Page 55 of Jacking Jill

Something inside him that responded to Miss IMG’s cryptic words about fate and free will, choice and destiny, being in the arena and playing the great game.

Romeo exhaled heavily, ran his fingers through his hair, grimacing at the phone as he thought it through, the whiskey not helping his roiling brain. “Shit, I can’t believe I’m actually considering this. I must be out of my fucking mind.” He rubbed his eyes, shook his head. “I don’t even know who you are.”

“I am someone who has been drawn into your path because our destinies have coincided. We have both been pulled into Darkwater’s swirling current, Benson’s trickster game. But, unlike you, I have played this game before, Romeo. I have been down that Darkwater rabbit-hole and lived to tell the tale, emerged from that abyss with new knowledge, new power, new purpose.” The IMG weirdo paused a beat before continuing. “Understand this, Romeo. You have been pulled into this Darkwater game just like many others before you. You chose to order a hit on Jack Wagner, and that impulsive decision pulled you head-first down the Darkwater rabbit hole. You can try to back your way out, I suppose. Certainly, Miss Kay will attempt to convince you to do precisely that when she bargains for her life in a few minutes.” The IMG snake-demon hissed out another breath. “Choices line the path to a man’s destiny, Romeo, and I want you to make your own decision. I could easily threaten you with financial destruction, since IMG can wipe out a substantial portion of your wealth by dumping those bonds. But I choose not to do so. I choose to let you choose, Romeo. A choice made with intention and inspiration is what generates the psychic energy needed to win at this cosmic game. So choose, Romeo. Advance or retreat. Play the game or fold your cards.”

Romeo’s temples throbbed. The room spun. He felt like he was looking over the edge of a cliff, about to make a leap of faith that if he stepped off, he wouldn’t plummet to his death, that the choice would give him wings.

The IMG voice swirled through the ether now, the strange cadence sounding hypnotic and trancelike, like this person really was tapped into something Romeo didn’t fully understand but was perhaps beginning to. “The brain is cowardly compared to the heart, Romeo. It serves as a check to restrain the boldness of the human heart. The brain whispers that you can find another way to smooth over the debacle with your dead nephew. Perhaps you can convince Bobby’s junkie fiancée to change her story and say it was an accident. The brain wants you to negotiate and manipulate, scheme and deceive, dig your way out of this hole with words instead of violence. But that is a woman’s way of fighting, using words and emotions. That has its place in every battle, but the death-blow must be struck in the realm of flesh and blood. To defeat Darkwater, we must attack with both male and female weaponry, harness the fundamental forces that give the universe its spin. The oscillating energy of sex and violence, creation and destruction, up and down, inside and outside, male and female.” A metallic hissing laugh, followed by a change in tone, the voice twisting and turning, taunting and teasing. “Darkwater generates its power from both female and male energy, and so to win against Benson, we need both sides of that cosmic coin. I can only provide one side. I need you to provide the other, Romeo. Do you understand?”

Romeo frowned, a chill running up his spine, sparking a glimmer of understanding. “You’re a woman,” he said quietly, not sure if it was a question or a statement.

“See, you do know something about me now, Romeo.” The voice was teasing now, a feminine lilt coming through. “Yes, I am a woman, and although women do ride into battle with swords drawn and guns blazing, I am not one of those women. My preferred battlefield is the mind, the psyche, the emotions. But to defeat Benson and Darkwater in the flesh, I need to combine my creative weapons with the destructive power of masculine energy.”

Romeo laughed. “Are you asking me out, Miss IMG?” He chuckled, rubbing his eyes and shaking his head in disbelief.

Disbelief not at the manipulatively melodramatic crap being spewed by some anonymous puppeteer hiding behind an AI voice, but disbelief that it was working.

Because there was something here that resonated deep inside Romeo.

Was it a sense of destiny?

A feeling of fate?

A yearning to enter the arena and fight like a man, give free rein to those savage primal instincts that yearned to conquer and destroy?

Romeo couldn’t quite articulate the answer, but there was no questioning the urge. It was vivid and vigorous, resonant and real. Sure, this IMG bitch was taunting Romeo with that crap about a woman fighting with words and emotions and a man fighting with fists and fire. But the taunts did trigger something in Romeo’s heart, and he damn well knew it wasn’t just because of the testosterone injections.

Damn it, there was some deep, ancient truth in what this IMG woman was saying about choice and circumstance, about decisions having power.

Because although she might be a puppeteer hiding behind the curtain, pulling strings and making the players jerk and twitch, Romeo Carmine didn’t feel like a dumb puppet without free will. He might be tumbling down the Darkwater rabbit hole, but Miss IMG was right about one thing:

It was Romeo’s own damn choices that had sent him down this road.

