Page 70 of The Carnage We Keep

Did I mention that this chick is goals?

Cillian sidles up next to his wife, wraps an arm around her, and leans down to cup her face and kiss her.

“I’d say that minor catastrophe worked out well for everyone involved,” he murmurs with a grin. “Wouldn’t you agree, love?”

They go back to kissing as I groan and look away. Just then, a soft and fuzzy head butts up against my ankle.

“BONES!” I shriek gleefully as I bend to gently scoop the old guy up. “Aww, I’ve missed you, you grumpy little shit.”

Bones, who was Una’s cat before she even met Cillian, is old.

Like, defying the laws of feline biology old. I genuinely have no idea how he’s still with us since he's nearly thirty, but fine by me. He’s a total shithead to pretty much everyone except Cillian and Una, and I am incredibly smug that he’s deigned to include me in his inner circle. I get even smugger about it when one of my cousins like Lochlan or Selene tries to get near him and he acts like a jerk.

A pitter-patter pulls my attention to the stairs. The other two cats, Diablo and Ghost, scamper eagerly down to say hi before pulling the most cat thing ever and pretending I don’t exist once they actually reach me.

Weirdos.

Cil and Una knew from the get-go that they wouldn’t be having children. Not after the fucked-up childhoods they both had.

So fur-babies it is, and I have no complaints about the three goofballs.

I start to bend down to run my fingers through the fur of the other two, but Bones grumbles and yowls in annoyance in my arms.

I know I shouldn't have one, but he really is my favorite.

I catch up with Cil and Una for a while over tea in their kitchen. Then Cillian gives me a hug and leaves to “get out of our hair”.

Unfortunately, there’s a reason I came over today beyond just wanting to see them and the kitties, namely, wedding dress shit.

Gross.

“Fuck, I totally forgot!” I make a face at Una. “Is it okay that I invited my friend Vesper to swing by? She travels a lot for work so it’s rare that she’s in the city.”

Una smiles. “Of course!”

“Thanks, you’re going to love her. And you don’t have to watch what you say around her.” I grin and wiggle my fingers in the air like I’m casting a spell. “She knooooows aaaall.”

I met Vesper about three years ago in a penthouse hotel room in Boston when I was closing in on these two shit-stain “manosphere”—barf—podcaster brothers who were heavily involved in sex-trafficking underage girls.

I was sixteen at the time, so obviously the two losers had no problem inviting me up to their “exclusive party”, where they and their buddies planned on having a grand ol' time sexually assaulting minors.

Unfortunately for them, that’s not how the evening panned out.

After I’d ushered the girls out, locked the door, and turned that hotel room into a Jackson Pollock painting, I realized I’d missed someone hiding in the closet of one of the bedrooms.

And that's how I met Vesper Cartwright.

She was working as an escort and the two fuckers I’d just torn to pieces had hired her, mistakenly thinking she was underage. When a confused and then thoroughly disgusted Vesper explained that she was actually twenty, thank you, and that she was now leaving after realizing what sort of party this was and how old the other girls were, they beat the shit out of her and tossed her in the closet.

Honestly, my smartest move would’ve been to leave her in there for the authorities to find.

But, instead, I opened the door. And she saw five-foot-nothing, sixteen-year-old me covered in blood, holding a cleaver, and grinning from ear to ear with five dead sex-traffickers behind me and decided then and there that we were going to be best friends.

Vesper isn’t “like me”. But she’s also not bothered by what I am or what I do. In fact, she’s helped me in my “extra-curricular activities” countless times since by passing me any info she hears on trafficking and pedo rings.

She’s a total boss. She still escorts, but she’s literally her own boss, works only when she wants, picks her own incredibly wealthy and respectful clients, and travels the world staying in stupidly nice hotels, eating at Michelin restaurants, and charging obscenely for her company.

Hey, sex work is work. There’s not a single drop of judgement here.