Roman's Redemption: Roman: Book II (Roman's Trilogy) Read online

  My Hell was run by the brand of Satan we’re all made aware of from the beginning of our realization of good and evil. He doesn’t hide behind masks or smiles, he doesn’t lie and act behind the curtains of sanity, much less society. I hate him to the core of my non existence, but I have not once feared him.

  Mac’s enemy is a fight between her heart and mind.

  My enemy is public enemy number one and has been since the book of Genesis.

  Chapter 20

  As I look around the second floor of the hostel I paid for three weeks ago in Armenia, I realize I’ve become the man I’ve loved and hated, envied and admired, my entire life.

  Amy, the whore who’s been with me from the moment I first pulled up to this cold, dilapidated hostel, remains shackled to the far left wall. Had I been paying attention, I would be able to tell you whether or not the rigor mortis set in late last night or early this morning.

  A part of me, a very small part, wishes I would have paid attention. Amy was the only one out of all of them who was able to withhold my attention and erection for the very small window of time I was actually able to penetrate any of them.

  Shambles. What stares back at me is a plethora of seedy shambles. Shambles of women. A chaos of body fluids and parts, littered atop broken furniture and stained surfaces.

  The newest conquest, Julie, is draped across the bed, her wrists and ankles still bound to the four posts. It’s now extremely apparent, I indeed did not translate the instructions properly while using the Judas Cradle. Be it the subpar translators or the amount of drugs in my system early this morning, it’s obvious by the awkward position of her lower torso hanging over the foot of the bed, separated from the rest of her, it may not have been used as its intended apparatus purpose.

  However, it’s all technicalities in the end, right?

  On the floor to the left of the two twin mattresses shoved together, Candy and Calypso are still bound front to front, ankles to wrists, but the head hanging between both sets of thighs no longer breathes. If memory serves me correctly, their demise occurred days ago.

  Well, either my memory or the horrendous smell emitting from the two of them.

  My breath freezes in my lungs when I spot a woman huddling in the darkest corner of the room beside the door.

  The last living soul left in this room aside from myself is hiding beneath Jackie, the single brunette of my original entourage of six, literal crack whores I obtained from dark alleys and seedy bars almost a week ago.

  The closer I step towards her, the more her trembling frame shakes Jackie’s on top of her. Even in the dark I’m still able to see the makeshift, red thong tourniquet around her upper arm and the hypodermic needle still hanging freely from the vein at the crook of her elbow.

  “What’s your name?” I cross my arms before leaning my shoulder against the wall next to her. When she doesn’t immediately respond, I reach for another piece of history from my bag, the breast ripper, and set it aside.

  “I refuse to repeat myself, darlin’. Instead, you and I are going to play a little game. A game that requires you to speak. Nod, do you, or do you not understand?”

  Her sniveling and pathetic attempts to disappear or have the floor open up and swallow her whole, almost gets her killed twice in the span of thirty seconds.

  She can thank her lucky stars my patience didn’t snap along with her neck before she finds the courage to nod.

  I hold up my new toy, earning a thrill at the sight of her eyes widening. “Do you know what this is?”

  She diverts her eyes away from the item in question before shaking her head.

  “This,” I pause, waiting to watch her reaction, “Was a tool frequently used back when women never misconstrued who owned them-mind and flesh. A little biographical trivia for you: I like to think of myself as being born in the wrong era, my…collection assists my past life’s carnal need for obtaining both, mind and flesh. Breast ripper. It’s a medieval device used either ice cold or branding hot to punish women adulterers and, or perform any necessary…seizure of life during abortion procedures.”

  Smiling I point to the clamped closed end and eight recently sharpened claws. “See these?”

  She nods.

  My fist releases, opening the torture tongs and revealing the four ninety degree hooks linking between the opposite ends four ninety-degree hooks like folding hands.

  When the talons of both ends pierce the skin on both sides of her left breast, she begins sputtering unintelligent sounds and pleas around her sobs.

