CHAPTER 4: THE REAPER
1200 Words
Cillian
She cut me deeper than expected.
Four lines through fabric and skin, one close enough to the artery to make Ronan swear when he saw the blood.
Valentina watched it soak my trousers.
No apology.
Good.
I had spent six months looking at her through reports, cameras, tinted windows, and the occasional reflection when I stood close enough to see her without being seen.
None of that had prepared me for her trying to take my eye out with car keys.
Ronan stopped beside the second SUV and looked at the blood running into my shoe.
"How bad?"
"Not arterial."
"You don't know that."
"I do," Valentina said.
Her voice was rough. She kept her eyes on the wound instead of either of us.
Ronan studied her for a second, then looked back at me.
"We need to move."
I put the phone away.
"Get in the vehicle."
"No."
It came out quietly.
I looked at her swollen ankle.
She noticed.
"Don't."
"What?"
"Stop looking at me."
I knew she would test the distance to the garage exit. I knew she would count the men. I knew she would decide whether the injured ankle could survive one more sprint.
She did all three.
"You won't make the exit," I said.
"I can try."
"Not on that ankle."
She swallowed.
"I didn't ask for your concern."
"It isn't concern. I need you able to work."
That was the answer I had planned.
It sounded worse aloud.
Her stare made clear she agreed.
I had begun watching her three days before Antonio died.
Declan wanted to know whether she had copies of her father's evidence. The assignment was simple: schedule, contacts, habits, possible exits.
I learned all of it.
Mercy General. Night shifts. Black coffee with one sugar unless she had been awake longer than fourteen hours, then two. The neighbour who collected her packages. The alley she avoided after dark. The cheap grocery store where she bought expensive wine and lied to herself that it balanced out.
Useful information.
Then I learned things that were not useful.
She sang badly while cooking. She read medical journals with one foot tucked beneath her. She cried in the hospital stairwell after difficult deaths, washed her face, and went back upstairs before anyone noticed.
She bought the black dress on a Thursday.
The man she planned to wear it for cancelled dinner twice, so she cancelled him.
She wore the dress anyway.
Alone.
Music too loud. Wine on the kitchen counter. Bare feet.
She looked at herself in the bedroom mirror, turned once, and smiled.
I should have removed the camera that night.
Instead, I watched until she changed.
I watched her hands slide the straps down her arms. I watched the dress fall. I watched her stand there naked in the low light, looking at her own body with quiet, private satisfaction — the kind of look a woman gives herself when she knows she is beautiful and is deciding whether anyone else deserves to see it.
My c**k had been hard for the entire recording.
I had watched it three more times that week.
Ronan found me in the surveillance room and asked why a report on Antonio Romano's daughter included the colour of her underwear.
I told him details mattered.
He called me a sick bastard.
Fair.
I was a sick bastard. I had memorised the exact shade of the lace between her legs. I had thought about pulling it aside with my teeth while she was still fighting me. I had imagined how she would sound when she realised the man who had watched her for six months was finally inside her.
Valentina looked toward the garage exit again.
"How long have you been watching me?" she asked.
Ronan glanced at me.
I ignored him.
"Six months."
Her face changed.
Not much. A small break around the eyes.
"Since my father died?"
"Three days before."
She went still.
There are lies people tell themselves because the truth would be harder to survive.
Valentina had told herself her father's death began the danger.
I had just told her it had started before the bridge.
"Did you watch him too?"
"Not here."
"Did you know?" She stopped, breathed in, and tried again. "Did you know he was going to die?"
"Get in the car."
"You won't answer me."
I opened the door.
Ronan checked the garage entrance and said nothing.
Valentina shifted her weight.
Pain crossed her face and vanished.
"My cat..." She looked toward the ramp. "She's under a delivery truck."
I had expected demands about Mateo, her phone, the police, her freedom.
"Ronan."
"We don't have time."
"Find her."
His jaw tightened. "Cillian—"
"Find the cat."
He left without another word.
Valentina looked at me as if she could not decide whether this made me better or worse.
Because after Antonio's funeral she had slept on the sofa with the animal pressed against her chest. Because leaving it behind would make the first night worse than it needed to be. Because I wanted her anger aimed at me, not turned inward over a cat.
"She comes with us," I said.
"Why?"
I opened the SUV door.
"Get in."
"Mateo lives if you get in."
"And if I don't?"
I called the man outside the coffee shop.
He answered immediately. "Status?"
"Where is he?"
"North window. Alone."
Valentina's face lost colour.
I turned the phone so she could hear.
"He ordered the muffin," the man said. "Should I move?"
"No," Valentina whispered.
I ended the call.
She stared at me for a long moment, then walked past me and climbed into the SUV.
Not defeated.
Never that.
She was choosing which battle kept her brother alive.
I followed.
Blood had filled my shoe. The wound pulled when I sat.
My c**k still hadn't gone down.
Ronan returned six minutes later with Luna's carrier held away from his body.
His left hand was bleeding.
Valentina leaned forward before he had fully opened the door.
"Is she hurt?"
"No."
He placed the carrier between her feet.
"Keep it closed."
She put both hands around it. "Thank you."
Ronan shut the door without answering.
The SUV pulled away.
Valentina put one hand against the mesh.
The other stayed wrapped around the useless phone in her lap.
She began counting turns.
I watched her lips move.
Left. Right. Straight.
She caught me looking.
"What?"
I said nothing.
"Then stop staring at me."
She was right.
That had become the problem.
I had watched her for six months.
I had watched her touch herself once, late, when she thought the cameras were only for security. She had been quiet about it. Focused. Beautiful in a way that made my hands shake against the desk.
I wanted that quiet focus on me.
I wanted her hands on my c**k the way they had been on her own body.
I wanted her to look at me the way she looked at herself in the mirror when she wore the black dress — like she was deciding whether to let someone have her.
I already knew the answer.
I was going to take it either way.
- Writer
