“What happened to not going after innocent people?” Stella asked from up ahead, her voice small but furious.
My answering laugh was ugly. “For all you claim to be one of the poors now, you’ve done a shitty job integrating. Pull your fucking head out of your ass, Stella. Everyone is capable of doing horrible, evil shit and getting away with it, because humanity, at its core, is self-serving and egotistical. We’re at the top of the food chain because we’re the smartestandthe most vicious. The only difference between the crimes committed by the poor and those by the wealthy is that the latter has more money and resources to hide them.”
“You expect me to believe that Keith from Accounting is an undercover serial killer?”
“No. But heisguilty of elder abuse. Did you know his siblings are planning to sue him for illegally changing their mother’s will when she was dying of Alzheimer’s, making him the sole beneficiary and cutting them out?”
“But I thought she didn’t have much money,” Stella said.
I almost threw the gun at the back of her head. “It doesn’t matter that it’s not a million fucking dollars. Thirty thousand is more than enough to make a greedy asshole like Keith commit a felony. And while we’re talking about it, did you know your dad’s executive assistant has been having an affair with Adam from Finance for the past six months? Oh, and guess what? She just took out a secret second life insurance policy on her husband. Gee, wouldn’t it just be awful if he dies in some freak accident or is killed in a home invasion gone wrong?”
“So, what? Everyone working for my parents is bad?”
I nearly roared. “No. Fuck, are you even listening? Nothing is black-and-white. I’m sure they have plenty of normal people on their payroll, but those aren’t the ones I care about.”
“That’s what you were after, then. Their dirty secrets. Why? To blackmail them into doing what?” Her voice rose, loud and harsh. “What have my parentseverdone to make you target them like this?”
I didn’t answer her. Because I was too angry to trust myself right now, too angry not to blurt out everything like some cartoon super-villain. I’d always thought their monologuing was laziness on the part of the writers, but now I felt like I understood their character motivations a little better. They just wanted someone, anyone, even their worst enemy, to know how much they were about to lose. How much effort and planning was going up in flames and how unfairit was that some lucky amateur sleuth was the one to take them down.
An orange wheel came into sight up ahead.
“Turn right,” I told Stella.
She did, and immediately fell again. I reached down to help her up, some stupid, sappy part of myself unable to take the sight of her sprawled in the muck, before I checked the urge.
No. I was done. I’d already put in my time pretending to be a gentle-man. Hell, I’d even tried to be a better person for her, and now there was probably a warrant out there with my fake name all over it.
I’d learned my lesson about going against what I knew to be true. It was time to go back to being who I really was.
Stella slowly crawled to her feet, and from the sniffle she attempted to hide, I could tell she was crying.
I hardened my heart against her tears. “There’s a ladder at the end of this tunnel. We’re going to take it down another level.”
“Where the bigger rats probably live,” she muttered.
“Maybe you’ll get lucky, and they’ll eat you.”
“Before or after you kill me?”
I said nothing. Let her be scared. It was the least she fucking deserved.
We continued on in silence for several minutes, and as my anger cooled from a boil to a simmer, I tried to tell myself that noteverythingwas lost. While this plan might be ruined, there were still other options. I’d known there was potential for someone to talk to the wrong person, or find a do-gooder cop that couldn’t be bought. Or for one of my competitors to infiltrate my games. So I’d dedicated a fair amount of time to developing alternatives. Plan A had been all about going at things sideways to keep people from guessing my intentions, convincing them that they’d just organically fallen into my debt, and wow, how nice of me to not immediately break their kneecaps but instead allow them to pay me in installments or information.
Plan B cut the bullshit. No machinations, no deception. I sent my goons after everyone I had dirt on and told them to give me what I wanted or I would make their lives a living hell. Similar to what I’d done with Stella, but removing me from the equation. The people I targeted wouldn’t know who, exactly, was on the other end of the blackmail, just that I existed and was capable of following through on my threats.
Plan C... well, let’s just say it was messier. Involved me getting my hands dirty. And it was the last resort for a reason.
“You’re him, aren’t you?” Stella said.
“Who?” I said.
“Richard Lawson’s son. This whole time, I thought you were targeting my parents because you went after Blake and then me, but it’s him you’re really gunning for, isn’t it?”
I stared at her back in the harsh light of my phone. How thefuckhad she pieced it together? “What makes you think that?”
“What you went through with your mom. How much you hate rich people. Your mom being a ‘young, hot side piece’ to a wealthy older man. That my head would explode if I knew who you were. Also, the two of you look alike. I noticed it the first time I saw you together, but thought it was just coincidence. And you’re the same age his son should be.”
Fucking hell. This was my fault again, for saying too much. For giving her context clues.
