Chapter 2 #3
“This way if they trip over a body, they couldn’t tell anyone.”
“I did not leave anyone out in the open to be tripped upon. I am not an amateur.” She balks.
“How lovely, you’re so good at killing innocent people doing their jobs.”
Taylor blinks, infuriatingly unperturbed. “They are enemies, Miss Piccolo. Enemies die. It is my job to make sure our enemies die.”
Gulping down another sip of tea, I set it down and struggle to settle my nerves. “I’m your enemy too.”
“Right now, you are my prisoner and under my protection.”
“Protecting me from what? You are the danger I need protection from.” I’m too warm in my anger, despite the drafty cabin blowing cold air around us.
My jaw tightens. “So, I’m supposed to sleep in this hovel with some lackey cutthroat sociopath while a complete stranger who sent you to kill me decides if I’m worth more as a corpse.
This is ridiculous.” In a burst of energy, I rise to my full height.
“I demand you bring me back to New York.”
“You demand?” With deliberate action, Taylor stands up and aims her gaze directly into mine. In it I find defiance, bemusement, boredom. Not exactly the emotions I’m used to eliciting. “You no longer make demands, Miss Piccolo.”
Flustered, I swallow saliva and try and find my courage somewhere. Courage and recklessness look similar in the dark. “How long will I be here?”
“I do not know.”
I stride to the counter and place the mug down. As I turn to her, she’s watching me closely. “Of course not, great. Since you’re useless, how do I talk to your boss and put a word in for my defense?”
Her eyebrows twitch. “You do not.”
“What if I walk out?”
“If you perpetrate any action that compromise me or the Order, I will kill you.” My face drains of color. The woman I met at the ball is truly gone, if she existed at all. “Despite how it appears, I do not want to do that.”
A harsh laugh bubbles from my lips. “Oh, no? Is that why you waltzed me into a place where everyone wants to put my head on their wall as a trophy?”
“Do not be dramatic, Miss Piccolo—”
“Dramatic? Are you kidding? I would’ve met the same fate as Silas McGovern’s kids if you hadn’t bungled everything,” I snap.
The hardness in her expression returns at my blatant display of sass.
“Did you do that, too? Did you get a shiny gold star from Mommy because you slit an old man’s throat and shot his children in the head, hero? ”
“I—” She pauses. There it is. Finally, the tiniest fissure in her veneer appears. “That is none of your business.”
I back up a step. “What a wonderful harbinger of democracy this is, slaughtering everyone who stands against it, including defenseless children.”
“What a wonderful place of privilege you come from, to be more concerned with the deaths of a few people over the atrocities that man and his ancestors committed against their own people. The Order cannot sit idly by, as you and your kin have, and watch the regions slaughter and impoverish their people.”
“Oh, I see. Murder is okay when you believe you have the moral high ground. How convenient.”
“Whatever you say,” she says, rolling her eyes and running her fingers through her hair.
Another fissure, another crack. “You are entitled to feel however you want about me, about all of this.” She gestures toward the cabin but I assume she means the entire operation.
Maybe the planet. “You do not have to like me to trust me.”
“Why in the world would I trust you? You stole me! I am not safe here with you,” I reply. “I am a sheep in the wolf’s den.”
“Are you?” She angles closer. “Do not reduce yourself to a damsel, Miss Piccolo. It does not suit you.”
In the blink of an eye, the killer stood in front of me is the woman at the ball once again. The woman who somehow knew me, unmasked me, disarmed me with few words and shy smiles. But that was a game, wasn’t it? A fox pawing a rabbit before sinking its teeth into a soft, pliable neck.
She rubs her face, agitating the cut on her cheek. I can’t imagine how the rest of her looks, and I’m not imagining it, even though I want to. “The extra bedroom is over there.” She points to the door in the middle. “Inside is a bathroom, some clothes for you to sleep in.”
I wrinkle my nose. “I don’t think we’re the same size, kid.”
Unexpectedly, that causes another fissure. A glimmer of grief as quick as a blink.
“They are not my clothes. I will collect you tomorrow for breakfast.” She marches into the first room on the right and closes the door.
I’m left in the poorly lit living room for a minute or two before her door opens again, her blood-splattered button-down shirt wide open, suspenders hanging around her pants.
My eyes snap up. “Do not attempt to escape. Please.”
“And miss this fun? Never.”
“Good night, Miss Piccolo.” She closes her door, and I scowl and enter the other bedroom.
Moonlight through two bare windows barely lights up the furniture.
Navigating around the twin bed against the wall, I find and turn on a lamp, filling my nostrils with the scent of kerosene.
The room doesn’t look lived in. No personal effects anywhere, not that there was a welcome mat on the door outside, either.
I guess the cabins for laconic assassins come with an extra bedroom and en suite for their captives.
A sparse en suite, I note. Only a tub, a pedestal sink with a water-stained metal faucet, and a clean porcelain toilet with a crack in the tank.
Functional, fortunately, as I push down the silver lever and watch the water swirl down the drain.
The claw-foot tub’s beautiful metalwork would look halfway decent were it not draped in a tacky, pink vinyl shower curtain like an inappropriately vibrant funeral shroud.
A lingering fear of tetanus makes my shower much less enjoyable than any I’ve ever had, plus the fact that the water barely passes for room temperature.
After drying off and dressing in borrowed clothing, I ignore a used brush resting on the dresser and resign myself to going to bed with bedraggled hair.
I’m not using someone’s old comb. Someone else’s clothes, towel, shower, bed, fine.
But not their brush. A line has to be drawn somewhere, even in desperate times.
The bed groans in protest as I slip in, objecting to my presence as thoroughly as I object to being here.
It isn’t long before the tears well in my eyes and I weep into the pillow in an overwhelming wave of grief.
Grief for Papa, for my life, for my future, robbed from me in one moment of weakness.
My life is over. Even if they don’t kill me, my life is over.
And why wouldn’t they kill me? You don’t keep bait after you catch the big fish.
However, as hard as I try, I can’t find it within me to give up.
I want to. It would be so easy. But surrender is not in my blood.
It goes against what I am to lie back and accept a fate given to me.
No matter what happens, I won’t let them turn me into what I’m not.
All I have left is who I am, and I intend to keep it.
I am not a damsel. I will not reduce myself to one.