Twice footsteps approached room 341 In the Intercontinental Hotel. Petra sat in the corner with a 9mm in her hand. Footsteps neared the unlocked door. She raised the weapon . The people proceeded down the corridor. She had been wearing the dominatrix corset, vest, and girdle for hours. The leather cut into her flesh. She quickly stripped and put on a thick cotton robe, then asked herself, "Where is he?"
SS Tommy was not the kind of man to let her off for running amok up his world. At any second the cold-blooded kill might smash through the door. She ran through the drill one more time.
Point and shoot.
A hail of bullets.
SS Tommy dead on the floor.
More minutes in the quiet hotel room. She grew drowsy and shut her eyes for a second, telling herself, that she would not go to sleep.
"Schiesse."
Sleep was SS Tommy's ally.
She composed a list of men who deserved death.
Her father for raping her.
The neighborhood priest for his fiery sermons on Hell and boring platitudes of Heaven.
She spared the boys in Hochschule who glimpsed up her dress, her first clients as a Strichmadchen on Lange Reite and the old men smitten by the top girl of Hamburg, because she had known what she was doing and taken advantage of the situation as best she could, although no matter how much you tell yourself otherwise, the one being paid was never the one on top.
Her blood burned at the thought of SS Tommy whipping her and Cali for allowing the beating.
Kurt was guilty by association.
Lukas also deserved a bullet and lastly Sean Coll, who had weakened her resolve.
They all had excuses, but 'Sorry' would not give back her eye or remove away the scars. If to forgive was divine, then she was purely human. Every man was guilty of something and her capacity for mercy was on empty. The next man to walk through the door was a dead man, even if he were room service. One was as good as the other. They were all the same.
Her teeth clenched tightly and her jaw muscles locked place. She had no power to speech and stiffness spread through her body to sculpt a taut statue. Footsteps neared and stopped before her door. She sighted the gun head high and held her breath to steady her hands. This would take less than a second. A man opened the door. His silhouette outlined by the hallway light was the perfect target, until he asked, "Petra?"
Sean peered inside the unlit room and his eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness.
A woman was in the corner.
He suffered a mal de déjà vu, dating back to discovering her in the old house on Kaiserringstrasse, then light glinted off the metal in her hands.
A gun.
He hated life repeating itself for higher stakes, but he had been on a losing streak too long and tonight that bad luck was going to end one way or the other.
"Petra. Don't."
"Go away." Her voice trembled with anger.
It never paid to argue with someone holding a gun, but Sean could not leave and stepped inside the room.
"No closer or I will shoot. Go away."
"So you can kill yourself. No, I'm staying," Sean spoke and recollected an old news story from Miami about some man getting shot in the head five time and complaining later to the doctors in the emergency that he had a bad headache. He had been shot with a 22. A 9mm was less forgiving.
He took one another step.
"Petra, I know you want to kill someone. Me?"
She said nothing and his hand snaked out to slap at the pistol. The gun went off before he touched it. A shot thundered in his eardrums. Her involuntary flinch had deflected the bullet's course. He snatched the pistol from Petra before she could pull off another round.
"You crazy fucking bitch. You could have killed me." Sean threw the weapon into the corner, then struggled to restrain Petra's fists, knees, and feet. Her screaming cut through the ringing in his ears, then she freed her right hand to strike him in the jaw.
A left landed and his head snapped back. Petra was not holding back. Sean grabbed her arms and twisted her body. They fell onto the floor. Her nails lacerated his face. If she had been on the top, he would not have stood a chance.
Sean seized her wrists and sat on her stomach. He almost hit her and Petra winced in expectation. He shook his head. The last thing he had on his mind was hurting her or letting anyone else touch her.
"Ist da ein problem hier?" someone asked, startling Sean.
A very respectable man in his pajamas stood at the door and Sean rolled off Petra. "There's no problem, mister. Just go to sleep. We will try and be quiet. Sorry to disturb you."
Sean shut the door and picked up the pistol from the corner. The barrel was warm to his touch and the smell of gunpowder was nauseating, especially since the bullet had whizzed by his ear.
Petra sat on the chair and her talon-sharp nails raked back her hair. She stared at him with unrefined hatred and announced dejectedly. "You are lucky to not be dead."
"You got that right."
He should be lying on the floor, his head surrounded by a halo of blood. He shuddered, sensing sensed the ebbing of life from that dead man. Almost a dead man alive for the next few seconds, then gone. Sean reckoned this was his third close call with death since coming to Hamburg. Surviving a fourth was out of the question.
"Why don't you go away?"
"Because that would be easy." Sean stuck the gun behind his back.
"You do not understand anything." The anger vented from deep within her and she screamed, "How can you tell what's good for me or even you? Who made you God?"
"I never said I was anything special."
"Special? You're no saint. You'll never change either. You'll end up dead on a slab like the rest of your kind. Dead, dead, dead with no one to shed a tear either."
Petra rocked from side to side, her knotted hair masking her face, repeating the word 'dead' like a record skipping its track, until she was down to just 'd'. Someone chanting his death mantra, even if it was under their breath, wasn’t good for your karma, but even worse for hers and Sean shouted, "Stop it, Petra."
"Why? To be a good girl? Is that what you want? This is as good as I get"
"That's a lie. Believe me, I know when someone is good or bad."
"What are you Santa Claus?"
"No, but I have been good and I have been bad."
"I guess you are not as big a bastard as you look." snarled Petra.
"You think you're the only one in the world to get the shit kicked out of you. I've been one foot in the grave before. Beaten to the ground outside a New York nightclub with bats. I was on the ground dying or as close to dead as you can get. To this day I have no idea why they stopped. I came to covered in blood with my ribs broken, but I was alive. I searched for the guys who did that with two friends and found them in a bar. We had guns. I could have killed them, but didn't."
"Why?"
Sean touched the scar underneath his eyebrow, reflecting back to the moment when they caught his attackers. The man dared Sean to shoot him, but he had walked away and it was time for Petra to join him.
"Because I'm not a murderer and neither are you."
"I will be."
"Who? SS Tommy? You're too late. He's already dead."
"I will believe that, when I see his body."
"His body in in the Elbe and Kurt is also dead. A heart attack in Geneva. not be possible," Sean said and sat on the bed.
"There is Cali and Lukas."
"Cali is lucky to be alive." Sean understood exactly how she was feeling, but also how she would feel later and said, "He isn't so easy to kill, but SS Tommy tried and failed. Lukas on the other hand. I don't know where he is, but I'm sure Cali will take care of him. They have issues to resolve and resolve only one way."
"But I want my revenge."
"Yes, and I wish I could buy it for you, but I can't and neither can I make you forget your beating, but that the pain will always be with you. Everything we do and is done to us always is. I'd like to say that I will not ever hurt you and hope that you will never hurt me, but that's a promise no one can keep. All I can say is that I love you. I'm leaving here for Paris. We have money. Are you coming or not?"
A second ticked in time.
"Paris."
"It's a good city to forget the past."
"With you?"
"With us?"
Petra stretched out a hand and Sean helped her to her feet. He put his coat over her shoulders and they walked from the room. This thing between them might not last forever, but it seemed like it could. Neither of them would talk about it though, since telling your wish after breaking a wishbone was bad luck and both of them wanted this wish to come true.
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