The Great Below

The Box - Part 1

Victor knocked loud enough that anyone in earshot would have thought Dominic's door was caving in. He'd tried to restrain himself on the walk from Raul's room, tried all of the bullshit from counting to ten to deep breathing, but the image of Dominic and Octavia dug into his thoughts and held like a meat hook. The door swung open and Victor relaxed his hands flat; not because he felt any better, but because he wanted to conserve his energy.

"You know, I understand there isn't a hot little thing sitting out here taking my calls," Dominic told him, "but that doesn't mean I have an open door policy."

"We need to talk."

"What do we need? I'm not understanding you."

"We need to talk...Sir," Victor said. And though he had the right expression on his face and the right inflection in his voice for saying 'Sir,' the word felt like hot garbage on his tongue. Raul had told him about Octavia's screaming. Victor had been out with Alex on his first job: the fat man in the too-small suit, the one whose face he'd smashed apart. Raul had spilled all of it in Spanish, ugly words, but only because Victor had forgotten himself and almost killed him with his own two hands.

Rape didn't have only one translation in Spanish; it shared with the words violation and destruction, so at first Victor didn't understand. He didn't want to understand. Raul had no real evidence, only hearsay – he couldn't emphasize that enough. But she had screamed, and she hadn't given up screaming until her voice was gone. In a tomb of men who had mostly accepted their fate, she had been a shrill beacon of defiance.

Dominic stepped aside to invite Victor in. "I assume this isn't about your assignments. You did well on the last one and you must know I'm impressed."

Impressed. The word floated down to him from a great mountain, perched on a cloud of sarcasm. "Thank you," Victor replied.

"So what is this about?" Dominic sat down at his desk and leaned forward, gesturing for Victor to take a chair.

"I've seen my fiance once in two months. I made a deal when I came to work for you, and I have been true to my word."

"You have. And you've been compensated for your work."

Victor's hand vibrated against the worn wooden arm of the chair. "You said I could bring her along."

Dominic took a moment to retrieve a cut-glass ashtray, a gold lighter and a pack of cigarettes, dragging all the components to the center of the desk. He tapped the new pack, unwrapped and discarded the cellophane, then delicately removed one cigarette to light. "You realize that a contract to kill someone is entirely unenforceable, right?"

"What?"

"When a client signs a contract with us, in which we agree to kill a third party, neither one of us can be held legally responsible for our part of the contract. We can't be found in breach, so to speak. It's unenforceable. You can't make a binding contract for an illegal activity. So in the same sense that you are not legally bound to kill a target when I ask you to, I am not bound to give you your kidnapped girlfriend."

Victor sat up in his chair. "Wait a minute—"

"We had a deal that said you could bring her along, and guess what, Victor? She's here. I even gave her a job." He blew a stream of smoke from his nostrils. "Did you think that I would make up a special room? A honeymoon suite? Did you think she would sleep under my roof and eat three meals a day simply because you asked to bring her here?"

Motherfucker doesn't even have a roof, Victor thought. "So then all of the confidentiality bullshit you had me sign, I suppose I'm not legally obligated to keep quiet about this place? What we do down here?"

Dominic's smile was tight and thin and his reddened winter lips could have cracked with the effort. "I know what's going on. It's all this talk of fiances and honeymoons. You think I should make Octavia available to you for sex."

Victor came out of his chair like wildfire. "I know what you did," he growled. The only thing stopping him was the thick expanse of desk, like a downed tree-trunk between them. "You've put your hands on her and it stops now. You're going to give her back."

Dominic leaned back against his office chair, cigarette dangling from his lips, and the gleaming handle of a semi-automatic came into view from a holster under his suit jacket. "You're agitated. I can't reason with you when you're like this. If you take some time and cool off, we can discuss it in the future."

"You can't put me off." Victor gave the chair a terse shove and it toppled.

"I'm glad we cleared this up," Dominic called after him. "And by all means, remember that my door is always open."

#

The silence in Alex's car went on for so long that he could have spontaneously gone deaf and not noticed. He couldn't look at her; he was driving. What he caught in his peripheral vision as he drove was a statue, frozen in the seat next to him and looking out the window. It wasn't anger. At least he hoped it wasn't anger. And it wasn't merely sadness, because he would have understood that. They were less than a mile from the garage and he chanced a look. Her eyes were aimed out the window without seeing, her mouth a tense line. If something formed behind those lips, he hadn't been able to draw it out.

He pulled into the garage and took his usual spot, the silence a weight crushing his shoulders. "I know it didn't go the way you wanted it to," he finally said.

She blinked, leaning her head softly against the window.

"But it was a success."

Octavia turned, face red-streaked from her meltdown in front of the car. "I'm not sure how I wanted it to go," she said. "First I wanted to fail. I wanted to fail and get it over with so you could kill me."

"I wouldn't..." Alex started. "That wouldn't have happened."

"Then, I don't know, I wanted to succeed. I wanted to do it and feel nothing. To be strong."

"You were."

"I fucked it up." She ran both hands through her hair, hard enough to make a scraping sound. "I hurt him twice without killing him, I dragged the guard into it and I still didn't pass." She looked down at her hands, discolored from the dried filth of Jacob Corrigan. "I think I was supposed to fail. Like it was a punishment I deserved for thinking I could do this."

Alex reached over, even when she glared at him, and unfastened her seat belt. He tugged at her coat until she shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

"What?" she demanded.

His fingers found them: the little hole that had torn through the thick wool near her back, and then the mate next to one of the buttons on the front. He pulled at the coat and showed her by sticking his finger through. "The security guard fired as you fell on Corrigan with your arms out. It spread your coat. But I thought he'd gotten you square in the back."

She stared at the bullet holes, feeling under the coat and around her rib cage. "You were angry?" she asked.

He let go, leaning back into his seat. "I was terrified. And even though you don't want to hear it, I would shoot a hundred more security guards. I thought he had killed you and that I was too late. I thought—" Alex stopped, rubbing at his mouth. "I was waiting in the car and I tried picturing my life without you in it. I know it wasn't that long ago. I did it. It wasn't that bad. But now I've gotten used to seeing you every day, and I look forward to it. I don't know what to do without it. I need that excitement in my life – something to look forward to."

Octavia opened the coat again, peeling up her shirt. She was unscathed.

"So like I said – that job was a success. And that's how we're going to sell it to Dominic."