“Seven,” I tell her, pointing at Seven with my liquor bottle. “One is gone, as are Eight and Ten, but Seven here is worth a dozen men alone, so I haven’t felt the need to replace them.”
Scarlet gives me a peculiar look, like none of this is making sense to her.
“Is this some memory thing, like your brain is wired wrong?” she asks. “Or are you just that much of an asshole?”
That makes me laugh.
Seven, on the other hand, tenses.
Afraid I’m going to kill her, probably.
Mormon, remember?
He’s still got a few morals left.
“Probably a bit of both,” I admit, slapping Seven on the back, wordlessly telling him to relax. If I were going to kill her, I would’ve done it when she robbed me, or when she pulled a knife on me… twice. Sticks and stones. Words from her sleek lips, no matter how bitter, are definitely going to go down smoother.
Moving past him, I step into the library doorway, seeing Ricardo still sitting there, exactly where I left him.
“Up,” I say, snapping my finger, motioning for him to vacate my chair. He springs to his feet, his gaze finding Scarlet.
She walks into the room right behind me, cursing under her breath. “Shit.”
She regards the guy like a deer caught in headlights and he looks at her like... well, like something he wants to eat. Uh-oh. I admit it, yeah, the woman is delectable, but I’m the big bad wolf in these woods, and he’s going to leave my Red Riding Hood alone.
I motion between them as I drop back down in my chair. “I assume you two know each other.”
“I’ve seen her around,” Ricardo says. “One of Amello’s whores.”
Scarlet makes a face but says nothing, skirting around the guy, giving him a wide berth as she makes her way to where I’m sitting. She’s uncomfortable around him, which means she’s got decent intuition.
“You drink, Ricky?” I ask, motioning toward him with my liquor bottle. “Smoke a little bit, maybe?”
“A bit,” he says.
“Go fix yourself a drink,” I say. “Hang out a while, get to know my guys. They’ll make you feel at home. I have some business to take care of here. I’ll come for you when I’m done.”
He nods in acknowledgment, casting Scarlet a look before disappearing into the hallway. He seems to want to gut her. Huh. Seven trails our visitor right away to the living room.
Scarlet watches them before turning to me. “What, Slick Rick doesn’t get a number?”
“Slick Rick?” I laugh. “I’ll have to remember that one.”
“You know he works for George Amello, right?”
“Yep.”
“He’s the one George ordered to kill you,” she says. “He’s supposed to send a message by eliminating you.”
“Yeah, I figured that much,” I say, kicking my feet up on the table as I lounge back in the chair. She looks concerned, like she’s worried for my well-being. It’s cute. Real cute. “So tell me, Scarlet, you come here to kill me, too? Because if so, you might want to come back later, since he beat you to it tonight. You’ll have to wait your turn.”
She blinks at me like I’ve lost my mind. Hell, maybe I have. “Are you insane?”
“Potentially,” I say. “You?”
“Am I insane?”
I nod.
“I’m starting to feel like it,” she mutters, running her hands down her face. “The fact that I thought it was a good idea to come here tells me I probably am.”
“You come to take me up on my offer?”
Hesitating, she approaches the table, glancing down at the puzzle. Her eyes meticulously scan the beginnings of the art, but she doesn’t touch any of the pieces, keeping her hands to herself.
“Did you know Michelangelo never wanted to paint this?” she asks after a moment. “The pope didn’t give him much of a choice. He spent so many hours on his back, struggling, suffering, the conditions so toxic it made him sick. He spent the rest of his life walking with a limp because of it.”
“No, I didn’t know that,” I say, “but I did notice you’re avoiding my question.”
She smiles softly, still gazing at the puzzle. “I know how that feels, having someone powerful controlling you, dictating what you do. But Michelangelo, he got his revenge. The whole thing is filled with blasphemy.”
“I bet,” I say. “Now answer my question.”
“Yes.”
That’s all she says. Yes.
“You’re taking me up on my offer?”
“Pretty sure that’s what yes means.”
I grin. “So, what I’m hearing here is that you want revenge on the asshole who controlled you… although, I’m guessing the Aristotle prick didn’t make you paint a church. What did he do?”
“He stole from me.”
“Stole what?”
“Everything,” she whispers, “but mostly my innocence. He took away everything good in my world, he stole it from me, everything I loved, and he tried so hard to snuff out every bit of light in my life, to make sure I never felt the sunshine again, and he did it, he said, for my own good, like that was what it meant to love somebody.”
She turns to me, her expression passive, as those words run through my mind. For my own good. Yeah, I’ve heard that before.
“That’s what makes him so cruel,” she continues. “I used to read all these fairy tales, and I just think about how fucked up it is to realize that heroes are make-believe but monsters are real. That’s the world we live in. There’s no knight in shining armor out there. It’s just me, trapped in a world filled with fire-breathing dragons, and that man is determined to burn me to a crisp.”
“I knew a man like that once.”
“What happened?”
I drop my feet to the floor and stand up, studying her for a moment before saying, “My face happened.”
I stroll over to the wall of bookshelves along the back of the room, mostly bare except a few scraggly books and some lock boxes. I pull out a set of keys from my pocket, wordlessly unlocking a small metal box, and grab the black silencer from inside. Pulling my gun from my waistband, I turn around.
Scarlet is leaning back against the table, her hands shoved in her hoodie pocket again. Her gaze trails me, on guard, as I screw the silencer onto the Colt M1911.
I check the gun, making sure it’s loaded. “So you like fairy tales, huh? You ever hear the story of The Juniper Tree?”
“No.”
“Stepmother doesn’t like her stepson, because he’s set to inherit the family fortune, so she beheads him and feeds him to his father before burying his bones beneath a juniper tree.”
She stares at me. “And then what?”
“That’s it.”
“That can’t be it.”
“Sometimes the stories are horrific, Scarlet. Just because you haven’t found some bullshit Prince Charming doesn’t mean fairy tales aren’t real. They’re just not always pretty pictures.”
I walk out of the library, making my way to the living room. Seven lingers in the doorway, keeping an eye on our guest like I knew he would. The others lurk inside the room, laughing, joking. Ricky sits dead center of the couch, drinking straight from a bottle, hazy smoke surrounding him.
Clearing my throat, I step into the room, drawing his attention. His smile quickly fades, something sparking in his eyes when he sees the gun in my hand.
BANG.
I don’t give him the chance to acknowledge what’s happening, don’t give him time to plead for his life, to try to shovel some bullshit, thinking I’m going to buy it.
BANG.
BANG.
BANG.
Back to back, I unload the bullets into him, suppressed but still loud enough for the noise to echo, merging with the sharp sound of his gurgling scream. Bullets hit his chest, his stomach, and the couch beside him, nearly hitting one of my men before the final one slams the fucker right in the head.
BANG.
Blood splatters the white wall around the couch. Ricky slumps over onto Three, his body still twitching, heart no longer pumping. Three shoves him off, cursing, as he stands up, flailing his hands like a hysterical little bitch, his reaction making the others laugh.