Page 3 of Crushed
Being called a child at twenty-one was annoying, but once I got past that and actually listened to her words, I liked what she was saying. I hadn’t thought of it that way. That it should be a question of motivation and not skill. There were ways I had learned to be careful with my words, but as I had only been working in elimination for a few years, I was still learning.
“I want to,” I said.
“You’ll live on-site, then?” Dahlia asked.
“We can drop off her belongings tomorrow,” Lizzy said.
“Good.” Dahlia stood, and Lizzy grabbed a cucumber sandwich before standing too. But my appetite was shot. I still couldn’t get over the fact that I was doing this job solo.Without Lizzy. It’s not like I expected her to work with me inside of the actual club, but finishing the job by myself? That meant I had to kill someone.
I had to kill Cormac Stone.
Correction: I wasgoingto kill Cormac Stone. A billionaire. A pharmaceutical mogul. A damn good looking one too.
What a job.
“Send me a list of items you need for the performance, and I’ll have them ready for you,” Dahlia said.
“We’ll give you a call,” Lizzy said.
We left the building. Our steps interrupted the lush noises of the birds chirping and wind through the pine trees surrounding the perimeter. The Dahlia District was set in the woods of a small town called Cresting Heights. It was close to Sage City, the capital and mega center of our state, but far enough away that the wealthy had discreet access to an exclusive entertainment club. I had been to Cresting Heights only one other time, when Lizzy was debating putting me in a private all-girls preparatory academy, back when she first took custody of me at ten years old. She had ultimately decided against it. She realized she could teach me more herself than any academy could.
Lizzy stopped and looked around. “You know,” she started. A roof covered the walkway to the parking lot, with columns covered in vines and orange flowers. It was mid-morning. The sunlight was soft behind the hazy clouds, the temperature warm. The club was a night venue, which meant that it was unlikely that any of the servers or staff would be awake right then. We were alone. “It’s important that you do this job on your own.”
“I wish you would have told me before we met with her.”
“Then you would have convinced me not to.”
That was true. The last time Lizzy had even hinted at giving me a solo job, I had basically pretended like she hadn’t said anything and acted confused when she brought it up again. It wasn’t that I was scared to eliminate a target by myself. It was that doing it on my own meant that soon, Lizzy would leave for good. So I did what she taught me. Acted. Played pretend. Lied until it felt like the truth, until I seemed to believe it too. Of course, Lizzy had seen through those games.
“I’m getting older,” she said. She leaned down, making us eye to eye. They say you shrink as you get older; for Lizzy, it was the opposite. She grew in grandeur with every year that went by. It seemed impossible for her to be getting older. Frailer. Weaker. Though I knew it was true. “You need to be able to handle any assignment. And besides,” she stood straighter, “This is a simple one. It’ll be a piece of cake.”
Right. Because convincing a billionaire to like me, so that I could eventually get him alone and kill him, waseasy. Men like that might be carelesssometimes, but that didn’t mean they weren’t openly trusting.
But it’s not like I was trusting either.
“You expect me to kill him?” I asked.
“Scarlett,” she locked eyes with me, “It’s just a target. You can still keep to your code. I won’t judge you for that.”
I had one rule; I only went after people who were undeniably malicious. The world was built in blocks of good or bad, and I intended to figure out the targets before I took their life, or gave Lizzy the chance. Would the world be a better place without this person? Would I ever regret eliminating this target? Would completing this assignment prevent more harm to others?
That part seemed easy in comparison to the rest. “I just don’t like thinking of a life beyond us being partners,” I said.
“Partners?” Lizzy raised an eyebrow, a grin gleaming on her face.
“We make a good team,” I offered.
Lizzy smiled to herself. She had started the Silent Network Consulting decades ago and had been the leader for that entire time. It was a joke to say that we were partners, or even a team. Lizzy carried the weight. Even if she couldn’t do as much as she used to, when it came to the two of us, she was the number one assassin. In some ways, I was still the sniveling kid she had adopted when my parents died.
I was older now, though. And I knew I was capable enough to do a job completely on my own.
“Think of how much you’ve accomplished,” Lizzy said. “You don’t need me at this point. I’m holding you back.”
“You’re a badass and you know it,” I said, narrowing my eyes. She cracked a smile.
“I might be, but I’m not going to be around forever.”
It was hard to think of a life without Lizzy. She had been there for me since birth, and after my parents died, she was the only one who was there for me, who was willing to drop everything to make sure I was cared for. Even if it meant putting her work on hold for a year while she figured everything out. Even if it meant putting a pause to Silent Network Consulting while we tried, and failed, to figure out what had happened to my parents.
