking. I almost fucking fell asleep in my car on the way home because her pussy sucked the life force out of me.

  The truth is, I haven’t stopped thinking about her since that first night we fucked. But now I know I can have her for a while and proceed with my plans. I am adapting like I always have.

  When I finally acquired the resources, both financially and physically, to transform my body, it became an obsession. Just like my dad claimed, in my very late teens, I sprung up a few more inches, my flat arms and chest curved with the first signs of muscle, and my smooth face sprouted with stubble. Jude never really blossomed in the same way. Sure, she developed, but she stayed tiny. I could only assume that she took after our mother’s side of the family. We had a couple of pictures of her, and Jude looked a lot like her. We both did. Our father had lighter features that seemed to be overshadowed by my mother’s raven hair and dark eyes. But I got my father’s build. The one good thing he did for me was pass those genes down.

  Those physical changes triggered an obsession with fitness. My entire life girls looked past me like I didn’t exist. Hell, most seemed repulsed by my tall, gaunt frame. Then, what seemed like overnight, women were throwing themselves at me. In a way, this was a good thing. I had learned not to attach myself to the need for female attention since I never received it. In fact, seeing how differently I was being treated made me resentful. Now I was worth something. Now that I looked good I was a person. Now they saw me. So sure, I took the pussy being flung at me, but they could never have me. I used them and disposed of them. My physical advantages became another tool in my arsenal. I could get women to do what I wanted.

  I am a big believer of sport translating into life. Combat sports, like boxing and muy thai, are my favorite for this very reason. I learned in my years of training that while aggression was important, timing was critical. So many fighters jumped into a match already swinging, wasting all of their energy and effort. A smart opponent would watch them flail and tire themselves out, patiently observing their weaknesses and awaiting the opportune moment to land a single, decisive blow. I learned to be patient, to be quick on my feet, to adapt. Yes, I was strong – stronger than nearly any of my opponents. But I was also smarter than my opponents. The ability to pivot, both physically and mentally, when facing an obstacle was a far more effective strategy than mindlessly plowing through.

  Pivot. That’s what this change of plans was: I was pivoting. I could fight my desire to fuck Mia, or I could use it to my benefit. Pivot.

  So, onto Plan B: I will suck her dry, I will fuck the life out of her, I will ravage her until she is hollow and used, and then when she thinks things can’t get any lower, I will destroy the company she loves and kill her.

  A presence stirs me in the middle of the night. There’s no noise, but I sense someone is in the house. Jude. That sixth sense we have about each other is what we refer to as twinstinct.

  I sit up, rub my eyes, and rise to my feet, stretching as I check my phone for the time. 2:47am.

  “Jesus!” I call out, when I glance over and see Jude’s tiny silhouette in the threshold of my bedroom.

  “I thought you knew I was here.”

  “Obviously I did, I was just trying to wake up. If I thought you were an intruder, I would have been a little less relaxed. Don’t you think? And for shit’s sake, can I get some fucking clothes on?” I ask, cupping my junk. I’ve always been a fan of sleeping the way nature intended and she knows this, but the whole concept of boundaries is foreign to her.

  “Oh, like I haven’t seen all that before,” she smirks, waving her hand at me dismissively.

  Thankfully, it’s dark. I snatch the nearest pair of sweats and throw them on.

  “You having a bad night?” I ask, still groggy. I sit back down on the bed. Jude sits beside me and rests her head on my shoulder.

  “Yeah,” she confesses, it’s then I notice the stuffiness in her throat. It’s a really bad night. She’s been crying.

  “Rex wasn’t there?” I’m not trying to pawn my sister off on him, but he spends the night at her place sometimes and knows about her issues too.

  “He was asleep. I didn’t want to wake him anyway. And he’s not you.” Her words reverberate along my shoulder.

  This is the Jude most people don’t see. The side that is secretly always afraid, though she would rather fight to the death than be victimized again.

  Jude lashes out and snarls like a fox in a trap, but it’s all out of a pervasive fear. Don’t get me wrong, there’s anger there too, and fear and anger make for a hell of a cocktail. Jude will never allow herself to be hurt again. But it’s exhausting work, always growling and showing your teeth. Occasionally, you have to give it a rest. Rex can be that for her sometimes, a person she can rest with, but Rex wasn’t always there. I have always been there. I knew Jude when she was innocent. I am the only person she trusts enough to expose her belly without fear of being ripped open.

  “That’s a good thing,” I say. Rex is a solid guy. I know she can’t love him like a normal person might, but there’s no one else I would trust with my sister.

  “It can be,” she says. She sits there in silence for a while, threading her fingers through mine. I’m not a fan of physical affection, but I let Jude steal it and sometimes I use on her it as a way to keep her level. It doesn’t do anything for me. After her delicate fingers make a home in my thick hand, she sighs out: “I had the dream about having a baby and them taking it away.”

  There are a few recurring dreams she’s had for the past fourteen years. This one is the most rare, and it’s the most painful.

