Page 18 of About the Green

"What exactly do you mean by this? And does it involve you tying me up, telling me how good a girl I am?"

His mouth is a harsh slash of a line before he monotones, "You're not a good girl."

I fake wounded, pouting my lips and holding my chest. "Ouch. Okay, fine. I like a little bit of degradation too."

"No, that's not what I meant."

Licking the syrupy sweet soda from my cherry before popping it into my mouth, I attempt getting back on track here. "Well, help me out. I'm fucking lost again."

He drinks from his own beer, eyes never leaving my mouth as I play with another cherry on my tongue. "You need to figure out how you're gonna get your car to Atlanta. Don't know how long we'll be there."

"Okay, fine,” I huff, “I'll just ask Lidia."

Setting his beer on the table, "No. You'll do it yourself."

"But I don't want to."

"Okay?” His phone vibrates on the table once and he looks down at it. “But, you're gonna."

Crossing my arms, I ask, "Who put you in charge?" in my most annoyed tone.

"I'm ranked higher than you in both families, so I put me in charge."

He just pulled out his big dick and let it lay across the table. My thighs press together, but I don’t get a chance to respond because his phone starts ringing now. Vert swipes it from the table and excuses himself from the bar.

I’m tempted to follow him but as soon as he’s through the front door, Matt comes in behind him.

Target, acquired.

“Oh man. I cannot believe you ruined these! Blood doesn’t come out of faux leather cut-outs easily. Pink is my favorite and now it’s all seeping in the stitching.”

He gurgles on the ground, spitting more blood up as the liquid fills his throat and airways. It's as much as he deserves and I refuse to take his pleas to “not do this” from him seriously. He’s a goner.

“Ugh,” I scoff, moving his body to the side with my foot as I look for a paper towel in my bag. “Could you not hear me? These boots are difficult to clean. Try coughing over here instead.”

I hear the backdoor click before I see the man who has been on my tail for the past few months. The alley is dark, but the look on his face is, somehow, darker.

“If it isn’t Ver-Tease,” I let my lisp roll a little longer only because I know he hates that I know his government name now. It’s a pun that I’m going to be quite fond of–I can tell.

If he weren’t such a tease, then I wouldn’t have to call him out on it.

He looks down at the man taking his last few breaths and then back up at me. “Nina, what are you doin’?” He rumbles out. The sound is low, likely so that no one is alerted, but his disapproval still feels cold over my skin. I don’t know why. I don’t get a chance to explore why because he adds, “I let you out of my sight for ten minutes to take a call.”

It was longer than ten minutes.

I just checked my phone only a minute ago and it had been twenty-seven. A fact that worked out in my favor because it gave me enough time to accomplish what I needed to.

A half-truth is better than the full-truth as I smooth the goosebumps on my skin, smearing a few streaks of blood there. “I was bored. You left me alone and this guy put his hand on my thigh.”

Crouching down to check the man’s pulse, he presses a couple fingers to the inside of the man’s wrist. After a minute or two of trying and failing to find a pulse, “You know many ways to apprehend a man without takin' his life. That’s somethin’ Fayes are trained to do.”

I put a hand on my hip, annoyed that he’s trying to tell me about my own family. He’s defending this… this pervert? What the fuck? “Why does he deserve that? He’s icky.”

“Icky?” He questions, with renewed incredulity.

“Uh-huh,” I say, never removing my hand from my hip.

Took me no time to see he was a pedophile. He thought I was underaged the entire time we interacted online and I didn’t correct him. Let’s be honest, he would have preferred it regardless.