Chapter 3
There are plenty of things I should be doing right now and most of them don’t include looking for a certain woman who is so very confused if she thinks I’m gonna let her get her way.
I know exactly what she’s trying to do. I’m not the one who needs the other for safety after all. She thought that the brief conversation we had after the family meeting had ended with her getting her way but I have a completely different viewpoint.
She will listen to what I have to say, not that there is no pressing business I have to attend to. The business being my personal life. I’m going to get her on the strict program I run, which is to say that I’m going to make sure she falls in line if it’s the last thing I do.
I’ve followed her a few times so I know where she’s likely to be at in town. There aren’t many options to be completely honest. My search is quick but finding her proves to be harder.
I only catch sight of her darting down an alley by chance when the stones from her tops catch the light and reflect. The shimmer that dances along the darkness is my tip off.
Where bright is, Nina surely is there too.
With my hoodie pulled tight around my face, I’m light on my feet as I follow her. I don’t know if she’s unaware or if she simply doesn’t care. I’m going to see this through to the end regardless.
Then, the safety light behind one of the restaurants illuminates with her skulking and she freezes and turns.
Her high pink ponytail streaked with red, pieces falling around her face whip around with her movement. I’m moved by how at peace she was though she is obviously doing something she isn’t. Her hair is pink but only streaked with more pink. Not red. Obviously she’s done it again.
The streetlight casts her in a light that is, unbelievably, highlighting the doll-like features of her light brown face.
It takes me a moment to recognize what I'm seeing is so wrong. Though I already had my suspicions of this tiny woman, I could never have predicted that I am the only person who sees exactly what this doll is.
She's not a pleasant, cheery, delightful ray of sunshine that she pretends to be in her bright colors and even brighter hair—she's insane, actually. That’s too much blood to be from a minor accident.
Whatever met her, did not leave intact. Everything about her is honed to distract and deter you from looking past what's superficially beautiful about her.
I'm not blind.
I can see that her tiny button nose and huge eyes are always being emphasized to make her look even more unreal.
Hell, even her lisp, she uses to infantilize herself.
She is a young woman, nearly twelve years younger than me.
Regardless, when I was her age, there was no way that I would be as skilled at both killing and hiding what I've done.
I only happened to catch her because I was looking.
This was a mistake on her part but for me, it’s one step closer to proving exactly what I’ve been saying all along.
I had gone to Redd and told him to look into her—to see what exactly was so off about her. Her smiles are not real. There's no heart behind them. They very rarely shine in her eyes as well. Down to the way she talks…
Then she told me to back off?
Why would I back off when I obviously was getting close to something that she wanted to keep hidden?
My suspicions about her were absolutely well founded.
Here she is dashing off into the night. I expect her to struggle more, considering she's in high-heeled boots that somehow have no signature sound as she moves quickly to her pink beetle convertible. I half expect her eyes to reflect yellow like a cat when she looks around to see if she’s lost me.
She pops open her trunk with the fob on her keys.
The entire trunk is already lined with a tarp or something to keep it clean.
How many times has she done this?
And why is she doing it?
I want to charge right up to her and immediately start interrogating, but I know that won't get me anywhere. The best I can do is call in a specialist to see if my concerns were actually listened to.
Though I might be number three in the line of this family, my importance here is not in these regards.
I call my second regent, hoping that he'll actually pick up.
It's a bit of a mixed bag with him. The only people he has notifications turned on for are his lady and our King.
Everyone else kind of falls into a silence-only setting.
Ever since he's been preoccupied with Stephanie, his focus is even further away from issues that he would not consider important, and for Dupont, the only thing that matters is the money.
And sure, whoever this unfortunate victim is, likely fell for all the charms that Nina exudes in spades, but I don't think they deserved to die for it.
There is no pointing beating around the bush, she did not leave this person alive, wherever they are now.
Whatever she's doing could eventually bring negative attention to the families, which would hurt the money, or she's going to get herself into something too deep and meet someone who is out for the hunt, like she apparently is.
When she closes her trunk, she pulls out a plastic bag to put her clothes in.
Instead of her getting into her car to change, she changes right there on the street.
I see her get down into her matching pink and black polka dot bra and panty set, putting a silk bonnet over her hair and a coordinating pink sweatsuit on before wiping her hands down with some sort of solution.
I mean… she was prepared. I’ll give her that.
With her hood on, you can’t see the blood in her hair which might have been the most damning change to her appearance.
She gets into her car and drives away. I don't have to follow her, because I know exactly where she's going.
Fuck.
Wow.
And like she said, she is Racquelle's most prized asset. She is Lafayette’s hitter.
Racquelle has made it clear that she will get women to use their own underestimated strengths against men to get what they, as a family, want moving forward, I can't imagine that whatever happened here was for that reason.
Racquelle is on a mission to clean up whatever dissent is currently in the family from how she rose to power. I very highly doubt that she sent Nina to assassinate one man, put him in her trunk, and drive off like she's going to go get one dollar tacos from the fast food drive-thru.
What’d she even use? An ice pick?
She's so messy.
I'm not the biggest expert in taking anyone's life, as it's usually not me who's called. It's likely Redd or whoever is the offended regent that takes care of that sort of thing. But I'm not innocent of the crime.
Each time it takes a toll, though I haven't acknowledged exactly what that toll comes out to be.
I don't have time to.
I have to keep work and my personal life very separate, so when I'm not clocked in for this, I am not clocked in for this.
I don't care what happens while I'm off duty. It keeps a roof over my head and more money than I could possibly need to keep both my daughter and her mother taken care of.
Dupont might be my family, but only during business hours. I'm not doing anything otherwise to hurt the family when I'm not working, so it's been fine up until this point.
But I'm supposed to be going to a completely different state with this woman as my partner while I'm there? Had it been Lidia, somebody I’ve work with closely before she revealed that she was just there to protect Racquelle…
Or fuck, if I had been there to work with Redd, I'd feel much more comfortable.
But what kind of situation am I going to be in with this woman?
Am I about to be an accomplice to this murder spree she’s on?
God, I cannot imagine what reason she would have to be doing any of this.
What could have possibly happened to her?