31. Cassius
thirty-one
“This is fucked,” Garrett grits his teeth and stands, his hands raised out in front of him. “I can’t do this, man.”
Photos of Hannah are scattered on the computer screen. Ruby takes the vacant seat Garrett left at my desk and enlarges each crime scene photo one by one. Unlike Garrett, I can’t bring myself to look away. Each photo is worse than the one before it. Numbered tags mark blood splatters and pieces of clothing. A shoe print, a knife, a woman’s flip-flop, a young woman’s lifeless body. There’s a photo of her bottom half, in it her legs are bent at odd angles, the joints rigid. She sits in a dark red pool, her skirt pushed up on her hips. In the last photo, her empty eyes stare back at us, daring us to look away. Her arms are stretched above her head, her wrists secured with a strip of fabric to the post behind her. A split gold chain dangles between angry red lines painted on her neck and chest.
“They used her underwear,” I tell Ruby, pointing to Hannah’s wrists. “And that chain, it had a charm on it. A heart made of cubic zirconia, G got for her. I don’t know why the suits would have taken it, maybe they thought it would throw suspicion?” Ruby nods, continuing her study of the photos. Across the room, Garrett gets sick in the trash can.
I’m not sure what she expects to find in the photos that will help us, but she studies them, committing them to memory. Each blood drop, every scratch, all the purple bruises. I’m grateful when she finally closes all the photos and reopens the folder Rowan sent.
I motion to Garrett and watch as he rolls the defeat off his back before joining me behind Ruby.
“Hannah is dead. Those pictures have not been doctored.” Ruby is tactless. I wince and then look over at Garrett, who may or may not get sick again. Before he does, she continues, “Which means that Rowan is correct, and the woman you saw was not Hannah.”
Ruby opens the only other file in the folder. A photo of an adult Hannah fills the screen.
“Fuck,” Garrett says at the same time I ask, “How?”
“This is Rawlings.”
“I think I’m gonna be sick again,” Garrett mumbles, reaching for the trash can.
“Who the fuck is Rawlings?” I demand.
“Sophie,” Ruby answers in her monotone voice as she opens the next file.
“So, where the fuck is she and why are we not moving?” I open the desk drawer and retrieve my Smith and Wesson. Removing the magazine, I confirm that it’s loaded and slip it back into place. The familiar sound like music to my ears. I look at Garrett, who hasn’t moved, but instead just stares at the computer screen, his eyes darting back and forth taking in what he sees there.
Ruby looks up at me, her lips pulled in a straight line, her jaw set.
“Cassius, I know that the whole barge in and take care of business tactic is your style, but that’s not how to handle this. We’re talking about the Reds. We need to know what we’re getting into before,” she gestures at the gun in my hand, “we go in guns blazing.”
“I will not be the pawn in this bitch’s twisted game. She dies.”
Ruby stands and places her hand on my cheek. “Cassius Cross has never been a pawn in anyone’s game, and if she doesn’t see that, perhaps she should be playing a different one.”
“She dies,” I repeat.
Her lips turn up, a devious smirk plays on her face. “She dies slowly.”
Ruby’s eyes grow dark, lustful. I pull her to me, pressing my lips with force against hers. Her nails rake the back of my neck, and I can feel her body writhe against mine.
This woman may no longer want to kill me, but she will be the end of me.
“If you two are done,” Garrett clears his throat. “Rowan did some serious digging here. And Ruby,” he looks pointedly at her, “you’re gonna have to fill in some blanks.”
“Talk us through it, G,” I tell him, and Ruby and I gather behind him.
“Okay, so it looks like Rowan dug into Rawling’s background. She was recruited by your European chapter according to this docket here.”
“That I know. We have chapters all over the world. Rawlings came to us about five years ago now, I think.”
“September is five years, yeah. So anyway, I think we need to start from the beginning. The basics though are this, Hannah’s dad killed himself not long after Hannah was killed, and her mom remarried six months later. Her new beau adopted Sophie and from what I can gather from Rowan’s files he was a real fucking gem. They legally changed not only her last name, but also her first name. So, Sophie Flemming became Francesca Juarez after this jack-off’s mother. How fucked up is that? Don’t answer that, let me finish. Dude was an asshole, as you can already tell.”
“Is there a picture of him?” I interrupt.
Garrett pulls up a picture, and it’s my turn to be sick. “That’s one of the suits.”
“You sure?” Garrett shoots me a pained look. “It’s been twelve years.”
“Their faces have been etched in my brain for every last one.”
“So, this cocksucker, he was a shithead. There are several reports of abuse, physical and sexual. But we all know money in the right hands will make all that go away. Except, her mom witnessed the last incident and blamed Francesca for making advances. Mommy dearest shipped her off to prep school the next day. Francesca was kicked out of prep school after prep school for organizing fighting rings until five years ago.”
“When she was recruited by the Reds,” Ruby finishes.
“Whatever the fuck that is,” Garrett flaps his hand in the air, feigning indifference.
“In short, we’re a league of assassins who recruit girls or women out of dangerous situations and train them to be contract killers.”
Garrett spins in the chair and levels Ember with eyes that might possibly seal his own fate.
“How old were you?”
“Eight.”
Garrett nods, eyes wide. “They’re supposed to protect us.”
They’re supposed to protect us, but they didn’t. Have we become what we are because of our parents? Or in spite of them? I know the answer, it’s neither. We became what we are because we didn’t have a choice. We became what we are to survive. And now, now, we thrive on the violence it takes to do so. It jumpstarts our hearts and pumps our blood through our veins.
“Fuck them,” I growl and look from G to Ruby and back again. I gesture to the three of us. “We survived. We fucking won.”
“Life is not a game, Cass.” Garrett whispers, looking at the screen again.
Ember meets my gaze, and I know without looking in a mirror that my smile matches hers. We both know life is a game, and we’re about to flip the fucking board.