Blaze (Virtues & Lies 3)

“You have your bullets,” she tells me. “I have science. I’m good at it, aren’t I, Dad?”

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” I pull the knife out of his hand. The sound of his discomfort makes my insides warm after the threat he made.

“Possibly, but if he’s going to bring trouble to my door dead or alive…I know how I prefer him. Besides, why do we need him if he’s of no value to us?”

I watch her clear the table. Not a single hair is out of place as she tidies up. Meanwhile, Charles is beginning to sweat. Really sweat, like the sun is concentrated on him.

“Do you want me to call the doctor, Charles?” I ask, sitting in the seat Fleur vacated. “I can help you.”

It’s a blatant lie. I have no idea how much she’s given him or how long he has. All I know is that he looks like he’s about die. I’m not really used to this sight. I try to keep things as smooth as possible. Normally when this shit happens it’s down to one of the other fuckers.

“You can’t help him, and the doctor won’t make it in time.” Standing over him, she puts a syringe down on the table. The liquid inside is yellow, like concentrated piss. “But I can. And I will…”

Our gazes meet, she looks positively glorious with all that darkness in her eyes. The lines of her face look razor-sharp, and the shadows are so deep that she is every bit the storm I taught her to be.

It’s satisfying. In a really fucking sexy way. It’s wrong, it really is, but she looks hot all maniac killer.

“I’ll save you if you give me what I want.” She looks at her watch, then up at me. “He’s got about an hour before his organs start to bleed out. There’s no going back then. Of course, shock will set in soon, and his liver will start to balk…his lungs will go into respiratory distress…”

She barely finishes saying that when he begins to wheeze. At this point he’s saturated in his sweat.

“You’ll bleed to death. Drown in your own blood. How do you think she felt, knowing she was going to die? Unable to save herself. How do you think my mother felt when you poisoned her and left her to drown in hot water? How much pain do you think she was in when her lungs burned?”

“P-p-please…” he heaves between strangled breaths.

“Please what? Save you? Why? You’re of no use to me or anyone. You’re a waste. A dead weight, and do you know what you do to dead weights?” Shrugging, she looks up at me. Not a single fuck is etched on her face. “You kick them off.”

Charles starts to blink, holding on to the table as he begins to dry-heave. It sounds painfully guttural. He reaches for the syringe, but she keeps moving it farther and farther out of reach until he’s standing. Sweat rivers down his face to the top of the bloodstained T-shirt he’s wearing. He tries to grab her, but when she moves out of his way, he falls to the floor.

“Karma is a beautiful thing. It’s not a cold bitch, it’s plain old fate.” She crouches beside his winded body, watching almost gleefully as he coughs so hard that blood spatters over the white kitchen tiles. “I can still save you. Tell me where the Stanton girl is, and I’ll give you half. It might or might not be enough to save you. But if you tell me where Kingsley is too, I’ll give you all of it. And we’ll let you go.”

He looks between us, as though he’s assessing whether or not she’s telling the truth.

“You have my word,” I tell him, crouching opposite her. “I’ll even throw in a nice car with enough petrol to get you over the border.”

“At the end of the day, you’re still my father, and I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to kill you. So, help me save you.”

Still coughing, he sputters some more blood onto the floor. With the dripping from his hand, a small puddle is starting to form.

“Where is Kingsley Fairfax?”

His breathing is erratic. His entire body is shaking so violently that it’s impossible to tell whether he’s cold, or whether he really is struggling to hold himself up.

“Swi—” He heaves. “Switz—” He vomits violently into

the puddle of his blood.

“Switzerland?” Of course the cunt would run away to no man’s land. The haven for cowards.

Grabbing hold of the hem of my jeans, he tries to tug himself up, but he’s so fucking out of it. His one open eye is rolling all over the place, confusion making him look like wide-open prey. Ready for take down.

“Where’s Lucy?”

He coughs and coughs and coughs until he’s vomiting all over again. The putrid smell fills the air. Alcohol, bile…wretchedness.

“Where is she?” Fleur tilts his head up with the tip of her finger supporting his chin.

“Sar…Sarp…”