Chapter 20
Doom
“I thought you said you negotiate with your mind, not with your fists,” I say for the first time when we close the door on Marshall’s apartment.
I feel my heart pumping inside my veins with an unseen surge of adrenaline.
I really had a plan to kill him or at least put him to sleep, but I figured out just when I jumped on his back that I didn’t finish that defence class.
The main reason, in fact, was Marshall. And however much strength I gained from my training, I didn’t even think about the consequences of that move.
We took Marshall to his apartment and tied him to the bed with a rope I found in his closet. The same way as in my dream. I was surprised he didn’t wake up from how hard we tightened that string.
I have so much hate inside for that man. Unfortunately, we need him alive if I want to stay in this universe and not go to the next one.
“Anything you planned to do earlier, don’t do it again until you feel ready,” Lucas says when we enter our apartment.
“After all this craziness calms down, I will train you to be able to defend yourself the right way. You have technique, but it’s not complete.
A couple of weeks, and you could even put me down. ”
He mechanically closes the door when I enter, then locks it.
He is right, though. I know how to protect myself, but being half-prepared is not enough. Especially if I’ll end up in situations where Lucas is not next to me. However, I hope it won’t be the case.
He goes to the safe room and opens the small hatch in the door frame where the camera was. He pulls it out and crushes it under his footwear. He also goes to all the microphones in the room and does the same thing, and I’m surprised he managed to remember the exact location of each one.
He then pulls a phone from his pocket and starts writing a message at a fascinating speed.
“If you’re asking yourself where I have it from, Cathal gave it to me to keep him posted," he says, like taking the words right out of my mind.
He stops typing and looks up at me.
“It’s something I haven’t told you regarding this whole story with Cathal.
Yes, I do work for him, but I accepted it only if he let me do what I wanted when I wanted, and didn’t ask me where I was going.
I know he followed me from the shadows, but I didn’t really care.
I wasn’t crossing paths with his business, even if I sometimes wished I did. ”
“Please don’t tell me you also have your mafia and you transport weapons or whatever the hell it is you do because I’m in over my head with information from dangerous, hidden worlds,” I say, rubbing my temples.
“Not… really. I don’t do weapon trafficking, but I cannot say that my hands get out clean all the time.
Okay, they never do. And my devices are not entirely self-made.
Not all of them, at least. I needed some help to let me explore other psychological directions.
Later came Bianca, but I can say for sure that she beats them all, and I am sorry I haven’t discovered her passion sooner," he says, making my eyes go big.
I remember her saying that what she did was for the good of mankind, but I didn’t press her for more details regarding her job. I knew she loved to play around with substances and that she had a degree in chemistry, deepening its secrets in private.
“A chemist and a technology-obsessed programmer made a pretty good team. Unfortunately, as with every experiment, I needed many subjects to test them on. I created an organisation that removes some of the most unscrupulous criminals from this planet, with a few people I trusted at first. Now, our faction has grown substantially, and we have teams all around the world. The biggest remains the one I’m leading directly.
As Cathal, my contract with my employees ensures complete confidentiality of the activities within the organisation.
Everybody knows its secrets, knows how many people this planet is getting rid of, but nobody is allowed to unravel these secrets further.
They knew they had dedicated targets on their backs from the very beginning, as it was explicitly mentioned in their contracts.
If anyone from the outside had known what we really did, neither one of us would be alive now.
Every employee was carefully selected based on their background, and I gained trust in them through the various tests they took before adding them to the team.
Plus, the salary they receive is not a small one, especially after we emptied the accounts of the ones we killed,” he smiles in a more sadistic way.
“The domain that remained untouched by us was Cathal’s," he says before returning to his typing. “I know that there are a lot of criminals who would probably deserve to die, but for both to coexist, sacrifices needed to be made.”
“Who are you writing to?” I ask him while trying to put together the information I just found out, and thinking that everyone in my life lied to me.
But I cannot stay mad at Bianca. I would’ve done the same thing to protect her.
