“Nice try, but I’m younger and faster, and I really want to kill you, so don’t push it and end this too prematurely.”
She spits on the floor between us, and I shake my head. “Classy, super classy. Tell me again how you are so much better than me.”
“You will never be one of us, even if you do manage to trap him into a relationship with you, and that’s a big if considering your…girth, you will never be a part of this society.”
I chuckle and run my hand over the slight belly I’ve gained from eating more regularly again. “Well, when he’s on his knees eating me out, he doesn’t seem to mind something soft to rest his head against. At least, that’s how I see it.”
“What about you? Does he have a problem with your hip bones threatening to stab him?”
She stiffens, and I wave at her. “You’re the one who went there first. I was happy to continue trading angry barbs, but you had to make it personal.”
It’s already personal, with Kai strapped to that bed, but god, I hate this woman, and toying with her makes me feel just a little bit better.
Carefully, she uses the bed to stand, keeping her weight off her injured leg. I note she is equally careful not to touch Kai in her use of the bed. “Maybe we have more in common than I thought. Perhaps we can discuss this.”
“You can discuss this. I can stand here and mock you until you figure out there’s nothing you can give me that I want.”
“Perhaps a trade? I give you a place here, amongst us, a house, money. All you have to do is leave him here. Give him to me, and you can have anything you want.”
I gag at the thought of leaving him in this place, not for anything, and it hurts my heart that she might have made a deal like this before, which is why she’s attempting to do it now. “Wow, you have no idea how to read a person, do you? I don’t want to be a part of your society. I doubt most people in said society want to be a part of it, especially if you’re the leader. No wonder things are so fucked up around here.”
She sniffs, raising her chin. “I take exception to that statement; things are perfectly fine.”
I narrow my eyes and tilt my head to Kai. “If things were perfectly fine, you wouldn’t have to kidnap your sex partners and drug them, now would you? You disgust me. All of your kind disgusts me.”
This time, she smiles, cruel and cold. “He is one of our kind, little girl, born and bred.”
“Well, that’s not something he can help, and he’s right on the front line trying to fix what he had a hand in breaking. You simply revel in the chaos.”
“Chaos does pay the bills.”
I wave the gun between us. “We aren’t the same. I may have been born in this fucked-up world, but I’m nothing like you. Proudly so.”
“And him? What will you do with him when he wants to go back to Chicago, join his sister, and become part of that little organization with just as many morally inept people?”
“I don’t give a fuck about his crazy-ass sister.”
She shrugs, a little too calm now. “Just as well. I did hear the season is open.”
I might not have any idea what she’s saying, but I know the tone of a threat when I hear one. “You think she doesn’t have her own protection out there. I’m sure she can take care of herself.”
“But she didn’t do a single thing to protect you, right? Not when you needed it most. Maybe she thinks her brother will inherit the Barone dynasty when you’re gone. A clever ploy to get her greedy little hands on your family money.”
I laugh. “I don’t have any money. If my family did, I sure as hell don’t know where it is right now.”
“Then let me give you money. Set you up here.”
“In exchange for Kai, right? That’s the deal. Would you even let me walk out of here after I shot you?”
Another cold, cruel smile. “Try it and find out.”
I match her little grin and shake my head. “No, I don’t need to. What you should know is I never intended to let you walk out of here alive. Not for one second, not for all the money in the world.”
“Everyone wants something.”
I step up to the bed and run my hand up Kai’s still arm. “Yes, everyone wants something. And right now, I want my husband’s rapist to die violently, painfully.”
Her eyes go wide a second before I pull the trigger. I walk around the side of the bed to kneel next to her. Blood is pouring from the wound in her chest, but she’s still alive. Alive enough to hear me at least.