Page 10 of Reaper & Ruin
This time she had no weapon. She was just sitting where Brick had once been. Gun next to her, elbows resting on her knees.
“I’m not dead, thank Satan. Or the tooth fairy. I don’t fucking care.” I coughed as I pulled myself upright, head throbbing. “Where’s Brick? Did you murder him?”
“Gone, Blue.” She sighed as if she were actually disappointed. “He ran off the second he could, ‘cause men ain’t shit.”
There was a pang of… not hurt exactly. But disappointment in my chest. He might have been a stranger, but I would have liked to think he would have tried to help me, the same way I helped him.
Next time I was asked to murder a man in a dungeon, I was going to do it. Fuck being nice. Future dungeon roomies could suck my imaginary dick.
“Now what? Another game? Can I at least have a coffee first? I’m tired.” I had no clue how much time had passed, but I was sure it had been long enough for my men to find me.
I was still waiting for them to burst through the door, weapons blazing.
“You can go home in a second. I don’t need to play anymore games with you.” The woman muttered as she traced star patterns in the dirt with her fingertips. “This was just a test run, a bit of fun and a way to mess with that big bastard one last time before I let him go. He’s going to spend the next few months spiraling, knowing that he let an innocent woman die and did nothing to help her.”
“Why me?” I asked, heart pounding, chest tight. “What was this for?”
She nodded to herself as she grabbed her knife from her pocket and flipped it between her fingers. “I wanted to make sure you were the person Atlas thought you were. I had to see it for myself.”
My lips parted, breath harsh. I wanted to ask more questions to see how she knew Atlas and why she wanted to mess with him. But she answered my questions before I could say a single word.
“I wanted to see if he would come for you.” She breathed. “To see if he would break all the rules in the world to save someone he loved.”
“He would.” I promised as I swallowed a lump in my throat. “I have no doubts.”
“That’s because you don’t know him. You haven’t seen what he’s like when he loves someone else more than you.” She laughed softly. “But it turns out I can’t even go through with it.You’re too soft and sweet to kill, Blue. I’d feel bad for taking my anger out on your pretty face. And if he came for you, then I would want to kill you. So I guess this was all pointless.”
A thousand thoughts ran through my mind, but for some reason I was quiet. A first for me. Perhaps it was the sadness in her voice.
Like something was broken deep down in her soul, and she… she had no idea how to deal with it.
A thing I knew more than enough about.
“I appreciate it.” I licked my dry lips. “What does that mean then?”
“I can’t just let you go. It would ruin my game—my plan. If Atlas knows I’m coming for him, he might be able to stop me.” She stabbed her knife into the dirt. “I can’t have him knowing anything. Because I don’t like my games being ruined. I can be a petty bitch.”
“So what?” I licked my dry lips as she reached into her leather jacket, pulling out a silver flask.
“So you are going to drink some of this for me. It’s going to knock you out and make you forget all about our encounter. Then when you wake up, you’ll be back in that cabin, entirely unaware that you’ve got a target on your back.”
“But the guys know and—”
She cut me off. “And my team already drugged them and cleaned the scene. Your precious Reaper is currently snoring away on the couch, and darling Atlas is there with him. Neither of them will remember anything. You can all return to your naive bliss.”
She offered the flask again, and this time I took it. Not just because I figured I had no choice, but because I believed her. It was odd, but I felt like she wasn’t lying to me. This whole thing had been for fun. For a test. She was being insane, but she was being truthful with it.
“What did he do to you?” I held the flask an inch from my lips after unscrewing the lid.
“He told me he loved me.” She breathed. “He made me love him right back. Made me think we were family. That I was just as important to him as SilverfuckingGomez.”
“He left you.” I said slowly as everything slid into place from the minimal Atlas had shared about his life in The Company. “You’re the woman he left who was like his sister.”
She laughed. “Yeah, that’s me. The one who islikehis sister. The one he abandoned. The one he let get tortured and hurt for years on end, whilst he was off being free. Whilst he was pretending to be dead and letting me grieve him.”
I downed half of the flask as she stared at me. Then wiped my lips on the back of my hand and offered her the bottle back. My hands weren’t as shaky as I thought they would have been when faced with someone who killed easier than I breathed.
“I’m sorry that happened to you, but it wasn’t like that. He wouldn’t have left you on purpose.” I muttered.
