The Foxes get concerned when a Raven player falls like a corpse on the first match of the Spring season.
They turn into panic mode when the helmet is taken off to reveal that his beloved lost striker, Neil Josten, is the one dying.
Kevin Day is the only one who can explain what that means.
Andrew Minyard is the one who will fight nail and teeth to keep his promise.
Even if it means becoming the new Moriyamas hitman.
No one will ever take away what is his.
It's a promise.
Read here or on AO3 (Check AO3 for content warnings)
Andrew decided long ago that if he was going to take on this kind of career, he would at least be classy about it. Stylish. Discreet. While his rivals enjoyed the screaming and the thrashing, delighted in seeing how much blood they could extract from a man before he succumbed to the blood loss, Andrew took no interest in such theatrics. He was practical, smooth, delicate. Artistic, even.
He therefore had little time for Nathan Wesninski. His most troublesome rival was everything that Andrew wasn’t in his work; boorish, bloodthirsty, dramatic… messy. The man was giving the profession a bad name.
His son was another problem entirely.
No, Andrew was no fan of bloodshed. He assigned the most violent tasks to himself simply because he would rather the blood was on his hands than anyone else’s, and the only way of ensuring a job would be well done was to do it himself.
Lola put up more of a fight than her brother, but she died just the same, scratching and scrabbling at Andrew’s forearm as he neatly retrieved his blade from her chest. Henchmen, Andrew decided with a curl of his lip, were not worth the trouble. Too uppity, too unpredictable, too likely to get certain ideas in their heads. No, it was always best to keep it within the family.
There was a pop from the next room as another bottle of champagne was uncorked, a scattering of laughter as the party continued in full swing, nobody having noticed the conspicuous absence of a few key guests. The hum of music and conversation was the perfect cover for Andrew’s footsteps as he padded up the thickly carpeted staircase.
Nathan’s house was a gaudy, unpleasant place, filled with bright reds and golds that hurt the eye. Framed paintings no doubt obtained under dubious circumstances cluttered the walls, not displayed out of any appreciation for the art but from a simple to boast. Why a man from such a long line of affluence should feel the need to flaunt his wealth was a mystery to Andrew, especially considering the target that it undoubtedly painted on Nathan’s back. For Andrew, who had clawed his way up from the gutter, his expensive lifestyle was not born of spectacle. He had spent the best part of two decades in squalor; his every expense was cushioning against the life that nearly killed him. Perhaps no healthier an explanation for his indulgences, but certainly less gauche. Andrew contemplated smearing a bloody handprint over an undoubtedly original Monet out of pure spite, but no, not his style, unnecessary and exhibitory.
He wiped Lola’s blood from his blade with a handkerchief as he slipped down the endless corridor before sliding it into place in one of the many sheathes built into his suit. It was a good blade, one of his favourites. Nathan was not worthy of it. He slipped another from his left lapel, slimmer, a little blunt from disuse. Perhaps he would sharpen it on Nathan’s ribcage. He flicked it over in his palm, enjoying the weight and balance.
There was only one closed door on the upper floor of the Wesninski mansion. Andrew caught sight of his reflection in the brass doorknob. His suit was unruffled, even after disposing of Nathan’s men, but his jawline was flecked with blood. He smeared a thumb across it, the sticky, familiar scent catching in his nose.
He straightened his tie and pushed the door open.
“I told you, I don’t want to be disturbed-!” Nathan said, and then stopped, likely because of the knife Andrew had plunged through his neck. He made a wet, gargling noise as he dropped to the floor, clawing uselessly at his throat.
Andrew crouched over him. “Ill be having that back, now.” He pulled his knife from Nathan’s throat, leaning back to avoid the spurt of blood. Nathan’s arms twitched, his chest heaving as he stared up at Andrew. His expression moved through all the stages Andrew had grown accustomed to seeing from the soon-to-be-deceased; outrage, horror, panic, and then fear, bone-deep, endless, fear. It took a great deal to elicit that sort of emotion from Andrew, and for a moment, he was almost envious. He watched, bored, as Nathan’s movements twitched to a standstill and his wordless gurgling gave way to silence. It was a quicker, more peaceful end than Nathan Wesninski deserved. As his killer, Andrew would take the dubious honour of his title - butcher - if he was foolish enough to come forward and claim it. Honorifics were of little interest to Andrew. He didn't care how people refereed to him as long as it was done with the appropriate amount of fear.
His blood seeped into the fluffy cream carpet, pooling around Andrew’s oxfords. They were expensive shoes, as was everything Andrew wore. The staining was of little concern – he had another seven pairs at home – but the red marks he left in his wake would be. He would blame them on spilled wine; the stains were nothing alike, but people were so wonderfully stupid when it came to such matters.
He found the ballroom much as he left it. He passed the string quartet (mediocre) to pick at the teetering profiterole tower (less so). Just because he had killed the host didn’t mean Andrew couldn’t benefit from his hospitality. Baltimore’s elite giggled and gossiped around him, and Andrew caught more than a few appreciative eyes roaming his tailored suit. Andrew couldn’t deny the idea of a hook-up appealed to him; leaving the party early would be suspicious, but slipping out to find a secluded spot with one of these trust-fund pricks on his arm… less so. Besides which, adrenaline was still hammering hot and heavy in Andrew’s veins, and there were worse ways of dealing with it.
