“You drugged me and ensured I was taken,” Luke says from his post. “And you would have done the same to Leo.”
“Oh. I suppose I was responsible for that part. But I didn’t have a choice, not really. It was my job,” she admits with a charming little shrug and tilt of her head that suggests even if she were responsible, it still couldn’t be properly considered to be anything resembling her fault. She’s just a girl.
The way she shifts from tearful guilty woman missing her dead lover to practically smirking gleefully at how smart she has been in deceiving us all is quite concerning.
She looks around at us. “You can’t hurt me,” she says. “If you do, bad things will happen. Haven’t you all lost enough? Do you really want to be at war with BP?”
“We’re not going to be at war with him. He’s going to die,” Leo says. “I’d be surprised if he was still alive.”
“Are you going to kill him?” She looks around at the three of us. The question is simple and almost sweet. As if she wants nothing more than for us to murder him.
“Orangutans are,” I say. Silly joke. Out of place. Nobody will appreciate it besides me.
She thinks about that for a moment, screwing up her face.
“They’re very peaceful primates. Nobody is going to believe that. You should say it was chimpanzees. Escaped from one of his laboratories.”
“That is a better story.” I make a mental note to correct it.
Then I step forward, past Leo’s simmering form, and I open the door.
“Step out of the cage,” I tell her. “And kneel down in front of me.”
She comes out cautiously and reluctantly, looking around at the three of us as if she is a little rabbit surrounded by tigers.
She knows she can be made to obey. I have handled her before. But obedience might not be enough. Obedience is superficial. From this woman, I am going to need complete and utter submission.
Ella really is quite a problem. She knows more than she should, she is ruthless, she is pretty, and she takes punishment and alchemizes it to pleasure. I like that about her. I like that I can hurt her the way she deserves to be hurt and she comes for me. But I cannot pleasure her out of this. This is going to take real pain.
“Kneel,” I remind her, not appreciating the fact that I have to tell her twice. She should be doing as she is told as fast as possible.
“How did you find us on the day of Teddy’s funeral? Did they give you our location, or did you find us yourself?”
She squirms on her knees. “I found you,” she says, sounding a little proud of herself. “I went through the local funeral homes and cemeteries. These things have to be scheduled. You can’t just have a funeral. A hole has to be dug. A priest has to be booked. I just called around until I found a cemetery with a priest attached without any funeral openly scheduled. It wasn’t actually hard. At all.”
We look at each other. When she says it like that, it’s not nearly as complicated as we thought.
“A lot of people probably knew about the funeral, and where it was,” she says. “You’re not as careful as you think you are. And obviously, not as untouchable.”
Leo lets out a low growl.
She’s taunting us. She has nothing to defend herself with, no means of stopping herself from getting hurt. She is surrounded by men who have a blood feud against her. I’m impressed by her bravery, though I don’t know if it is truly bravery. I think there might be something slightly off with this little creature. Something that tugs at the strings of recognition inside me. The call of the void is strong in her. That’s what happens when you live life long enough knowing that it could end at any moment.
When I was a young man and my parents were killed, I felt that for a very long time. I tried my best to hold the family together, and I succeeded, but at the cost of being able to take my own life seriously.
Ella has the same problem. She has been so close to death she no longer has the luxury of pretending it will not come for her at anymoment. That makes her appear cavalier, when in reality I am sure she is anything but.
“I want an explanation of how you came to deal with BP,” I say. “I want to know everything. Think of this as a confession. You will stay on hands and knees until I know what I want to know.”
Her expression contorts adorably.
She doesn’t like the concept of being degraded, or even brought down to a level beneath us. I wish I knew where she got the confidence and calm she has. She should be far more scared than she is acting right now. It is so hard to get a read on her. One moment she whimpers and cries; the next she looks me dead in the eye and tells me to go fuck myself without saying the words.
“I’m not telling you anything,” she says. “You don’t have any right to know.”
Luke, Leo, and I all exchange glances.
We need to talk. Again. And properly.
