The chairman stands up, and the others follow suit. “Before you are four traitors to the Society.”
Bla, bla, bla.
Yeah, yeah. Just let us put a bullet in their brains already and be done with it. This is almost as bad as when Maverick insists on playing his death song.
“They’ve been confronted with the accusations against them and admitted guilt.”
Noah leans in. “After a nice little visit with The Skinner.”
A dark chuckle rumbles in my chest as the chairman prattles on. We’ve seen The Skinner in action. He’s meticulous about his art and takes great pleasure in torturing people. In other words, he’s a sick fuck, and you’d better pray you don’t end up on his table.
“One of the men in front of you is someone close to one of you.”
That gives me pause.
Someone close?
“After tonight, one of you will live with the knowledge that you sacrificed a loved one.”
A chill seeps through my clothes. Is the room colder? What the hell kind of fucked-up mind game is this? I thought we were done with the mental torture after the initiations. It wassupposed to be the ultimate loyalty test, but now this? Do these old men get off on the power they hold? Does this get them hard?
Fuck this.
“You know the consequences of turning your back on the society,” the chairman drones on. “You know what will happen if you step?—”
I lift my arm and fire, the bullet biting into the kneeling stranger’s skull. It’s as anticlimactic as always to see the man topple over dead, especially with the silencer on the gun. It’s done, just like that. Not even a loud bang. All I get is a pool of blood forming around him.
The muted pop sends the other kneeling men whimpering and sobbing as panic sets in. One of them pisses himself, and I cringe as a growing pool of urine threatens to stain my oxfords if I don’t step out of the way. I only had them polished the other day, and I’ll be damned if I dirty them now.
This is why I don’t like guns, knives, or other weapons that leave a disgusting mess. There are cleaner ways to kill.
The chairman jerks his chin at the guard who dragged the fucker in here. He goes to remove the sack, but I’m already walking out of the chamber because I’m done with this and don’t give a shit who I handed to the reaper on a silver platter.
The society overestimates my emotions for those around me.
When are they gonna learn? I don’t have weaknesses.
They could carve me open with a sharpened blade, but they wouldn’t find any.
“You’re lying,” a voice whispers.
Liar, liar, pants on fucking fire.
Turns out it was nothing more than another sick loyalty test to see if we’d hesitate to pull the trigger. The men we executed tonight were strangers, random bottom feeders who’d pissed off the wrong person. We should be relieved, but relief doesn’t come. It never does. The silence afterward is too loud, and whatever part of me they wanted to test feels a little more hollowed now.
Engines rev and rumble, filling the air with the smell of gasoline and burnt rubber, while smoke from earlier burnouts drifts through the air like low-hanging fog.
I’m oblivious to it all because of this damn woman. Maybe if I stare at the screen a bit longer, Jessica might answer my text messages.
Sure, and pigs fly.
Why is she so fucking stubborn, anyway? Why isn’t she reading my texts? I’m at my wit’s end. What do I need to do to get her attention? Send her flowers? A message in the sky? Now that’s a thought. I wonder if Mr. Dundee is back from his vacation in Europe yet. He’s got a private jet and could maybe do it tomorrow if I call him now. Father is out of the question. He’ll get suspicious if I ask him to have our pilot fuel our jet to fly over the Falls with a “pick up your fucking phone” message.
“You’ll melt the screen with your laser vision if you’re not careful,” Cash says. He leans back against the hood and glances down at the phone in my hand. “Trouble in paradise?”
That’s one way to put it.
“Why are women so hard to read?” I ask.