  A bad night for Jude can be a number of things. What happened to us happened in the dark. I think that’s why it’s always nights for Jude. They used to be frequent. Nearly every night, she would wake up from a panic attack. Once every few months or so, she would have a vivid night terror, like the one she had tonight. We’ve lived in a lot of places, including on the street, and the tradition was for her to crawl into bed (whatever that might have been at the time) with me and cry or talk, whatever would get her mind off of things, and fall back asleep. When Rex got older, eventually some of that burden lifted off my shoulders and she would talk to and crawl into bed with him. But the really bad episodes, those always came to me.

  Now that she’s a woman, the nights are rare. Because Rex is usually around, I am not privy to the panic attacks when they still happen. Sometimes I forget she still has them, she even fools me with her show of toughness.
But when it’s a nightmare, she shows up at my place, quiet and weak, expecting me to put her back together.

  “Rex didn’t wake up?” I know from personal experience, she usually wakes up clawing and crying for the baby.

  “You know he sleeps like a corpse. And we had a few drinks before bed. Well I had one, he had like seven.”

  I huff a silent laugh under my breath about Rex.

  “It’s almost over,” I say to her, at the same time reminding myself of the vow I made.

  “It’s never over,” Jude sighs. Her voice is raspy with fatigue.

  She’s right. Some things that were taken can never be reclaimed.

  She inhales deeply, shrugging her shoulders, and then drops them with a lingering exhale. “Your smell...it always makes me feel safe. Have I ever told you that?”

  “I don’t think so,” I say evasively. There’s no one in the world who I am more comfortable with, but even she sometimes gets too close. Sometimes I don’t want the pressure of being her hero.

  “I don’t mean your cologne or soap. It’s the smell you leave on things, like pillows or clothes. I think it’s because we’ve always been a team, and at home, when dad was being a dick, I knew I always had you on my side. Dad’s smell always made me anxious. Yours made me feel secure.”

  “Thanks, I guess.”

  “Don’t let it get to your head.”

  “You would never let that happen,” I say. “Let me make you a drink.”

  I stand up and she follows me out to the kitchen. I make a warm liquor and milk concoction, sure to knock her right the hell out.

  “Sorry I snapped at you earlier,” she says, blowing steam away from the lip of the mug.

  I nod.

  “I just...we’re so close. We’re almost there...and Mia...she’s so important to me because she hurt you. And you are the most important person in my world. It’s something about her and what she did that sits the worst with me.”

  “Trust me, Jude. I’m finishing this. And you’re right. Everyone else, I did for you. Now this one is for me. So you need to let me do it the way I want. She’s mine.”

  She nods, brooding.

  Jude sips her drink as I walk over to the floor-to-ceiling windows that embrace views of downtown Milwaukee and Lake Michigan. The black water seems to stretch out infinitely and I wonder how we can tell ourselves that Mia is the end while at the same time acknowledging that it’s never over.

  "It’s been a while since your last bad night,” my voice breaks through the ultra-silence of the dark hour.

  “And you, you still have a perfect score,” she says, alluding to the fact that I don’t suffer from the same affliction. Sometimes I wish I did. Jude got the worse of it all, even though it was really about me to begin with.

  “How much booze did you put in this? I’m feeling really woozy.”

  “That’s the secret to my recipe, you can’t taste the alcohol. This has been the key to shutting you up and getting me a good night’s sleep for years now.”

  “Asshole. Well, I think you put a sedative in here or something because suddenly I am about to conk out. Bedtime.” She stands, leaving the dirty mug on the counter (she knows that shit makes me twitchy) and marching over to my bedroom. “Slumber party,” she says, pulling me by the wrist over to the bedroom.

  “Fucking great. I have to sleep next to someone who somehow defies the law of physics by occupying more space at five feet and a hundred pounds than I do at six-four and two-thirty-five.”

  “What are you doing?” she asks, as I organize some pillows.

  “I’m allocating your space and also blockading you from flailing your boney limbs at me all fucking night.”

  Jude flips me the bird and slides under the covers on her side of the bed. I lie on my back and cross my hands behind my head. In less than a minute, she’s snoring her tiny munchkin drunk snore and I know I don’t have a chance in hell of getting any sleep.

  I sit up and look over at my twin. The fierce lioness is nothing but a snoring cub enveloped in a makeshift pillow fort. And for the first time in all these years, I allow myself to resent the responsibility she’s put on me. Not of the vendetta, I gladly take up my sword and shield for that, but as her personal savior.

  I’m not her goddamn hero. I can't make it all better. I can’t always be around to keep the nightmares at bay.

  14 Years Earlier

  Radiohead – Creep

  The bell rings, and the murmurs of chatting die down as everyone takes their seats.

  “Alright, alright kids. Pull out your textbooks and open them up to twelve,” Mr. Carthy says as he writes the word “Electricity” on the whiteboard.