He cast his gaze around the room. Some gusts he recognised from one shady dealing or another, members or associates of the Wesninski clan, while others were simply tag-alongs, swept up in the glitz of the revelry and oblivious to the sharks they swam amongst. The latter would be less troublesome, but the former more interesting. Andrew was a cautious man where work was concerned, but on his own time, he allowed himself to indulge in riskier ventures.
His gaze caught on a figure in the corner of the room, standing out for all that he was trying to blend in. About Andrew’s age, he showed no interest in the figures swirling around him, still like the eye of the storm. His eyes may as well have been glued to the floor.
Then, as though feeling Andrew’s gaze, the man’s gaze snapped up, and Andrew’s breath caught in his throat.
Despite his ill-fitting suit, the man was attractive –undeniably so – but that wasn’t all he was. Andrew knew those eyes. He had watched the life drain from a near-identical pair mere minutes ago.
Andrew didn’t believe in ghosts, but this was the closest he had ever come to doing so. No, despite his uneasy pallor, this man was not a ghost. He was younger than Nathan by far, his features slimmer, sharper. His lips, pressed together in an unreadable expression, were curled, chapped as though the man had been worrying at them.
Andrew met his gaze with a steady, blank stare. Nathan’s son was not what Andrew would have expected of him, shoulders curled in, devoid of his father’s self-assured bluster. He looked like he wanted to melt into the gilded wallpaper, or better still, dissolve into nothing. Nathan’s features, which had so offended Andrew on the man himself, did nothing to aide his son in his mission to disappear, attracting many interested glances that he made no effort to return. The striking eyes suited him better than they had Nathan, and for a moment Andrew’s world narrowed to the silver-blue gaze which pierced through the auburn mop of his hair.
Nathan’s death, along with the death of his most significant aids, was strategically planned to yank the legs out from beneath his empire. Andrew had not planned for an heir to the family business. As far as he had been aware, there wasn’t one; Nathaniel Wesninski had not been heard from in years, presumed to have met the kind of end that was common in Nathan’s line of work.
If Andrew had any sense, he would kill Nathaniel there and then. Instead, he took a glass of champagne from a passing waiter and threw it back. The sweet fizzle as the drink hit the back of his throat did little to distract from the warm, bubbling sensation in Andrew’s gut.
Partygoers parted before him as he crossed the ballroom, stepping sharply from his path like gazelles backing away from a lion. He came to a stop before the new, if unknowing, head of the Wesninski family. He was barely taller than Andrew, leaving them almost eye-to-eye.
“I heard you were dead.” Andrew offered him his hand. “Minyard.”
“Andrew or Aaron?” Nathaniel took it. “Either way, your reputation precedes you.” Andrew’s hand was still cool from the champagne glass; Nathaniel’s skin felt like fire in comparison. His hands were marked, Andrew noted, with a mish-mash of cuts and burns, still pink and healing, stark against his tan skin. Lola’s work, if Andrew had to guess. He wondered what act of insubordination could have drawn her ire; perhaps it was related to Nathaniel’s decade-long disappearance.
“Andrew.” Andrew squeezed Nathaniel’s hand. His fingers slid and caught on the callouses of Nathaniel’s wrist as he dropped his grip. “You have quite the pulse for a dead man.”
“So I’m told.” Nathaniel smiled. Andrew realised, with a shiver, that it was his father’s smile. Oh, he did not like that at all. “You can call me Neil.”
“Neil.” Andrew rolled the syllable around his mouth, testing it out. “An improvement.”
“It wasn’t a difficult name to improve upon.” Neil’s gaze flicked across the crowd, a crease appearing between his eyebrows. Andrew wondered if he was looking for his missing father; it wouldn’t be much longer before Nathan’s disappearance was noticed. Andrew was running out of time. “I always hated Nathaniel.”
“Not a fan of your father’s name?”
Neil’s expression closed like window shutters in preparation for a storm. “Is there something I help you with, Minyard?”
Andrew took the opening. He cast a calculated look over his shoulder before returning his attention to Neil. “Not here,” he said quietly. “Is there somewhere we can…?”
Andrew left the sentence dangling between them like a hook, left it to Neil to decide where he wanted to go with it. Neil’s suspicion was heavy in his gaze, but beneath it, a spark of curiosity that sent heat straight to Andrew’s gut.
Neil led the way while Andrew followed, leaving the kind of distance between them that gave the barest appearance of propriety without fooling anyone. A maze of corridors took them up onto a quiet balcony that overlooked the lush green of the Wesninski’s estate below. The height would be enough to leave Andrew’s heart tipping around in his chest, were the man before him not already doing the job quite effectively. It was more exposed than Andrew would have preferred, but at this time of night it would be dark enough to provide the minimum cover he required. If not, Andrew was more than equipped to deal with the consequences.