You ordered Diego to kill Jack Wagner, Romeo reminded himself as that resonant sense of destiny made his head buzz with an exhilarating clarity. And it was an instinctive decision, made with intuition more than intelligence. Yeah, sure, you can tell yourself it was logical, that you needed proof Diego wasn’t setting you up, that Diego and Jack weren’t both part of some DEA or FBI sting operation. Getting Diego to kill Jack would prove Diego wasn’t working with law enforcement.

But it wasn’t just cold calculation, Romeo admitted to himself. There was a scorching hot sense that you needed to go down this path, that it was fated, destined, pre-ordained, paved in anticipation of your arrival, an empty chair waiting for you at the cosmic card table, an open invitation to join the other players placing bets and waiting for the invisible dealer to shuffle the deck of fate, deal the cards of destiny.

Well, those fucking cards have now most certainly been dealt, Romeo thought with a manic grin as he considered all the events following his decision to have Diego take a shot at Jack. Now decide if you want to fold your hand or play it out and see whose fate wins the day, whose destiny takes the jackpot.

Romeo tented his fingers and rocked gently in his swivel chair. He was starting to see the eerie way in which coincidences lined up after pivotal choices were made. He’d seen glimpses of it in his own life, times when the universe seemed to reward boldness—not unlike how the mythical gods often intervened to help clear a hero’s path to his own destiny, to help him create his own personal myth, write the legend of his own life.

“All right.” Romeo spoke quietly, his answer sending a ripple of exhilaration through his body. He poured himself another drink, the last of the bottle. “Fuck it. I’m in it now. I’m not going to sit here and wait for this guy Benson to send some Darkwater killer after me in my own home. I’m going to take the fight to this guy’s nest in the woods. You said Darkwater is no more than a dozen men, right?”

“Yes. And it’ll just be six or seven at the Darkwater facility right now, with the rest too far away to get there in a hurry.”

Romeo exhaled heavily, ran his fingers through his hair as he went through a mental checklist. “I can bring eighteen men, armed with AR-15s. We’ll bring a few gallons of flame-accelerant with portable power-hoses to spray it on the building, flare-guns to ignite the accelerant. Just like the old days when we were burning down warehouses to take out the competition.” He chuckled as a ripple of excitement went through his muscles. “We’ll turn that building into a crackling-hot oven, pick off Benson and his guys when they come staggering out through the smoke. Or maybe we’ll barricade the exits, pin them inside, let them fucking burn, just like you said. Depends on the building layout. I don’t suppose you have any images of the Darkwater facility?”

“I am sending them through now.”

Romeo sat up straight as a stream of images started to pop up on his phone. He frowned, a chill rising up his back when he saw that the images were most certainly not from Google Maps. “How the hell do you have access to this stuff? Who the fuck are you? CIA or military? Some foreign Intelligence agency?”

“Would it make any difference if I were?” came the smooth response followed by a hollow laugh. “Oh, relax. You are not being set up as a patsy in some off-the-books CIA-sanctioned assassination of John Benson. In today’s world, so much military-grade surveillance tech is built by private companies all over the world. Almost anything can be acquired for the right price, Romeo. And so much of it is just software, computer programs that can be sent anywhere within seconds.” She sighed. “Did you know there are over a million satellites and drones in the skies, monitoring everything from weather in New York to traffic in London to terrorist camps in Sudan to militia training grounds in Michigan? Which means there are dozens, sometimes hundreds, of eyes in the sky watching every spot on the planet at any given time. You combine all that with new AI-enabled decryption and hacking software, and you can put together a pretty impressive set of real-time surveillance capabilities.” Miss IMG laughed again, the sound less hollow this time. “Speaking of surveillance, Miss Kay appears to be on her way to your office finally. I will give you two some privacy.” A short pause, as if Miss IMG was considering her next words carefully. “Romeo, Romeo, Romeo . . .” she said, repeating his name like a chant. “You know, this Darkwater thing has shown a remarkable affinity for names lining up. And you have quite the name for this sort of game.” Another pause, this one pregnant with insinuation. “Romeo, oh, Romeo. Do you have a tragic Juliet in your life, Romeo?”

With those parting words, the line clicked dead, leaving Romeo staring at the silent phone, wondering if he’d imagined the whole thing. He blinked away the hypnotic hangover of that surreal conversation, pushed himself to his feet and stepped away from the desk. He paced the large office like a beast in a cage, stomping his feet to shake himself back to the real world which felt damn far away, like the events of the day had shoved Romeo into a different dimension. He wondered if it was the chemical cocktail of whiskey, caffeine, adrenaline, and high-dose synthetic testosterone that was creating the altered sense of space and time he was experiencing.

Whatever it was felt damn good, though.

Really fucking good.

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