15. Cass
CASS
PLAYLIST: TATTOO – LOREEN
“This place is fucked,” I say as we lean against the headboard of the bed in that penthouse suite and drink whatever alcohol it is from the bar. It’s bright daylight, probably somewhere around noon, not that I care.
Daydrinking is one of my favorite things to do, because it numbs the noise of the world.
“It is. Look at that thing,” she says and nods towards the ceiling where some sort of fanned fabric is arranged.
I haven’t felt out of place like this in forever, and it literally lets the hair on my neck stand up.
“Don’t you have to be somewhere?” I ask.
“I sure have,” she says. “But I don’t want to be anywhere else right now.”
My heart skips a beat from a fluttery sensation rushing through me.
“If I leave here and anyone sees me like this, I’ll have the vultures eating me.”
The feeling in me flushes out as fast as it came.
Of course she didn’t mean you, I tell myself. And she better not. That would be the absolutely stupidest, fucked-up thing we could ever do.
“Meh,” I say, because I have nothing more intelligent to say.
We sit and drink.
“So, how do you wanna do it?” she asks.
“How come the change of mind?” I ask her in return.
“Well,” she says, “There is no point if you destroy it anyway; everyone’s fucked anyway.”
“True,” I say.
“I also can blame you for that,” she says, playfully cheerful, and grins mockingly at me.
I scoff and take another gulp from the bottle.
She, too, lets her head fall back at the headboard.
“I’m not doing it for her, because she is dead,” she then says, and my entire body feels like ice. “She doesn’t care about any of it anymore.”
I swallow. Hard.
“I’m doing it for you,” she says. “So you can find peace.”
There it is again, the flutter. I let my head fall to the side, and I watch her staring at the ceiling thing, whatever it is called. I am not fluent in rich people stuff.
“That’s giving me at least some purpose,” she adds.
Of course she is doing it out of selfish reasons, says a slightly disappointed voice in me. And she should. I don’t even know why I react this way. She’s Elise’s sister!
“Nikki is in,” I say. “I might have to bring in Illy; she’s the girl for all things tech. She knows how to hack almost anything, including those modern chips that track everything in cars.”
“She tracked my phone, didn’t she?”
“Yeah,” I say hesitantly.
An awkward silence follows.
“We are going to take them down one at a time,” I say to cut the silence. “We attack the seven parent corporations, one by one. Starting with the Bank. We take everything.”
“You wanna rob them?”
“If we take their business, there is nothing left.”
She scoffs in a way I don’t like.
“It’s not the streets,” she says. “You aren’t going against a single gangster with cash. That conglomerate is like a hydra. You cut one head off, and three others grew back. That bank doesn’t have the money they shuffle lying around.”
“How then?”
She doesn’t say anything for a while. She just leans against the headboard, her eyes closed. I thought she'd passed out, and I twitch when she suddenly speaks.
“You ruin them,” she says. “It’s the only way.”
“And how do we ruin a multi-national hydra?”
She laughs and finally opens her eyes, looking straight at me.
“Nothing easier than that,” she says, a devilish grin on her face. “A company is nothing when nobody buys their things. A bank is nothing if nobody gives them their money. A foundation is nothing if nobody needs the funds.”
“True,” I agree with her, while I don’t see how any of it is achievable.
“What we need is public attention to what they do, public uproar, scandal. In a way not even the government can look away,” she says and jumps up from the bed. She is…elated. Her eyes glowing, she walks up and down in front of the bed and me, bottle in one hand, the other gesturing.
“What we also need is a destabilized internal structure. Rig what we can. Systems. Cashflow. Contracts. Insider Trading. Strengthen competitors.”
She freezes. “And last but not least, we are going to take what we can and give it to those in need.”
I don’t know what to say, because it sounds so much above my head that I can’t even grasp her idea. It’s like a fairytale Robin Hood story fueled by too much alcohol.
“It’s impossible and insane,” I say, and before I can continue, she falls into my words and stands in front of me with her fists on her hips.
“It’s not. Insane is to think you can rob a corp—“
“Shut up and listen to the rest I have to say before you interrupt me,” I say, falling into her words myself.
She closes her half-open mouth reproachfully.
“It is completely impossible and insane,” I repeat myself, “I don’t understand a thing about that world. It sounds like a fundamentally stupid idea. But hell yeah, I’m in.”
A grin spreads over her face.
“You do know that we might end up in prison?” I ask. “For life?”
She bites her bottom lip with all her visible upper teeth to stop the grin from spreading even further as she nods knowingly.
Reckless.
Thrill-seeking.
No regard for her life.
Like me.
“Wasn’t it you who said the world runs without me?” she asks me, and then does something that causes my heart to skip several beats at a time.
She climbs back onto the bed, over to me—
Suddenly, she is so close.
My eyes widen.
Hands get sweaty.
She sits on my lap.
Taking one big gulp to empty the bottle in her hand.
I am at a loss at what to do.
With my hands.
With my entire body.
With my thoughts.
“What are you—“ I stammer out.
There isn’t a single thought in my brain right now.
She leans over to the empty bottle on the nightstand.
Leans back.
Ties her long blond hair in a high ponytail.
“Cuba,” she says.
I am not even listening properly.
I am just looking at her boobs right in front of my face, squeezed into a laced bra underneath that black, silken corporate blouse, caressing over her skin.
I feel her ass in my lap.
She cups my face.
Pulls it to her.
I look up into her eyes.
Right.
Eyes.
She said something.
I am just useless at this point.
“What?” I ask, stupidly.
“Cuba,” she says, sniggering.
“What’s with Cuba?”
“Epic car scene, no extradition.”
“Oh, yeah,” I say as my brain catches up to reality.
These eyes. The touch. The scent.
And then, her lips meet mine.
Of everything I expected, this wasn’t it.
She stops.
Brings some distance between our faces.
“That was fucking weird,” she says, and I couldn’t agree more.
“Yeah,” I say as she removes herself from my lap and falls onto her back on the bed.
She sighs.
The moment is as awkward as it can get.
So I just say nothing.
Of all the fluttery sensations she has caused in me, that kiss was not only strange; it felt like kissing a corpse.
So many moments passed between us, moments where I thought there was heat and fire between us, and now, it feels like I kissed my sister.
I shudder to shake off the sensation.
“Why did you fucking do that?” I ask her incredulously, but I don’t get an answer, because she has finally passed out.
And while things couldn’t be any more awkward, when I lie down next to her and watch her sleep, it feels like we have done so forever.
Lying here together.
Being together.
Flying and falling together.