This whole time, someone’s been behind me.
I can’t prevent a whimper from escaping my lips when I hear the creak of leather indicating someone has just stood up from what I can safely assume is a beige, greige or white couch. Then I hear feet pad on the thick beige carpet before stopping in front of me.
I recognize the brown curly-haired guy who towers over me. His cruel smirk is giving psychopath Quill vibes, only he doesn’t have the rest of Quill’s darkness, in all its weird blend of viciousness and vulnerability.
No, the look on this man’s face is so much worse, because it tells me he actually does see me as an insect.
The kind he could squish unthinkingly under the heel of his boot, and only feel annoyed at having dirtied the sole.
This man is Logan Colt, and he’s looking at me like I’m the world’s most inconsequential bug.
“Stupid,” he agrees, and my face flames red at this new proof that he’s heard my little monologue. “Stupid, or as I like to call you… a big fucking problem.”
32
Quill
Present Day
“No.”
Anger beats at me as I rip the paper into tiny shreds. “No.”
Stupid fucking idiot,I think to myself the next second. It would have made a lot more sense to accept the contract and then figured out how to save Piper the minute I was free.
Then again, Tragen, unlike me, isn’t an idiot. He’s the only one who seems to understand the depths of my obsession. I’m sure he’d see right through me if I did say yes.
Plus, even if I did manage to get out of here, he’s shown me how good he is at finding out what he wants to know. There would be no hiding.
So I guess this is what he meant when he said he’d make it easy.
It’s a set-up, and I’m going to die. Easy for him. Not for me.
I grit my teeth and look up at him.
He’s smiling, and I want to lunge at his throat. Maybe I could. I could probably manage to scratch him before he gutted me like a fish. I may be the best soldier, but even I could never measure up to him.
I could try, though. Getting gutted like a fish would probably be a kinder fate than whatever he’s got planned for me.
The only thing stopping me is that… well, I don’t want to.
I guess, in the hierarchy of things I don’t give a fuck about, he’spretty close to the boundary that separates them from the one thing Idocare about. The onegirlI care about, rather. Though with the way I currently feel about my annoying, cruel little possession,girlandthingare pretty much interchangeable.
Tragen, Liam and Dane are right at that limit where I’d probably feel just a slight pang of something if I killed them.
It wouldn’t stop me, but maybe it would slow me down.
So instead of attacking Tragen, I keep a sullen eye on him, waiting for him to do his worst.
His worst is to sit down across from me and slide a picture toward me. I don’t even have to glance at it to realize it’s a bad quality photo taken by a phone. Which he’s printed out.
Who is this fucking boomer?
Then my blood turns to liquid nitrogen in my veins, freezing them, suffocating me from inside as I recognize it.
A picture I’d hoped never to see again.
The proof that my possession is a fucking snake, and she should, by all rights, be dead. She would be, too, if I wasn’t a weak bastard.