His knives were a heavy weight in their hidden sheathes. Andrew wondered, if he pressed Neil up against the balcony wall, whether the man would feel his blades through the layers of his suit.
Kiss the boy or kill the boy; Andrew could not have both. He wasn’t needlessly cruel.
Against expectation, Neil turned away from Andrew to rest his elbows on the balcony partition. “So? What do you want?”
Andrew quirked an eyebrow. Neil genuinely believed that Andrew was here for business, not pleasure. Interesting. Oh, why did he have to be interesting? Interesting was troublesome. No, interesting was dangerous.
Nathaniel Wesninski was a problem. A loose end. Left to his own devices, he could unravel everything Andrew had fought and bled and killed to build for himself. Painted silver by the moonlight, Neil leaned over the balcony with no concern for the drop beneath him, eyes on the horizon, unaware of the terrible power Andrew had dropped on his shoulders. Power that, if Andrew had any sense, he would destroy before it had the chance to be turned on him.
Andrew couldn't look away. It would be easy, now. A hand on his shoulder, the slightest push, and Neil would tumble to his death. It wasn’t Andrew’s style, but it would be effective.
He stepped forward, and in an instant, Andrew was flipped and slammed to the floor, a blade glinting at his neck. He gasped, the air knocked from his lungs, as Neil smirked down at him.
“You really think I’m that stupid?” He leaned forward to whisper in Andrew’s ear, breath tickling his neck. “You have blood beneath your fingernails.”
Andrew flinched. Stupid, stupid, stupid. His mind whirred; the key was to keep Neil talking, because talking was better than dead. “It didn’t come from anyone that will be missed.”
“I don’t doubt it. I’ll ask one more time: what do you want?” Neil twisted the blade, and a hot dribble of blood slid down Andrew’s neck. Andrew was impressed; he barely felt the skin break. Of course the butcher’s son would know his way around a knife.
Andrew glanced at the scars winding their way up Neil’s wrists, remembered the tense set of his shoulders as he scanned the ballroom, the way Neil’s expression shuttered at the mention of his father, and made an educated guess. “The same thing as you.” His voice came out low, hoarse from the weight of Neil’s knee on his chest. “Your father in a coffin.”
Neil laughed. “It isn’t a particularly exclusive club.”
“I’m not joking.”
Neil went still. “If you think you can kill my father, you’re either stupid or suicidal.”
Andrew’s face split into a painful smile. The movement pressed his neck to the biting metal of Neil’s blade, but he couldn’t hold it back. “Is that so?”
“The life expectancy of people who anger my father is not a long one.”
“What are you? The exception?”
Neil’s gaze flattened into something painfully black. In the moment of distraction, Andrew lunged, flicking a blade from his sleeve to press into Neil’s abdomen. Neil’s eyes widened, but Andrew only held it there, teasing at the hem of Neil’s shirt with the tip.
“Don’t make me kill you,” Andrew hissed. “This suit costs more than your life is worth. It would be a shame to get your blood on it.”
For a moment, they stared at each other, hands veined with the strain of weilding their respective blades, chests rising and falling in time. Neil was the first to give ground.
“Now what?”
“Do you want to be head of the Wesninski household?” Andrew asked. The question seemed to surprise Neil. He flinched.
“God, no.”
“Correct answer.” Slowly, Andrew withdrew his blade. It clattered as it hit the floor, startlingly loud in the quiet night air. “A lot of people are about to be pointing a lot of fingers, and you’re going to be suspect number one.”
“For what?”
“The murder of your father.” Andrew wrapped his hand around Neil’s wrist and pulled it back. Neil moved bonelessly with him, his features slackened. “Come with me, forsake your family name, and I can offer you protection from all of them.”
“The murder of my-” Neil’s mouth moved wordlessly for a moment. “You didn’t.”
“Go look, if you like. I’m sure being found at the crime scene will do your case a world of good.”
Neil’s eyes flashed, bright with a vicious, violent hope. His gaze snapped back to Andrew. “Why should I trust you?”
Andrew shrugged. “Trust is irrelevant. I’m more interested in your compliance.”
“And if you don’t get it?”
Andrew pressed Neil’s wrist to the floor and squeezed it, hard. “Then I’m sure we can work out another way of settling the issue.”
The windows on the ground floor were thrown open to let the cool night air seep in. The sounds of the party were so faint that Andrew didn’t notice them until they stopped. There was a clash of glass, a faint scream.
“Tick tock, Neil. Join me, or become your father and risk paying the price for his death.” Andrew pushed himself up until their faces were a hair’s breadth apart. Neil’s eyes were wide, his pupils blown, his breath shallow. The sight sent aftershocks of adrenaline shooting through Andrew’s bloodstream, making him wonder if the offer wasn’t better rescinded with a knife to the chest. It was a terrible risk to take simply to neutralise a threat. But, if Andrew was being truthful with himself, it wasn’t entirely about finding a bloodless resolution; he thought he knew better than to mix business with pleasure, but Nathan’s son was teaching him all sorts of new things about himself.
What the hell; Andrew had earned a little indulgence.
