Chapter 67
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
BELLATRIX
“Iwant half.” I slammed the apartment door closed.
Opened it and slammed it again when the smug son of a bitch didn’t notice the first time.
He didn’t notice the second time either, but it made me feel a little bit better.
Plus, I’m sure one of the bar patrons downstairs noticed so there was that too.
“For what?” Casper sighed as he kicked his boots off and bounced his ass onto the bed.
“It was my idea!”
He slowly turned his head and looked over at where I was leaning against the dresser. My arms crossed and my face pissed the fuck off. I couldn’t see it. But I could feel the heat on my cheeks, the pinching of my eyebrows together, and the tightness of my jaw as I ground my teeth.
This was worse than when Allie took credit for cleaning our bedroom when I was eight and she was twelve and somehow messier with her shoes and makeup than I was with my toys and Silly Putty—homemade by one of the cooks because we couldn’t afford the real stuff.
That came with Mom’s praise and an extra serving of dessert I couldn’t eat anyway.
This came with dollar signs. Dollar signs I could use for a couple more throwing knives or maybe even an upgraded scope.
I’d figure out which as soon as I figured out how much this fucker made off the idea he stole from me.
“It was my hard work.” He shrugged.
“What about what you did back there was so hard?” I flung a hand out towards the window even though we were miles away from the spa, gym, whatever. It didn’t matter. He knew where I was pointing.
“Well,” Casper hummed, his eyes focused on the ceiling now and the way the fan knocked dust around every time it did another rotation.
I had no room to talk, though. Couldn’t say I’d ever dusted my ceiling fan either.
“I had to find incriminating pictures the guy’s girlfriend had stashed in her nightstand.
I had to make an anonymous call to the wife, forward those pictures, and hope that she was as bloodthirsty and ready to pay as he was.
I had to find one of her closest friends and get the girl to innocently suggest the woman reach out to me for my services. ”
He pushed up on the bed and started listing on his fingers now.
“I had to then meet up with her, make sure she wasn’t wearing a wire, and discuss the best place and time to do it.
Monitor him for a week to get his schedule down to a science—admittedly that was probably the easiest part.
The wife knew everything he did, minus the whole fucking someone else on the side.
After that, I had to get my computer guy to hack into the gym’s security system to make sure no one caught us on the live feed, look up the model number and purchase the replacement knob for the sauna door, procure the uniforms, set up the getaway car, pay off a few employees to call in sick so that the place was short-handed.
Drive there, drive back—oh yeah, and I had to actually kill the guy.
Then I had to make sure Big Daddy Bossman didn’t catch wind of any of this so I wouldn’t have to split the payout that was already cut thin by everyone else I had to pay off.
What was it you did again, though?” He flipped his legs on the floor, sat on the edge of the mattress, and peered over at me.
Blinking twice before adding, “Right, it was your idea so you want half.”
“Fuck you,” I grumbled under my breath.
“That would be nice.” He rolled back onto the mattress, kicking both legs out and spreading them wide across the crumpled sheets. “As you mighta heard, I did a lot of work today.”
When he started sliding the uniform pants down off his ass and pushing them onto the floor with a socked foot, I grabbed for the knife on my ankle and tossed it across the room. It landed a fraction of an inch above his head, grazing some of his hair along the way.
He glanced up at it, tugged the hilt out of the wall, and threw it back in my direction. The tip of the blade skimmed the uniform top, taking a bite out of my right shoulder, and then embedded itself in the opposite wall.
“You fucking asshole!” I slapped a hand over my arm to stop the bleeding, turned, and stomped into the bathroom. “You cut me!”
“You tried to cut me. I’m just better at it,” he called out over the sound of the running faucet.
I shut the water off and screamed my frustrations.
I could hear him snickering to himself as I grabbed the peroxide out of the vanity mirror, poured some of it onto a clean towel, and started blotting at the wound over the shirt.
Thankfully, it was just a scratch and it didn’t sting too much. That didn’t make me any less annoyed.
I hadn’t hit him because I hadn’t been trying to. And not because I couldn’t have if I wanted to. And then I was more annoyed when I realized I hadn’t wanted to.
Something was seriously wrong with me.
I glanced up into the mirror and glared at myself for a long minute. Shook my head and stomped back into the bedroom.
Casper was exactly where I had left him. Feet wide, head propped up on an arm, candy bar in his mouth, and remote in his hand.
I yanked the knife out from where I had left it in the wall, narrowed my glare, and chucked it at his thumb as soon as he swiped across one of the buttons to change the channel.
He didn’t flinch. Instead, he plucked the handle up off the bedspread and licked the blade clean. Then he was stalking towards me, the knife raised high over his head, blood dripping down his hand to his wrist, and that same crazy look in his eye he had the last time I’d stabbed him.