  My eyes narrow on hers, “I love this toy. Did you know it is my favorite?” I ask, my eyebrows shooting up.

  I feel as the sharp iron fingers meet the resistance of muscle commonly found beneath a woman's breast tissue. Moving mountains. Maintaining my cool seems as unlikely as moving mountains.

  When she looks back at me, I pin her with my eyes, “I could honestly care less if you have two breasts or one in ten seconds. So, I’ll leave it up to you. Name? Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three.” All eight talons are biting every bit of their three inches, into her tit to the hilt. As I pull the skin taut, stretching it as far as it will go. “One breast it is.” I tell her before tensing every muscle in my upper left back and left arm, readying to yank. “Two,—“ She finally speaks clearly.

  “April! You sick, fuck, my name is April.”

  Shit.

  She flinches, jerking backward at the sound of my wrought iron toy clunking to the cement floor.

  “I’m sure you knew it never mattered, right? You’re a whore, darlin’,” I chuckle, sliding the twelve inch blade from it’s holster. “I don’t give a fuck about what your name is.”

  I momentarily ponder if I’ve ever heard a sweeter sound than that of a blade cutting the air before slitting the throat of ones prey.

  Ahhh…yes, undeniably there is a sweeter sound, I’m certain.

  The memory of Roman’s face alone when he thought he killed his ‘mouse’, still today, has me stumbling to the shower, coated in nothing but the blood of six Armenian whores and pumping my cock. Before the water can even turn warm, cum is dripping from around my fist and down the front of my thighs.

  It’s within the space between release and the assemblage of barriers to keep my mind safe from the pain when the dawning of perfection occurs. It’s this experience that leaves me clear-minded, certain of the direction my new divine plan will take me.

  The one vital, crucial cascade of happenings and events on my horizon, are the same as the ones written in my stars…life times ago.

  How did Hercules kill the Hydra?

  With one simple, single strike, severing every head from the serpent at the exact same time.

  Chapter 21

  “No, ma’am, Ivy. You can’t just eat your bacon. Finish your eggs and toast too.” Before looking back at the Seattle Times newspaper in my hands, I keep my eyes on her, waiting. I know exactly what she is going to do next. She must have inherited her strategy planning from her mother, because quite frankly, Heather’s planning is horrid.

  Example:

  Oh, I know what I can do! Dress in the shortest skirt I own and the lowest shirt I own, pull up to a physician’s gate and demand entrance. So, I’m following him because he may be a serial rapist murderer. It’ll be fine. Exit strategy? Ehh…we’ll do that later.

  I hold down the corner of the newspaper slightly and watch as her little hands start shoving her eggs under the edges of her plate.

  Before I can get pissed and chastise her though, I start chuckling and shaking my head.

  Just like her mother.

  “Daddy, don’t laff at me! I hate eggs! You know dat!” Her eyes narrow under her furrowed brow as she shakes her pointer finger at me.

  My chuckle turns to full out laughter as Heather walks into the kitchen.

  “Good morning.” She sits in the furthest seat from Ivy and I and curtly nods before looking down at her plate, picking up her silverware, and begins eating
.

  My laugh dies almost immediately when it hits me that something is wrong. The woman I held close to me as we fell over the precipice while both our bodies trembled last night, is not the same woman sitting across from me.

  As Ivy glances at her mother before sitting up and looking back at me in question, my chest feels as though a bomb exploded, shattering my rib cage.

  My mouse, my wife, is not sitting at this breakfast table with Ivy and me.

  I fold the newspaper and set it to the left of my plate then look over, smiling at Ivy, “Angel, if you’re full you may be excused.” Her eyebrows shoot up before grinning like the cat who ate the canary and she quickly scurries from the kitchen. When I hear her bare feet hit the first stair I look over at the woman on the opposite end of the kitchen table, “Mace, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

  Her silverware clatters to her plate. She wipes her mouth with her linen napkin before tossing it on her plate of half eaten food, leans back in her seat, and rests her elbows on the arm rests before glaring at me over her steepled fingers.