This time, it was Andrew who leaned in to whisper in Neil’s ear. He noted the way the hairs on the back of Neil’s neck rose as he spoke. “Come with me. Join my family. Live under my protection.” Sirens screamed in the distance, the horizon flashing blue and red. They didn’t worry Andrew, who knew a car would be waiting for him at a strategic getaway point, nondescript, fast, expensive. Neil, on the other hand, did not look so comfortable with the approaching sirens. Perhaps he had some sense, after all.
The silver flecks in Neil’s eyes looked like shattered glass as he stared towards the source of the sound. “You can’t keep me safe. Nobody can.”
“Only one way to find out.” Andrew nudged Neil out of the way as he climbed to his feet. He noticed, with a stab of irritation, that his suit was rumpled. He paused to smooth out the creases.
Neil looked up at Andrew like it was his turn to see a ghost. Andrew had imagined the head of the Wesninskis kneeling before him more times than he cared to admit. The reality was more appealing than the fantasy ever had been, and for entirely different reasons.
Someone moaned. Another muffled a scream. Curses were thrown. Sobs erupted.
A single tear rolled down of Andrew’s cheek.
***
“When I release you, you’ll go back to whoever the fuCk is Lord Moriyma, and you tell him to stick his fUckiNg needle deep in his fUckiNg ass. No one touches what is mine. Clear?”
Another bunch of coughs followed before the man could nod. He was close to unconsciousness. It was almost impossible for Andrew to get up and kick the man out instead of taking his very last breath, but Neil wasn’t safe, and he needed to finish every threat that could come his way.
***
This boy won’t turn into him.
Andrew crouches in front of the kid and holds his neck. The contact sends jolts of past and present pain through the both of them, but Andrew doesn’t let go.
“It’s over.” He says.
And it’s true for both of them.
***
Next lot of chapters is here! Go on and keep reading on AO3.
All kudos, likes, comments, shares and follows make my day :D
Mafia & Hitman AU, Inspired by butcher!Andrew discussions on Twitter
Sequel to Blood Beneath your Fingernails (But can be read as a stand-alone)
Read here or on AO3 (Check AO3 for content warnings)
*
Nathaniel Wesninski – or Neil Josten, according to the forged papers Andrew procured for him - was more trouble than he was worth.
This was the mantra Andrew repeated to himself as he stalked across his study to where Neil waited for him, slouched on his couch with a false nonchalance that said, I’m sitting like this by choice, and not because I’ve lost too much blood to keep myself upright. He flinched as Andrew approached, but stilled when Andrew seized his chin between his thumb and forefinger, turning Neil’s face from side to side to inspect the damage. It was as though Andrew’s touch melted something stiff and glacial in Neil’s core, and he visibly softened, reassured by Andrew’s protective grip.
Neil showed none of the fear or anger one might expect from someone Andrew had recently pulled, unconscious, from a car full of bullets and corpses.
The kidnapping had been clumsily planned and clumsily executed; it had been child’s play to track the gleaming black Lexus as it roared north out of the city, likely headed to a convenient dumping ground in the wilderness. Wrecking such a nice car had prompted more regret from Andrew than any murder ever had.
The car was quiet in the ditch it had rolled to a stop in, although a bloody handprint glowed on the rear window. Having confirmed that Neil was alive and largely in one piece, Andrew neatly disposed of two of the three kidnappers with a knife drawn swiftly across their throats. The blood spilled hot and heavy over his fingers as he worked, but the faint twitches and jerks the assailants gave as they bled out on the leather upholstery ultimately left him unsatisfied. Andrew wasn’t used to feeling much of anything in the wake of a kill, but the adrenaline of the chase mixed with the dark fury that came from the knowledge that they had laid hands on something of his simmered uncomfortably beneath his skin like an itch in need of scratching.
Leaving the third kidnapper alive was more… challenging than Andrew had expected. The sight of blood oozing from the criss-crossing slits carved into Neil’s skin drew something primal to the surface of Andrew’s mind, something that threated to spill over him and wash away the neat suits and refined tastes and cool, calm efficiency of his methods. Andrew didn’t want the man dead; he wanted him destroyed. It was a dangerous path from which there was no return, but the strain of hauling himself back from it left his hands shaking as he carried Neil back to the Maserati. The blood would be removed from the seats easily enough, although Andrew would remember the shape and distribution of the bloodstains with pin-point precision until the day he died.
And, back in the safety of Andrew’s study, Andrew had Neil’s blood on his hands for the second time that night. He removed his hand from Neil’s chin before the congealed stains could stick them together, rubbing his forefinger and thumb together. The familiar heat of Neil’s blood seeped into his callouses as he contemplated the damage. “Care to explain why the Moriyamas are after you?”
Neil smiled. His face split itself open all over again. “I suppose they don’t like the look of me.”
“Understandable,” Andrew agreed, “But wrong. You should know better than to lie to me by now, Abram.” The sound of his given name was enough to dent Neil’s smile. It was his father’s smile, and for that reason Andrew detested above all else the heat it bit through his gut.
