“I’m sorry, they do what?”
Emily laughed, running her hand over my chest.
“Leak. Like the body is sixty percent fluid, right?”
“But they’re dead. Why would they leak? Doesn’t it all harden in there, or something?”
“They leak because they’re dead,” she explained. My hand ran through her hair as we lounged under the covers. I could have sworn we were talking about something else before this. How exactly had we come to leaking corpses?
“Emily, that is disgusting.”
“I thought so too, in the beginning. After a while, it’s very… you know. Normal. I mean, I don’t think I’ve dealt with any more feces or urine than the average mother or sanitation worker,” she said. I felt her shoulders shrug, using the most clinical terms to refer to human waste.
“So what do you have to do? Drain them?”
Generally, I got rid of them before they could start decomposing. She shifted on my chest, getting comfortable, tucking herself under my arm.
“Kind of. It’s called aspiration. Getting all the fluid out or at least most of what’s in there. It really only matters if the body is going to be displayed or stored for any amount of time. At some point, you just stick a diaper on them.”
“You’re fucking with me.”
She tilted her face up to look at mine. There was something catlike about her. It was the green eyes and the sharp eyebrows, her small nose and plush lips. It was that smirk she had on her face when she told me shit like this that she knew grossed me out.
“The leakage is involuntary and that region of the body has a number of… openings, so it’s just practical. Sometimes we plug them.”
“Stop it.”
“It’s not often that we’ve had to do that. Just sometimes. There are those bodies that just don’t stop.”
“Emily.”
“Hm?”
“That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve heard in my life.”
She giggled, pressing her face into my chest.
“Well, someone has to do it.”
She had a point. It was because of people like her and her father that I was able to quickly and efficiently dispose of bodies that didn’t need to be found. Getting to spare myself from the knowledge that dead bodies leaked and purged liquid seemed a bonus.
The stuff she’d shared in the last ten minutes alone would’ve made a weaker man ill. I’d never met anybody so comfortable in such a dark, morbid topic. Imagining her working with the dead. Cutting them, draining them, painting them…
I started to wonder if I shouldn’t be more afraid of her than she was of me.
“Can’t imagine it was your dream job, though,” I edged the statement in a question, leaving her room to respond, absently trying to remember the last time I talked like this with another person. Not giving orders or going over the merits of shibari versus traditional bondage…
I couldn’t remember.
“You’d be surprised.” She laughed.
“How so?”
There was a pause before she spoke again.
“It was what my mother did. She opened the mortuary. I was always around that stuff so it never scared me, and after she died, I became sort of obsessed. I read all her anatomy books, the ones about embalming, all of it.
“I just needed a way to connect with her, I think. So, in a way I guess it was my dream job. At least for as long as I can remember. Was this yours? Doing whatever it is you do?”
I couldn’t say that it was.
For the first ten years of my life, there was nothing I wanted besides a safe place to sleep at night. One where I couldn’t overhear the things being done to my mother in the next room. There were so many nights I wished I could stick my fingers into my ears deep enough to make myself go deaf, just so I wouldn’t hear it anymore.
I considered her question, but I barely thought of the future back then. I didn’t have the presence of mind to think about whether I wanted to be an astronaut or the President of the United States. I just wanted to get to tomorrow.
Once Thane chose me, it was natural that I took over from him. It wasn’t my dream initially but it became that. It became my path and my duty so I didn’t question it. It offered safety, not just from scum like the johns mom fucked, but from anyone who might dare try to harm me or take what I’d rightfully earned.
I was the king and this was my throne.
“It was a succession,” I replied finally. “Didn’t really have a choice.”
I didn’t. Not really. But if I had I would’ve chosen this for myself anyway.
I left out the details telling her the simple facts of my trade. She knew the broad strokes of who I was and what I did, enough to have an idea.
We talked a little while longer until she stopped responding, falling asleep in my arms.
I never shared my bed with anybody.
My fingers ran through her hair, strands of black silk that hung around her face. She was particularly beautiful when she was like this. Calm, comfortable, and not telling me the gritty details of body decomposition.
She didn’t have any secrets from me. She didn’t have a reason to lie to me either. Tension stiffened my muscles remembering what she told me about Nixon. The quiet serenity of my sanctuary was broken by my thoughts.
I’d known this woman for mere weeks, a pitiful fraction compared to how long I’d known Nixon. There was over a decade of trust and brotherhood between us. I would never choose a woman over him. I couldn’t because no woman worthy enough existed. My words felt hollow feeling Emily’s warm body rising and falling against mine.
She wouldn’t say something like that for no reason. Nixon didn’t like her, and she had no reason to like him, but she did care for her father, which lent credence to her admission.
…making it impossible for me to completely ignore.
I slipped carefully out from next to her making sure she didn’t wake up.
It was 11 o’clock, he should still be awake.
I got dressed quickly and went down to the garage, taking my Aston Martin to speed up the road to the mortuary. It was nothing personal. If the undertaker stopped being an efficient, clean way to get rid of bodies, then I had to do something about it. I didn’t want to think about what that meant if Nixon was involved, but it needed sorting.
I’d barely slept since Emily told me what she overheard, regardless of whether I actually believed there was any truth to it.
The lights in the mortuary were off but the lights in the house wedged off to the right of the property between the trees were on. I banged on the front door, waiting for him to answer.
The door opened and he halted, seeing me. The color drained from his face and his mouth fell open. In a second, he crumpled, falling to his knees.
“You said you wouldn’t hurt her.”
“What?”
“Where is she?”
“Calm down. She’s not here. Your daughter’s fine.”