  No. This is definitely not my wife.

  “To what do you owe the pleasure? Oh, that’s rich, Rome.” Her linked fingers lower, revealing her sinister smirk. She then expertly delivers the strike as below the belt as she intended, all the while drawing out the ‘mmmm’ of Rome before finishing, “Eeee. It’s alright if I call you that, isn’t it? Surely after burying your wife, being forced to raise your daughter without a mother you’ve realized how unimportant little things like terms of endearment and pet names are, right, Romie?”

  Ahhh. She’s angry with me, which, who could blame her? Every time she’s been forced to encounter me, it directly involved her protecting Heather because of my irreprehensible actions.

  Around a chuckle I tell her, “No, after some of the names Ivy has called me,” I raise my eyebrows and deadpan, “Buzzy Light Year. King Triton. Papa Smurf. I can promise you, Romie is much more preferable, to say the least.”

  Mace stands before walking towards me. When she stops inches away, both of her hands grab the front legs of my chair and she turns me facing her.

  As soon as I see the wicked gleam in her eyes I know whatever is going to happen next will not be good, but before I can open my mouth, her skirt is hiked up around her waist and she’s straddling mine, grinding her pelvis against my lap. “Romie, you know you want a taste, mmmm. Wanna know what it feels like to fuck the trashy version of your little mouse?” Her breath whispers across my lips before her teeth sink into the flesh.

  I abruptly stand, shoving her off my lap and send her crashing to the floor before storming from the room. Her cackling laughter bounces off the walls chasing after me.

  My feet come to a halt in the doorway and I tilt my head to the side before speaking, “Mace, that behavior is not acceptable, is that understood?”

  I hear silverware clatter against a plate and seconds later a plate smashes into the right side of the door frame I’m standing in. “So you have no issues fucking the whores you nick, filet, and hang, is that what you’re telling me? But the woman who fought tooth and nail, screamed, spit and cussed while enduring the physical and mental torture so your precious mouse could remain untouched and safe? She...I am not good enough?”

  My eyes watch egg yolk run down the white doorframe as her words pull at my heart and my stomach turns.

  My voice sounds as cracked as my blackened soul, “Mace, I’ll never be able to repay you for what you’ve done for Heather, for allowing yourself to become the martyr, saving her from both me and Sebastian. When I lost her—“

  Fuck. This is so hard to say. Not because I’m proud, not because I refuse to own up to the fact that all of this, every bit of pain and heartache they suffered was both directly and indirectly caused by me, but because I can’t for the life of me find the fucking words to say it.

  I cough around the lump in my throat and continue, “When I lost her, when I lost my mouse, I lost myself. My mind, soul, everything that made me, me. Before her, with her…after her no longer remained. The sins and carnage I left in my wife’s wake are unspeakable. The night that fucking fire poker connected with the back of her neck and I thought I killed her…”

  Tears bite the back of my clenched eyelids as the nightmare of my life slowly replays in my mind and I have to brace myself with both hands on either side of the doorway before letting my head loll forward, slowly shaking it side to side. “I put a loaded nine millimeter in my mouth, slid the safety off, and bit down on it with my teeth before pulling the trigger fifteen times. The bullet in the chamber as well as the other fourteen in the mag didn’t fire, as much as I wanted them to, they wouldn’t fucking fire.”

  When I feel her arms circle my waist as her head rests between my shoulder blades just as she did last night, I know my mouse has found her way back to me. Her fingers link together and she whispers ever so quietly against the fabric of my v-neck t-shirt, and it’s her words, her voice that almost brings me to my knees. “I’m here, Rome, I’m here, Baby.”

  Her tears soak through my shirt and before she can speak another word, I turn, sweeping her from her feet and kiss her as if my next breath depends on it.

  Without thinking, without question, I know the woman I’m carrying up the massive mahogany staircase to our room is my mouse.