“How did you find me?” Neil said, as though he honestly believed Andrew would be so easily distracted. Andrew indulged only because letting Neil believe he had the upper hand occasionally was entertaining, and dissuaded him from seeking out a real victory. Andrew leaned in, knee dipping into the sofa cushions as he slipped a hand under the lapel of Neil’s jacket. Neil held his gaze as Andrew’s fingers worked their way across his chest. He could feel warmth radiating through the thin fabric of Neil’s shirt, but refused to let it distract him from his mission. He found the miniscule disk sewn into the lining of Neil’s suit jacket and yanked it free without regard for the seams and stitching he tore along the way.
He held the tracker up for Neil’s inspection. It could be mistaken for a button if one didn’t know what they were looking for. “If you were better at keeping your phone on you, this wouldn’t be necessary.”
“And here I was, thinking you bought me this suit because you wanted to treat me.” Neil crossed his legs, and barely twitched at whatever pain the movement must have caused him. “Or because you thought I’d look good in it.”
“Making you fit to be seen in public with me was a welcome side-effect.” Andrew dropped the tracker into Neil’s lap. “Keep your phone with you.”
“Why bother? The tracker has proven itself.”
“The tracker can’t text me back,” Andrew snarled. “Now, circling back to this.” He punctuated the sentence with a jab to one of the thin slits running the length of Neil’s cheekbone, “Shall I get my answers from you, or from the man chained up downstairs?”
Neil’s eyebrows twitched, as close to surprise as his face would admit. “You took one of them alive.”
“I had a feeling my other captive would be reticent with information.”
Neil snapped forwards with an agility that the night’s events should have denied him, crowding into Andrew’s space. “I’m not your captive.”
“True.” Andrew didn’t blink as Neil’s face eclipsed his field of vision. His eyes were as electric a blue as the day they met, raising the hairs on Andrew’s arms with the efficiency of a static shock. “You could walk out of those doors right now and never look back. Your father’s men would tear you to shreds, and I would be free to enjoy my whiskey in peace.”
“Don’t tempt me.”
“Why not? We both know you won’t.”
Neil was the first to blink. “The Moriyamas think I should have gone to them after my father’s death. Apparently, I’m quite a valuable asset.”
Andrew hummed. “Does that make me the lesser of two evils?”
Neil snorted. “You think highly of yourself. I’ve lived with evil. You go through the motions to keep up appearances, but you have no real interest in the business of evil. You don’t live the life you live because you enjoy it. You don’t enjoy anything but expensive suits and fast cars.”
Two out of three wasn’t bad, but Andrew wouldn’t admit it. Neil’s assumptions had opened a far more interesting line of enquiry. “And why do you do the things you do, Neil? You’re hardly an angel yourself.” Andrew slipped two fingers under the hem of Neil’s sleeve to check that the knives he had lent him were still securely sheathed in his armbands. His fingers flickered across warm metal and came away damp. This time, Andrew doubted that it was Neil’s blood. “You should really clean them before you put them away.”
“I was in a hurry,” Neil muttered.
“No more evading. You have hit your limit for evasiveness for tonight.” Andrew slipped a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the blood from his hands. He offered it to Neil, who scrubbed it half-heartedly across his jaw. “Do you kill because you have to? To keep up appearances? Or because, like your father before you, you enjoy watching a man bleed out on the end of your blade?”
Neil flinched. Silence hung heavy in the air as he handed Andrew his handkerchief back. Andrew rolled his eyes, held Neil’s head in place as he wiped away the streaks of dried blood Neil had missed. Neil tracked the movement of his hands as though trying to connect the careful movements to the man before him. He tilted his head to the side to grant Andrew access to the vulnerable underside of his jaw, and Andrew felt the muscles of Neil’s throat flex as he swallowed.
“I don’t know,” Neil answered quietly. “I don’t want to be like him, but I feel… I feel something of my father in me. His temper.” He swallowed again. “The henchman said that once he was finished with me, he would come back here and do worse things to you unless I stopped fighting back. I wanted to… I don’t know what I wanted to do, but I wanted to do it.” Neil’s eyes flicked to Andrew, heavy and unreadable. “I’m not losing you.”
Four simple words, but Neil didn’t know, couldn’t know, the effect they had. Andrew clenched his jaw, schooling his expression into something along the lines of his usual blankness before Neil could read too much into it. Andrew protected Neil, as was their arrangement. The last thing he needed was his fool of a runaway getting delusions of heroism.
“Would you like to find out?” Andrew’s question ploughed a furrow into Neil’s brow, so he elaborated. “Would you like to find out what you wanted to do to him?”
Neil’s eyes fixed on Andrew’s mouth as though Andrew had offered him eternal life, or perhaps eternal damnation. “Yes.”
Andrew lead and Neil followed as they made their way down to what Andrew privately called his workshop. It was a small building with insulated walls, separate from the main house, easily mistaken for a garage, and it was labelled as such on planning permission forms. Andrew didn’t often have cause to bring his work home with him, preferring to dispatch with his enemies as neatly and quickly as possible, but sometimes circumstances demanded a little more time with the kind of tools that weren’t easily transported to and from a potential crime scene. This was where Andrew brought victims in possession of information that they would not easily part with. Until today, Neil had never stepped foot within the workshop.