…couldn’t say the same for her pussy, but that was another matter.
“Where is she? Where did you take her?”
My annoyance peaked. I wasn’t sure how he worked my last nerve, but his daughter had managed to work her way under my skin and live there since we’d met. I didn’t have the energy for his dramatics.
“I’m not here to talk about Emily.”
His bottom lip shook but he dragged himself back up to his feet.
“If you hurt her—”
“What are you gonna do? If I hurt her and brought back her body, ready for the oven, what would you do?”
His face clouded over again. Yeah, that was what I thought. He didn’t have leveraging power here, I did. I wasn’t going to hurt Emily. But if he thought I was going to, that would make him more amenable.
“Let’s keep the disruptions to a minimum and maybe one day I’ll send her back to you.”
“One day?”
I said the words without thinking. I had no immediate or future plans to say goodbye to Emily.
I liked having her around the house.
I liked talking to her.
I liked fucking her more than I ever liked anything else in my miserable life.
And she wasn’t actively trying to run anymore. There hadn’t been a locked door to stop her in days. Nearly a week now. But she was still a prisoner. Still trapped. Not a fully willing participant of my twisted devotion.
The hair on the back of my neck prickled as I beat the intrusive thoughts back.
“Promise me you’re not going to hurt her,” the undertaker demanded.
If I ever hurt her, it was because she enjoyed it.
“She’ll be safe as long as you cooperate,” I deadpanned, finished with this arm of the conversation.
“I got rid of the boyfriend’s body,” he said.
That loser was the furthest thing from my thoughts and I didn’t appreciate the reminder.
I hadn’t thought about the guy since I’d told Emily he was dead. Come to think of it, Emily hadn’t brought him up either.
“When did you last see Nixon?”
“Nixon?” he asked. His eyes became comically large, bugging out of his head pretending not to know what I was talking about. Or maybe I was overthinking it.
No. I was never wrong.
“Every second of my time that you waste is a second you won’t get back with her,” I warned.
“I…” He faltered. “He’s only been here once.”
Ice ran down my spine.
“When?” I demanded. He shrugged.
“It was a while ago. I don’t know. He was alone.”
“Three days ago, on the phone, what did he tell you?”
His eyes shifted until he broke eye contact completely.
“He didn’t say anything. He just wanted,” he sighed. He was stalling. Hesitating. There was something there, he was just afraid to say it. Trying to make up something else that would fit the narrative.
Fuck, Nixon, what did you do?
There was history with Nixon but Emily owed me nothing. She had nothing to gain by sharing what she heard.
I slammed my fist into the doorframe.
“What did he tell you?”
Snow jumped, his will crumbling like a piece of burnt toast.
“He wanted more money.”
“From you?”
“From you,” he countered. “He wanted me to ask for more money.”
He was staring at the ground, showing me the top of his head.
The realization was slow, taking a while to settle in. Like acid eating away at open flesh.
“When did he start asking for a cut?”
The undertaker’s eyes shifted. “Please…”
“Answer me.”
“S-since the beginning. It was his idea.”
Shadow darkened all the interactions I had had with Nixon since the first fee hike request came. It was slow, creeping, that bitter taste of betrayal as it coated my tongue.
“You didn’t make the requests for your own greed,” I said, more a statement than a question.
“Please,” he tried again. “Mr. Monroe… he’s threatened Emily. He said if I didn’t push for a higher increase in the fee he’d—”
I lifted my hand to stop him right fucking there.
He. Threatened. Emily.
I blinked, trying to keep composure despite the column of fire rapidly growing in my core.
“You’ll protect her from him, won’t you? I swear I’ll get rid of as many corpses as you need. I’ll even take a lower fee, just… she’s my only child…”
The betrayal hung heavier now. It’d seeped into my muscles, making me want to crawl out of my own skin.
“He will not harm Emily.”
It was the only promise I could make as I turned to leave.
“Wait, what are you going to do?” he called after me.
To Nixon? I didn’t know yet.
To him? Nothing.
To Emily… I didn’t want to think about it. I’d taken her because of the undertaker’s greed, to teach him a lesson that wasn’t his to learn. My right to keep her just turned to dust, seeping between my fingers.
“You don’t report to Nixon anymore. Only to me. Do you understand?”
“I do.”
A venomous shudder rolled down my spine.
“And my daughter?” he called, louder now, realizing what I’d just realized a moment ago. That I no longer had a legitimate reason to keep her.
I ignored him, my feet heavy in my boots as I stormed back to the car.
Nixon couldn’t get away with this.
If he did, it would send shocks of dissent through the ranks of my other men. A king dealt with insubordination swiftly.
My mind rattled, still struggling with the truth.
Don’t get involved.
Unlike the others, I’d let Nixon in. It wasn’t only orders and payment with him. I talked to him about things I’d never spoken of with any other people on this planet. I talked to him about Emily. Considered him the closest thing to family I had left.
I looked out in the direction of Emily’s cabin, not able to see it in the dark. For a while now, keeping her had nothing to do with keeping her father in line. My stomach sank, reckoning with the next hard revelation. Cold desolation hit. My hands idly held the steering wheel, unable to move.
Dark thoughts swirled, vying for attention from the furthest recesses of my mind. If Nixon could betray me like this, it was only a matter of time before Emily would do the same. Before I got so twisted up in her, with her, that pulling her roots would hurt me just as badly. Or worse.
Don’t get involved.
Don’t get involved.
Don’t get involved.
This was what I’d earned myself for breaking the rules.
There was only one solution.
They both had to go.