  Her eyes search mine once we are in our bedroom. It’s her following words that execute the perfect final blow. “Rome, baby, please, I know this is us, loving me will never be easy and at times it’s probably going to feel more like a war. But, Roman if you could just find a way, any reason to stay, I’ll go anywhere with you. I’ll do anything for you, just please,” The sob tearing its way from her throat is almost too much to for me bear, yet she continues begging through it, “Stay. Don’t leave me…”

  I want to lie to you, I want so badly to deny you the truth, but I don’t see how doing so would make any sense. As the tear spills before streaming its way down my cheek, I cup her flawless, beautiful face, look deep into my wife’s dark brown eyes before choking the words out, “I’m not leaving you, mouse, I’m afraid you’re leaving me.”

  Once I set Heather down on her feet, she makes her way to the phone and calls Dolores, asking if she’d watch Ivy while we spend the overdue time to talk and find out where we are at in our relationship. Code for, in my mind- a wonderful well needed day, evening, and night of worshiping my wife’s skin, inch by every inch, freckle by every freckle and everything in between.

  And that is exactly what I did. I held onto her while she came apart in my arms, my lips started at her forehead before slowly making their way down the front of her body kissing, nipping, and licking. When I finished exploring the front of her body ending at the tips of her toes, I eased her writhing form underneath me, turning her to her stomach before my mouth trailed from the soles of her feet to the nape of her neck.

  Twenty-one. I counted and kissed all twenty-one freckles scattered across her pale, flawless skin from head to toe.

  Afterward, I kneeled at the alter of my wife’s flesh, consuming, worshipping, devouring, adoring, dominating, loving, and gorging myself on Heather for more than twenty-four hours.

  Nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing is more humbling than when you realize even as you search for the redemption you don’t deserve, you’re still somehow blessed with the honor of loving and being loved by an angel.

  “I’m scared, Roman.” Her soft voice whispers as the rising sun spills into the bedroom through the windows, her head resting on my chest.

  Heather’s soft-spoken confession sends ice shooting through my veins. “Scared?” I ask with my lips against her temple. “There isn’t anything to be scared of, mouse, I will never let anyone hurt you or Ivy, ever again.” My fingertips pull her chin up until putting we’re face to face and I bore my eyes into hers, “I’ll only allow my demons to resurface once more in this life…I’m going to kill him, mouse. I’m going to find him, and bring him to the brink of death for e
very single day that he kept you as his prisoner. Then I’m going to peel every square inch of his skin away before plucking his muscles from his joints and bones. And in the end, I will hand him a gun, scatter the bullets to the far corners of the room, turn and leave, locking the door behind me, and I won’t return until I hear the sound of him putting a bullet in his head.”

  Heather’s eyes stay on mine as she processes my words, then her eyes flutter shut briefly before reopening, “I know. I know this is something you believe you must do, but Roman I’m afraid there are more people in this game than either of us realize. And until we know who, until we’re absolutely sure, Mace won’t go away.”

  “Good. With Mace comes the absence of your feeling the pain.”

  Chapter 22

  Roman, Ivy, and I all wave goodbye to my brothers as they pile into their own cars and drive away. It’s so normal I almost want to cry and laugh at the same time. Cry because I don’t remember ever feeling like I’m a part of something normal, and laugh because I love the way it feels; it’s like that feeling you get in your stomach when you’re riding a rollercoaster.

  I’ve been home for over a few month and I’m astounded by how much Roman has changed in my absence, as both a father and a man. I haven’t seen even a hint of the man he was before. He’s stern but patient with Ivy. He listens to my thoughts and opinions carefully and they’re considered around his decisions. As much as I hate to admit, I would honestly go through all the hell I went through again, without Mace, if it was necessary to keep Roman the man he is today, and the father he is to our daughter.

  My brothers’ and Roman’s parents began coming over for lunch at our house every Sunday. I love watching Ivy in the backyard playing with her little cousins. Rick and his wife had a little boy almost a year after Ivy was born. I could contently stay swinging on the porch swing watching them play and giggle forever.