He was not the man Andrew had first believed him to be, that much was certain. Nor the second, third, or even forth. Looking at Neil was like staring into a maze of mirrors, impossible to discern which images were reflections and distortions and which was the real person concealed within the labyrinth. Their first meeting had been a headlong sprint into reflective glass, leaving Andrew bruised, disorientated, but itching for a fight. At first, Neil had been the suave inheritor of his father’s fortunes, a mini-butcher in the making. Then he had been the scarred victim of his father’s violent tendencies, trapped and desperate for escape. Then he had drawn his knife and pressed it to Andrew’s throat with all the ease of breathing, and the reflection shimmered and distorted itself all over again. Andrew had taken Neil on in the vain hope that he would reach the end of Neil’s maze or lose interest, yet neither event had yet occurred. No, the more Andrew learned, the more interesting Neil was, and while he remained as dangerous as the day they met, it was now for entirely different reasons.
Tonight, Andrew suspected, they would crack through another layer of glass.
He keyed his twenty-digit code into the keypad – Neil rolled his eyes – and flicked the lights on before tugging the door shut behind them, checking for the usual clunks of numerous locking mechanisms sliding back into place.
Most men in Andrew’s line of work would have guards, lackeys, minions – whatever one wanted to call them. Andrew personally found that the issue with hired muscle was simply that – it was hired. What could sway a guard to work for Andrew could just as easily sway them to work for anyone else. If Andrew was to be double-crossed, he would rather it was by his own blood, however expanded his definition of his blood might be. The workshop, despite and apart from his captive, was thus unoccupied.
The man was where Andrew had left him, which was to be expected, considering the numerous restraints holding him there. Andrew hadn’t genuinely expected him to know anything of interest, but there was a slim chance that Neil would have no earthly idea why the Moriyamas were after him, at which point a surviving kidnapper would be of help in filling in the gaps. Unluckily for the man, whose name Andrew would never learn, he had outlived his worth.
Neil showed little interest in their prisoner. He touched one of the carving knives hanging on the wall, flinching as it clanged against the neighbouring blades.
“Show me his face,” Neil said quietly. Andrew obliged, tugging the gag and blindfold down around the man’s neck in turn. He screwed up his eyes against the sudden light, sweat beading on his forehead despite the room’s chill.
“I have information,” he panted. “Valuable information.”
“Don’t care.” Andrew ran a hand across his cuffs, checking they were sturdy and untampered with. “Neil?”
“Yeah,” Neil said, and Andrew stepped back when he saw the axe swinging at his side.
As much disdain Andrew held for the others in his chosen profession, the irrefutable fact was that Andrew had a type. Neil, armed to the teeth as though he could be any more of a hazard than he already was, sharp smile and sharp weapons and sharp tongue, was Andrew’s type. Andrew wasn’t sure what he wanted Neil to do to him, and whether the axe should be involved, but he knew he wanted something.
Neil Josten was, undeniably, more trouble than he was worth.
“Hey,” Neil crouched before the captive. “Remember me?”
The man was stupid enough to nod.
“I never liked axes.” Neil tossed it from hand to hand like a running baton. “My father’s thing, really. You know, he threatened to hobble me with one of these? Nearly slit my ankles once, too. Figured I’d be less trouble if I couldn’t run.” Neil levelled the sharp end at the man’s head. “I can’t say I understood the weapon’s appeal. Blunt, imprecise, unwieldy. But that was the point, wasn’t it?”
The man’s head twitched in aborted movements, as though unable to decide whether he should be nodding his head or shaking it.
Neil pressed the edge to the same place his own face had been sliced open. A trickle of red wobbled down the man’s cheek before dripping onto his shirt. The stain blossomed on the white fabric like a miniature gunshot wound. The man quaked.
Neil abruptly raised the axe, inspected the thin sheen of red on the blade, and tossed it aside. He straightened to meet Andrew’s gaze.
“That’s what I wanted to do.”
“All out of your system?”
Neil smiled thinly. “It seems I am not my father after all.”
Andrew smoothed a thumb across the cut healing on Neil’s cheek. “I’m going to kill him, now.”
An unsteady breath shook itself from Neil’s lungs as he nodded. He had a particular way of looking at Andrew when he was working, gaze intent and pupils dilated, as though Andrew’s actions were poetry written for him alone. Andrew’s principles of detachment were never closer to shredded than when Neil looked at him like that.
Driving them home, Neil on the backseat and the kidnapper in the trunk, Andrew had played out this moment in his mind. He gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles whitened to chase the endless trembling from his fingers, which twitched with impatience in aborted movements towards the knives secreted in the folds of his suit. The anticipation sliced through his veins with the efficiency of molten iron, hot and furious and growing stronger with every glance Andrew caught of Neil’s form in the rear-view mirror. He had curled in on himself in his unconscious state, hair ruffled and sticking up in every direction at once, dark eyelashes standing out against his copper skin. His features were smoothed out in sleep, his brow freed of its usual pinched worry, and were it not for the blood streaking down his cheeks Andrew would have said he looked far younger for it.