  “So we’ve been studying this amazing feat of nature for the past couple of weeks and this will be what we cover for your final project this semester. It’ll be a partner project.”

  I see a couple of people smile and mouth yes, excited to use this assignment as time to hang out with their friends. But me, I hate this shit. I am alone. I am always alone. I’ve got my sister, but she’s not in this class, or any of my classes. She doesn’t take her studies as seriously.

  “That being said, you will NOT team up with your usual partners. You need to pick someone you have never worked with in this class. This is not an excuse to chat with your best friend during class. I mean it.”

  A collective AWWWWWWW of disappointment rises from the class.

  Mr. Carthy’s instructions drone in the background as my eyes drift to her: her brown hair, her tanned skin, her pouty lips. She is the vision of perfection and to top it off, she’s smart. But she can have anyone she could ever want. She would never date a poor, skinny, piece of shit like me. In fact, she dates the richest kid in our tiny shit-hole town. His dad owns a bunch of factories all over the country, including the only factory we have in town. Almost everyone around here is employed by his father save for a handful of small business owners. Sure, we’re in America, but in this town, the Pettits are royalty. And if Tripp’s dad is the king, then that makes Tripp the prince of Clint, Iowa. The rest of us are just fucking serfs.

  The scraping of sliding chairs and collective movement jars me out of my daze as I realize people are looking for the last person on earth they would want to partner with. People zig zag around me while I stay in my seat in the back. I’ll just partner with the other leftover outcast. There’s no point in trying.

  Then I feel her eyes on me and my heart races. No, I must be imagining this. She swallows, smiles and makes a beeline towards me.

  “Hi, do you have a partner?” Her voice is as sweet as honey. She’s wearing a tight blue t-shirt and jean mini-skirt that shows off her perfect slender body. Her hair drapes down over one shoulder, stopping right above her tit. Her nipple is hard. Thank the lord for air conditioning.

  “I, uh...not yet...” I say, correcting my slumped posture.

  “You wanna?” she says, wagging her finger between the both of us.

  “Uh, sure...yeah, sure,” I say. This cannot be fucking happening. Why would she ask me?

  “Sil, right?” she says, plopping her bags on the table just beside me. She knows my name?

  “Yeah, Sil.”

  “I’m Mia,” she smiles. Like I and every other guy in this school don’t recite her name as they jack off.

  “Yeah, I know your name.”

  “Oh,” she laughs a little, and her smile is just...fuck.

  The room buzzes with activity as the partnerships start working on their project.

  “Is Sil short for something?” she asks, while unloading her books on the table.

  “Silvio.” I hate my name. It reminds me how different I am, how I don’t belong.

  “What kind of name is that?” she asks, without judgment.

  “Romanian, I think. My mom, she’s from there.”

  “Oooh, cool. Have you ever been?”

  “No, she’s dead. She died giving birth to me and my twin sister.”

  Mia’s face sinks. I h
ave issues with blurting things out that make people uncomfortable, I don’t soften it for them. I guess it’s because no one’s ever softened anything for me. So I just stay alone most of the time and save everyone the awkwardness.

  “I’m sorry about that...” she says. I never expected her to be so...nice. I had stared at her semester after semester since middle school. I watched her like a painting from a distance, but I always assumed she was the female equivalent of the big guys who slammed me into lockers and tripped me in the hallways.

  I shrug. I never knew my mom, so whatever. I heard she was really nice though, that my dad was a different person before she died. He blames me and Jude for killing her.

  “So, I don’t have anything after school today, do you?” she asks.

  “No...” I say. Usually I meet up with Jude and we go to the library to do our homework, the park, anything to stay away from home for as long as possible.

  “Well, you can come over and work on the project with me, if you want. We could get a head start. This thing is complicated.”

  Holy shit! Mia Tibbett is inviting me over to her house. If there is a god, thank you!

  “Okay, I just need to tell my sister that I’ll be going with you.”

  “Okay,” she shrugs and smiles.

  I know I don’t have a chance in hell, but just getting to talk to her, to be close to her like this, it makes my awful life feel just a little less shitty.

  I sit in the parking lot of the office building, my stomach queasy, swimming in anticipation of my second weekly meeting with Tax Draconi. This past week has been hell on wheels. When he left me in that conference room with a smug look of satisfaction on his face, I locked the door behind him and slid down to the floor and cried.

  I cried so hard it hurt. I wailed. I let it all out: the fear, the confusion, the isolation, the anger.

  Who is this man and what does he want from me?

  I wracked my brain for the name Draconi, but it rang no bells. I honestly think he might have mistaken me for someone else. I just don’t understand. Maybe he’s delusional, and he has concocted some sort of shared history that never happened? My week-long investigation has turned up nothing. His business seems totally legit. And I can’t find a shred of info on his personal life. I thought about hiring a P.I., but then I realized that would likely somehow lead back to the unsavory things I am trying to keep secret. And I don’t care how professional said P.I. is, I don’t want him or her to know that I hired someone to “rape” me.