Page 15 of Even Robots Die
“You told me we would be free to go if I healed your guys,” she tells me with all the aplomb she can muster.
“Oh, that’s not what I told you, Miss Furious. What I told you was that I would let your father go. You just assumed that I would let you go, too. But, no. No, you’re not going anywhere. You’re coming with me to the castle.” I tell her, and I can see that each word hits her like a hammer on a nail.
“I’m not going with you,” she tells me, and I have to give it to her. She looks beautifully enraged. Her red curls are flying all around her face and her freckles look like they’ve been set ablaze on her skin, and those dark brown eyes of hers look like they are black as night. If looks could kill, hers would kill me right now.
“You don’t have a choice,” I tell her as I grab her and throw her over my shoulder. “You’re coming with us. I didn’t do all of this to draw you out for you to go back to Paris after being in our company for just a few minutes. We have things to discuss, and a little payback might be in order for what you did to my men.”
I walk in the direction of the castle without waiting for my warriors while Florentine keeps hitting my back with her fists. She was honestly better with her guns than she is with her fists.
“Charles, find Jeremy. He shifted and flew away when she started shooting. There’s also a gun to retrieve in the street behindLe Loup et le porc-épic,” I tell my second in command as I pat Florentine’s left pocket and retrieve her second gun.
“What are you doing, you pig?” she yells as she fights harder to escape my hold on her.
I send the gun over my shoulder in Charles’ direction. “It looks like that.”
And then I slap her ass before walking in the castle direction.
That seems to stop her completely.
“Something is really wrong with you,” she tells me before hitting my back another time.
I’ve taken worse beatings. I’m definitely going to survive.
I enter the castle and pass the first floor as fast as I can.
I don’t know why I keep imposing that on myself. I don’t know why I decided to come and live here. It was already bad that I picked this city, but it's even worse that I picked the castle.
The exact location where everything started.
The exact location where my brain was so tortured that they managed to turn me into their killing machine, that they managed to turn the sight of my best friend into a kill trigger.
Just thinking about Elhyor feels me with a mix of dread and shame for what I have done, but also of rage and fury for what I didn’t manage to do.
They rewrote my brain and now I can never go back to Notre Dame or I’ll want to kill him again.
Actually, I know why I picked this place. I know very well.
It’s to never forget. It’s to always remember that it’s where I became a monster.
I move to the second floor quickly, open the last door on the left of the corridor, and then I dump Florentine on the ground as if she were a potato sack.
“This is now your room. There are clothes in the closet, towels in the bathroom, and your bag will be here in a few minutes. We eat breakfast at seven. Now get some sleep.”
I walk back the way I came and lock the door after me.
9
Florentine
It was a freaking trap. How could I have known that it was a freaking trap?
It’s not like I could have left my dad in his hands anyway, but knowing now that Brice never had any intention of letting me go is infuriating.
If I could, I would burn this castle down just for the pleasure of knowing that he would burn inside, too.
As it is, I’m not going to burn anything.
I’m tired. The adrenaline from the shooting moment behind the bar is finally dissipating, and I’m starting to feel all my energy leave me.
