If you have an intruder, The Servants of Patmos might be for you.
My walk-in closet was the source of all the noise, and I inched right up to the open door. Peering into the closet, I found a girl rummaging through my drawers with her back to me. Swiftly moving up to her and bridging the gap, I pushed the gun into the back of her shoulder, making demands: “Who are you, and how did you get in?”
Her hands flew up into the air, “It’s me! Abigail!”
Abigail?
“I don’t know any Abigails, sweetheart. What are you doing here? Who gave you my house codes?” Pressing the gun deeper into her soft skin, I choked on the perfume she was wearing.
At least it wasn’t Gucci’s Guilty, my mom’s signature scent.
“Vic’s assistant. We’ve met like a million times. He sent me to make sure you had an all-black suit for the Hunt coming up.”
Lowering my gun, but not flicking the safety on, I crossed one arm under my bicep, waiting for her to elaborate, as she slowly turned around, planted in front of my drawer full of socks and underwear.
“He gave me the codes and sent me to hang up your suit he got you. He made it very clear that anything with holes in it was a no go.” Her eyes shuffled over my body to the rips in my shorts. Judgment was burning into me.
Finally taking a harder look at her, all I was able to gather was that her hair was a natural kind of brown that fell past her boobs, big features depleted of fillers, and her body was hiding in a baggy turtleneck cream sweater that was tucked into the front of her plaid pants.
Who was this girl? How did I not burn her into my brain already?
“Nice turtleneck,” I mumbled, before stalking towards the bed. I patted my sheets for my phone that I had tossed on it.
Vic had been testing my nerves lately, in new and creative ways, compared to his old ones that I called “tough love”.
Normally he’d bitch and complain, then ignore me, then realize I was never going to do what he wanted. Now he had moved on to home invasion and had worked me up enough to want to cave his face in.
Between Vic and Mommy Dearest, I was full on the pushy ideals of how to fix me. Let’s just skip to the end, where I do something so horrible that they deem me unforgivable. I would prefer that.
Short of burning down Clave with everyone in it, I didn’t see that happening. I’ve killed every kind of walk of life; I use torture as a method to get what I want; and I’m pretty sure the anxiety is a side effect of rejecting feelings for this long. Yet, I was still redeemable to everyone in my life.
Remarkable. Utterly-fucking-remarkable.
“It’s cashmere, asshole.” Mousey and natural, but she wasn’t afraid to follow me into the rest of my bedroom.
Pressing Vic’s contact, I put the phone to my ear, waiting for him to pick up. I knew he was awake. It was still early, but not for Vic. He liked to wake up before the world. This was LA; the only people awake were the ones doing sunrise yoga in Echo Park.
“Almost shot your assistant. Didn’t think that one through, huh?” I didn’t even wait for him to say anything when it stopped ringing.
“Is she dead?”
Vic, short for Victory, had no attachment to anything that wasn’t helping him win.
Win what was the real question.
We had won countless wars before they started by burying the right people at the right time. None satisfied him.
He wanted to win against love, hate, fate, karma… life.
“She’s alive. Don’t give my house codes out again, or I’ll shoot you myself.”
Before I could hang up, the phone was no longer against my ear. I could hear his drawn out words, “Wait… She got caught. I have no use for people who can’t follow directions. You don’t have a receptionist—”
Cutting off his words, I clamped my eyes shut, raising the phone to my ear at the idea blooming. Another way for him and my mother to control me, fix me, smother me.
“No. Absolutely not. I don’t have a fucking receptionist for a reason.”
“You know what happens to people we let go, Grimm. You might as well give her the honor of shooting her in your closet then, and save us all the trouble of an accidental death later.” He hung up before I could protest again.
Pussy.
I don’t argue and debate. I left that up to the other guys, until it came down to the fun parts: fists, knives, guns… That where I shined in getting my way.
Twisting around, I looked for Abigail, but she suddenly wasn’t in my room anymore. Almost panicked, I searched the closet and looked over the railing of my very modern and cold house, tucked into the hills of Los Angeles.
Abigail was fleeing the scene, like a professional escape artist out my front door.
Fuck.
Depending on how serious Vic was, he could have put the hit on her right away. He was as ruthless as I was reckless.
Still shirtless and barefoot, I flew through the door to catch her still in my driveway. I don’t know why I cared or why I felt like I needed to save her. She was a stranger who invaded my personal space and just a receptionist for my best friend, at a company where we were treated like the elite assholes we were.
Catching her arm, I spun her around, caging her against her car door, surveying the driveway and my front yard, like a fucking psycho.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Her face was tearing through all those mousy features to look unamused as much as someone can look.
Realizing there were no red dot sights anywhere, nothing even looked disrupted, except Abigail, who was actually cringing against me.
Her tits were pressed against my chest, and the chunky sweater she had on was building a wall between us.
“Nothing…” Backing off of her, I shook my head at myself.
Fucking hell.
“Next time, warn a girl before you act like a freak.” She yanked her door open, slipped in, and rolled the window down as she pulled out.
This girl, with all her dormant features, decided to cop an attitude… with Death.
Spinning around, with my arms crossed against my chest, I shouted her direction, “By the way, you’re fired! So, be in my office in 30 minutes for your new marching orders, toots!”
Waving as she pulled away, I smiled at myself, knowing I won that round, but she was gonna win the whole damn war if every time she was in a bad position my body jumped to protect her.
It might seem far-fetched to think her being fired would mean someone was ready to put a bullet through her head, but it wasn’t, in my world. When you belong to a secret society that’s pulling the strings of the world, that’s just a reality.
Loyalty isn’t expected; it’s required to live—right next to oxygen and water.
ABIGAIL
I have a theory that no one actually wants to live in LA.
We all grew up with this shiny idea that LA is the one city in the world that lets you blend in and stand out all at once.
Who doesn’t want to stand out? Be that one person in the crowd picked to be “special”?
LA is the single city, not afraid to weigh your worth and dismantle your credibility in the short few years of you arriving. You don’t leave, because that sliver of hope keeps telling you: You could still make it here.
I moved here after I let too many big fish in my small pond back home convince me I should move here to model full time. That was three years ago…