I stared at her, it wasn’t directly at her as my eyes unfocused slightly to think about what had happened. “You didn’t know?”
“No, are you kidding me?” She was already grabbing at her beige beat-up Birkin. “I wanted their attention, but I can’t—I don’t—we need to leave.”
It was all rushed, I didn’t know what to believe about any of it. We were show and tell to her, and I was fine with being used, but I liked to know in advance the goal.
Once we were in the car, Artemis, who’d been quiet, turned to Maya and asked. “Do you want them to know you’re protected?” he asked. “You had to have known something, you were, a bit loud and all.”
She laughed to herself, rummaging through her bag and pulling out a phone. “The plan is to show the Ashford’s I’m protected, yes, but I don’t want to engage with them. It could complicate the investigation.”
“The FBI are heading to the hotel now for file cataloguing and collection,” Jinksy said.
“We’re heading back to the hotel anyway,” I told her, glancing at her in the rear view. “In future, if you could fill us in on what you’re going to do, we can be better prepared.”
“Yeah, I just go a text. My friend is arriving at the hotel.”
***
We were set there to be glorified statues. Standing across from each other outside the bedroom we’d fucked in. Artemis struggled to stand still for so long, complaining about his ass—thighs—calves, everywhere I’d been able to grab at last night.
There were three people in those FBI windbreakers that turned up. A woman and two men. I didn’t know what they were doing or even looking for, since there were a lot of files, and I didn’t want to comprehend that was filled with hellish scenarios more vicious than the ones we’d heard about earlier.
“What do you think justice looks like here?” I asked Artemis.
“Like what do I think will happen, or what to do I want to happen?” he countered, trying his best not to rest on the wall with all it’s geometrical designed ridges.
“Both,” I said. “I want to know what you see is going to happen, and then what you would do.”
His jaw visibly tensed, turning away from me. “Interrogation,” he said. “I want to know who they hire, or how they get people in here and treat them as slaves. Then kill them, or the better sense would be to have them rot in jail and pay a whole bunch of money out.”
“What Reaper told you about one head, it’s true. You took down the head of an organization. You—actually made me feel proud when I saw it. Like, pretending to myself I was the reason you were able to get that good shot,” I said. We were far passed honesty time, now, we were being brutally truthful.
“I was actually thinking, what would Daddy do?”
“And, what would I do?”
He gulped hard and turned to me. “Make sure their a paycheck at the end of it.”
I laughed so hard the FBI agents in the room came out to check on us. It was fun to feel like we could joke about stuff now, again, without either of us kicking up a fuss—which all stemmed from being severely underfucked. Getting laid did wonders to us—even if I knew this wasn’t the life for him.
“There is a paycheck,” I said, restarting the conversation up afterwards.
“Yeah, I just want to see Mercy’s list,” he said. “I heard there’s someone on there with a fifty-million dollar bounty on his head.”
I kept my laughter down this time. “There wasonce,” I told him. “There hasn’t been anyone that high on it.”
“What happened to him?” he asked.
“He had billions on a crypto wallet, apparently it was stolen, or they needed his pin since it was a cold wallet,” I said to his questioning gaze. “That’s when your crypto wallet isn’t connected to the internet. Nobody can steal it.”
“Right, so they killed an innocent guy then?”
“Let me finish,” I said.
He giggled. “You’ve never said that before, you just do.”
“Funny, so you want to know about Mercy’s list, or not?”
“I do, I do.” He pouted, now looking like he was doting on me. He was so tired behind those eyes. After all that training, the one thing to take him down is an active social life. “So, what happened?”