“Bianca," he says, as if he read my mind, and he subtracted her from it. “We need a specialist for what we’re about to do.”
?
We are in a parking lot near the park, which is full of surveillance cameras. I can see them in all of its corners, but it seems that Lucas doesn’t really care about that. Especially since he is fixated on stealing a car.
“Do you at least know what you’re doing?” I ask him with my arms crossed over my chest. “I could help you.”
“I know what I’m doing," he says arrogantly.
“You don’t know how to ask for help when you need it.”
“That’s not true," he says, softly laughing. “I’m good.”
“If you say so.”
I let my posterior lean against the hood of the car in front of the one Lucas tries to open with one hand on the car door next to the driver’s seat and the other on his phone.
Of course, he is struggling in vain. I could see it on the way he huffs and clenches his fist on the handle, highlighting his muscles. I’m standing and laughing at him while drooling over his perfect body.
I broke into cars in the past when I got bored, and I wanted to drive.
I didn’t have enough money to buy one. I had a driver’s licence and all that was missing was having a car, so I learned how to open any model to satisfy the small pleasures of my horrible life.
Plus a lot of beautiful things I was doing with them.
I felt the adrenaline in my veins while I was participating in illegal car drives.
They made me feel like I had no worries in the world, and also came with some money benefits, which was a big plus.
A waitress's wage was too small to live decently.
After I met Marshall, he bought me many expensive gifts, including a car.
I adored it from the first second I laid eyes on it, even if it wasn’t exactly my kind.
It was pink, and I hated it, but Marshall loved seeing me wear or have anything in that colour.
And as his smiles dictated my happiness, most of my clothes were pink.
I’m happy that I didn’t bring them in the suitcase I had taken with me on this adventure.
I would’ve burned them all.
Somehow, I am glad that I started to detach from him and see who he really is, even if the pain of my betrayed heart is still there. It will probably continue like that for a while. At least until we manage to get out of the shit we’re in now.
Out of the blue, I hear a click, and I lift my gaze to Lucas’s all-knowing smile, making me roll my eyes. I watch him climb into the car and notice he is still on his phone.
When I hear the gentle sound of the electric engine, I become sceptical. I get off the hood and go to the car he is in, directly to the passenger seat. I look inside and notice it's a high-end car, connected, of course, to a server that Lucas easily broke into.
I don’t tell him, but I’m impressed by his abilities. And I know I haven’t even seen them all.
“So, will you tell me the plan you made with my best friend?” I ask as I close the door and fasten my seatbelt.
“Nope,” Lucas smiles.
“I hope you won’t kidnap me, too, and try to rape me. It won’t end too well for your little one,” I say, pointing to his pants.
My eyes turn to face the window from my side when I see that the bump in his pants is only getting bigger.
“My little one wants you anyway, and I don’t think you gave me such a bad idea," he says playfully, while he is getting out of the parking lot to god knows where. “And it won’t be a rape, because I know you can’t resist me.”
If I think about it better, I actually need a distraction to push aside a part of my pathetic life. My little girl agrees with me, slowly pulsing and feeling the wetness appearing.
To hell with my sexual need. It appears in the most inappropriate moments.
I can feel Lucas often turning his gaze to me, like he wants to address a question, but hesitating.
“I want you to answer a question and be completely honest with the answer you’re gonna give me.”
What did you just say?
“I feel like I’m interrogated, but go on,” I say, softly laughing.
“How good did Marshall make you feel?”
I freeze, trying to process what he just asked me.
“What kind of question is that?”
“Just answer me. Sexually speaking.”
“Only you can ask me these kinds of questions in a serious situation.”
“Anmara…”
“No, seriously, that is what you did when you were little. You were always trying to avoid reality by asking the stupidest questions.”
“It’s not stupid for me," he says and looks at me for a second.
That got me thinking. I want to open my mouth and speak, but I’m too surrounded by my memories to be able to say something, because I don’t find exactly what I’m searching for.