Before that night, Andrew had not believed he had a truly vengeful bone in his body. He did not cause pain for the sake of pain; he caused it as a warning, a deterrent, a statement, an affirmation of his place in the world and the consequences that would meet anyone who wished to remove him from it. Andrew had left his statement for the Moriyamas in a Lexus filled with dead men, but he wanted more. He wanted to hack and tear and slice until there was nothing left. He wanted to remove every finger that had dared touch Neil one after the other and work his way inwards until there was nothing left of the surviving kidnapper that wouldn’t fit in a matchbox.
That Neil made Andrew want to do these things – that Neil made Andrew want at all – brought with it a kind of fear that Andrew had long believed was dead and gone, buried under years of betrayal and pain and loss. Wanting was as strange an ache as he remembered it being, more so when the object and instigator of that want was standing before him, looking at him as though Andrew could hack a thousand men to pieces before his eyes without prompting so much as a flinch.
Andrew wanted the man ruined, but he wanted Neil more. He promised Neil his protection, and he could not protect Neil if he became the kind of man both of them would rather forget. The kind of man who revelled in losing control.
Andrew killed the man. He died quickly, quietly, unremarkably. It wasn’t what he deserved – it never was, with his kind – but he owed Neil that much.
After, Andrew washed the blood from his hands, stilling as Neil chased a stray fleck from his clavicle with the pad of his index finger. Neil used the point of contact to turn Andrew to face him, allowing him access to refasten the top buttons of Andrew’s shirt. In the chaos of losing Neil and finding him again, Andrew couldn’t rightly say when they had come undone. Neil’s knuckles brushed Andrew’s neck as he did so, and Andrew repressed a shiver, remembering the day Neil pressed a knife to the same spot.
“I can help clean up,” Neil murmured, casting a sideways glance to the mess behind them. Andrew rolled his eyes as he tugged Neil’s lapel back into place. It was the same suit he had been taken in, and it showed, scuffed and rumpled and sporting several loose threads and dried bloodstains. Andrew would have a new one hanging in Neil’s wardrobe before sunrise, although Neil certainly wouldn’t appreciate it.
Andrew flicked a wayward tuft of Neil’s curls from his forehead with a roll of his eyes. “Worry about cleaning yourself up. You’re a mess.”
Neil shot him a flat look, but left to do as he was told. It wasn’t long before Andrew followed him back to the main house, checking his clothes as he went for stray flecks of red, knowing he would find none. The night air was cool after the stuffy, stale workshop, which was now choked with the thick odours of cleaning chemicals. The light in Neil’s room was still on, and Andrew squinted up at the tell-tale twitch of curtains that told him his return had been awaited.
Andrew took his time, holding a cigarette between his lips until the smoke drowned out the lingering smell of disinfectant. He knew from the tingle on the back of his neck that he was still being watched, but knowing it was Neil did something warm and pleasant to Andrew’s stomach, something that nipped. Andrew was particular about the kinds of attention he did and didn’t welcome and found that Neil’s faceless vigil was one which he, in fact, did. He pursed his lips around the cigarette, rolling his shoulders as he looked back up to the house, keeping his stance loose and relaxed as though he were returning from an evening stroll instead of a crime scene.
He waited Neil out, listening to the quiet chirp and rustle of the garden around him. Finally, the orange glow from Neil’s window flicked to black, and Andrew went inside.
His post-kill routine began, as it always did, with the longest, hottest bath he could stand. He threw handfuls of bath salts and goop into the claw-footed tub without much regard for the conflicting scents. He felt little need to wash off the grime, as it were, of a murder scene, but did so as a courtesy to anyone he might encounter in the immediate future less acclimatised to the scent of dry blood. When his skin was bright pink and scrubbed soft by the salts, he hauled himself from the tub, shaking water everywhere as he slipped into a grey silk bathrobe and returned to his room.
He found Neil waiting for him on his bed. This was not part of Andrew’s routine, as much as he might have fantasised otherwise. Face freshly scrubbed and his suit jacket abandoned somewhere between then and now, Neil was halfway towards looking human again. The top three buttons of his shirt were undone, and Andrew made a conscious effort not to let his eyes catch on the exposed stretch of Neil’s collarbone. Andrew did not like people sitting on his bed, or being in his bedroom, or behaving unexpectedly. Neil was doing all three, yet somehow it didn’t bother him.
“That is expensive Japanese linen. Do not get blood on it,” Andrew said. Neil’s wounds were cleaned and sealed, but it was wise to err on the side of caution where the runaway was concerned. Andrew wouldn’t be surprised if Neil had found someone to infuriate to the point of homicide between his room and Andrew’s. He was gifted that way.
Neil picked at the sheets. “They’re not even soft.”
“Can I help you, Neil?”
“It smells like hibiscus in here. And lemon. And lavender?”
“We have talked about your evasiveness quota for the night.”
Neil sighed. “I just don’t understand why I’m here.”
Andrew rolled his eyes. “Fate, destiny, a horse, who cares?”
“I mean, why you brought me here. Why you protect me. It would have been so much easier to kill me. It’s what you do¸ and you’re good at it. What makes me special?”
“This couldn’t wait until morning?”
One of Neil’s eyebrows slid upwards. “Now you’re being evasive.”
Andrew exhaled heavily. “You said I don’t enjoy anything but expensive suits and fast cars. You were wrong.”
Neil wrinkled his nose. “Clearly, you enjoy over-perfumed baths too.”
“Concentrate, Neil.”
“It’s hard to think when you smell like you’ve just robbed a florist.” Neil was too busy complaining to notice Andrew’s approach. Andrew kneeled in front of him, hands braced in the bedding on either side. Neil blinked.
“You’re interesting,” Andrew said simply.
“Interesting? Are you serious?”
Andrew shrugged. “It’s not often that I’m…interested.”
“Interested,” Neil repeated, and suddenly his eyes grew wide. “Oh.”
Andrew snapped his fingers in front of Neil’s face to regain his attention. “Now. If you want, you can walk out that door right now and go back to whatever plans you had for your evening. Your place under my protection will be unaffected.”
Neil did not, against Andrew’s expectations, look to the door. “Or?”
“Or you stay here, and I blow you.” Andrew had never been one for flowery propositions.
“Oh,” said Neil again. His eyes flicked across Andrew as though he were the mirror-maze reflection instead of Neil, and another layer of reflective glass had just been torn down. “You like me.”
Andrew fixed Neil with the most disdainful glare he could manage.
“Is it because…” Neil gestured vaguely over himself. “Because I’m the son of the butcher?”
“No,” Andrew replied. “It’s because you’re not.”
A new kind of understanding dawned in Neil’s features. He leaned in until their faces were inches apart. Andrew could smell Neil’s crisp aftershave, not one of the expensive brands Andrew preferred but compelling all the same.
“Kiss me,” Neil whispered, and Andrew was happy to oblige. He buried his hands in the sheets either side of Neil’s legs and kissed him until his lips were numb and they were both breathless. Neil gasped, and Andrew drew back, scowling when he noticed a thin scar cutting across Neil’s upper lip had re-opened.
“I don’t need medical attention,” Andrew mocked. “I’m fine.”
“I am,” Neil insisted. His tongue darted out to lick across his upper lip, and Andrew had to tear his gaze away. “It’s a scratch. It doesn’t hurt.”
“You said that about a stab wound last month.”
“You can’t tell when I’m lying yet?” Neil asked innocently.
“Stop talking.”
“Make me.”
Andrew was careful, the coppery taste of Neil’s lips setting long-abandoned parts of his mind alight, but Neil chased Andrew’s mouth with such fervour that Andrew soon gave in to the rough slide of their lips against each other. Neil, always so careful where it really mattered, dug his hands into the sheets so hard that Andrew wondered how he hadn’t torn right through them, leaving Andrew to dictate the points of contact between them.
Andrew nudged Neil onto his back as he climbed onto the bed, pausing to check for Neil’s consent before slipping a hand under the hem of his shirt. Neil gasped into his mouth, but as Andrew’s palm dragged across his ribcage Neil tensed, a bitten-off sound jerking from his chest. It wasn’t a good kind of sound.
“Neil,” Andrew said carefully. “You said your only injuries were on your face.”
“They were. I’m fine.”
Andrew retaliated with a light press to the side of Neil’s ribcage. Neil’s breath hitched, his face twisting. “Looks like it.”
“Fine. Fine, I think I broke a rib. It’ll heal.”
“Anything else I should know about?”
“No. Yes. No.” Neil winced. “It might be two ribs.”
“And you didn’t think to mention this because…?”
“You were upset.”
Andrew narrowed his eyes. A dangerous swirl of emotions churned in his stomach. “Was I?”
“Yes,” Neil replied. He said it with such ease, like he didn’t know what his words did to Andrew, staring up at him, open and exposed and caring, and for a moment Andrew couldn’t stand it.
I hate you¸ he wanted to say, but instead, “It is not your job to protect me. It is mine to protect you. Don’t lie to me again.”
“Can’t it be both?” Neil’s eyes traced the length of Andrew’s body, fingers twitching but still fisted into the sheets. “I’m not made of glass, Andrew. I’m the son of the butcher. I know how to fight. Let me fight for you.”
Andrew bit back a curse. He cupped Neil’s cheek in his hand, thumb running across the chapped skin of his bottom lip. “One condition,” he said at last. “No more lies.”
“Done,” Neil agreed, so easily, too easily, and yet Andrew couldn’t help but believe him.
He guided Neil’s hands to his hair before kissing him again, rough and hungry, and waited until he had succeeded in pulling a desperate moan from Neil’s chest before pulling back.
“Now, we are going to the ER, and you are going to get an X-ray, and I am not going to hear a peep of complaint about it.” Andrew ducked to press a kiss to Neil’s pulse-point.
“And afterwards?”
“And afterwards,” Andrew said thoughtfully, lips moving against Neil’s skin. “I suppose we’ll see where the night takes us.”
Neil smiled. It was not his father’s smile, not anymore. Neil had claimed it as his own.
