Chapter Twenty #4
“Because you’re not the biggest monster in the room,” she said.
“See the Marines around you?” she asked, introducing them.
“They work for me. What you didn’t realize is I have a whole other side, Devon.
I fight evil with tools you never considered.
They not only helped me tie up the loose ends, the ones you planned on using to prove you weren’t behind this as you ruined my career, but they finished it for me. ”
Devon didn’t know how he’d lost to her.
He was smarter.
He was better.
His father told him so!
Elizabeth continued.
“The florist that poisoned the flowers?” she asked.
“I killed her myself. I snapped her neck like a twig. The mad bomber? The one you hired to blow us up as we were parked next to the car with all the explosives? He’s dead too.
I put a bullet in his head. Look at that, Devon.
I did it all outside of the law, too. Bet you didn’t see that coming. ”
Devon screamed in rage.
Only, she didn’t care. She let him have his hissy fit and then leveled him with what was coming.
His undoing.
“You dug up my parents, thinking that would bother me. Well, that was a miscalculation too. As soon as I saw the bones, and learned their ages, Devon, I knew. I’ve been doing this a long time.
Country Road, take me home,” she said. “That was about me, Ethan, and Deputy Bishop. You gave me too much.”
The best part of this for Elizabeth was the look on his face. He was genuinely bewildered.
“Since you brought our parents into this, I had your parents pulled from their mausoleums.”
He tried to go nuts, as she flipped open the coffins, but it was damn difficult to do, bound to a chair.
“Tit for tat, pussy cat,” she said. “You planning to hurt my daughter…if you think as a mother, that wouldn’t put me over the edge?
” she asked. “You clearly don’t understand a mother’s love.
I bet yours tried to save you, but your filthy fucking scumbag, impotent limp dick daddy had his claws in you. ”
He was pissed.
“Don’t talk about him like that! He was a great man! You’re just lucky he didn’t come after you years ago.”
She laughed.
“Let me clue you in, Devy. He didn’t come for me because he knew he wouldn’t win. Instead, he had to take twenty fucking years to train you to fail. How pathetic was he that he made a loser for a son? Know what my Daddy didn’t do? He didn’t make a failure.”
The man was bright red and losing it.
GOOD.
Let the emasculation continue.
“What he didn’t get you ready for was that I’m a different kind of animal.
I’m a monster like none ever made. I was born, I watched death, I walked through it, and I became besties with it.
I sold my soul in order to save the countless lives I encounter every single day.
Playing dirty is easy. Beating some tiny-dicked, misogynistic, piece of shit like you is easy.
What took you YEARS to do, took me less than a week to unravel.
That’s how pathetic your ‘master plan’ was. ”
From where he sat, bound to his chair, he was breathing heavily, and pissed.
Well, he was about to get angrier.
“See, Devon, you fucked around, and now you’re going to find out.
Playing the game above the board might have given you the ‘W’ on this, but you went after my family.
The way you put that info on the Dark Web…
it got my Marine killed, and he mattered to me.
That made me want to go so low with this game, that I kissed the Devil right in Hell.
Don’t worry, though. I said hello to your daddy. He was there.”
Devon screamed.
His whole body shook, and she was glad this was destroying him because now, she was really going to destroy him.
“Know what I say to all the men who challenge me, Devy? Let me tell you. FUCK. THE. PATRIARCHY. Long live the queen!”
Elizabeth picked up a gas can and began pouring it all over the rotting remains in the casket.
First his father.
Then, his mother.
That was when he realized what she was going to do, and he began begging.
It fell on deaf ears.
“Don’t think I’ve forgotten how you went after me at the office and killed my secretary.”
He was so confused.
“HOW? I did this perfectly. You shouldn’t have been able to figure this out!”
She laughed.
“You gave me too many clues. I’m hell on clues, Devon. I love clues so much, that I eat, sleep, and breathe them.”
He started laughing like a lunatic. It was clear he was having a mental breakdown.
She poked every weakness and made him feel like he deserved.
IMPOTENT.
From where he stood, gun pointed at him, Zayn was staring at Devon like he was a few bricks short of a wall, and that was because he was.
“I hurt you. That’s all that matters.”
She shrugged.
“You miscalculated again. I watched my mother die in front of me. I was moved to a town where I had no friends, and I was abused by my stepmother on a daily basis. Then, I never got to say goodbye to my father as he was left to die on his floor alone. If that wasn’t enough, the man who took care of my wounds from my stepmother was killed and consumed.
My whole life has been blood, death, and bowel.
You can’t hurt me, Devon. No one can hurt me but me. ”
She held up her hand, and Rogue tossed her the sterling silver lighter he always carried, and she flicked it open.
“You shouldn’t have gone after Rayna RunningWolf. That Marine is like my son. I pay back people who hurt my children.”
Everyone standing here had just learned a lot about Elizabeth. Mostly, they learned she’d had a rough life and had become someone who gave all she had to help others.
Now, she’d been pushed too far.
“Don’t!” he said, as he watched the lighter. “How did you find me!”
She smiled.
“Don’t what? Play at your level? I’m the queen of dirty games, Devon.
You just didn’t know it. As for how, like I said, my hacker is better than your hacker.
Rayna, the chief of police on the reservation scribbled down your rental license plate number on the back of the report.
You missed it. We didn’t. You aren’t that smart.
Because if you’re going to set up a crime scene, you set it up so it’s never figured out.
Like this one. No one will ever figure out who the burned-out remains are in this building. ”
He started panicking.
Because up to that moment, it was clear that he believed she wouldn’t do it.
Well, he was wrong.
“Sadly, Devon, your father didn’t teach you well enough.
You were outsmarted by me. A woman. You played my game, and I played yours.
From the car blowing up to the poison, to the plane ticket to go after my kids in Fiji, I found it all out.
I even know how you learned all about the homes we have.
I know that you also killed the woman who worked for our attorney.
There were only so many ways that could happen. ”
Lighting some cardboard, she tossed one into the mother’s casket, and then one into his father’s.
They both went up in flames as he wailed in pain. Yeah, she took his collection. His father was his most precious possession—his memory of him, and the promise to his son that one day, he’d be the best.
He wasn’t.
“Unlike you, Devon, I’m good at getting my hands dirty.
I don’t ask anyone to do anything that I wouldn’t do myself—including killing you.
I’m your judge, your jury, and now, I’m about to be your executioner.
I just wanted you to know I beat you, and destroyed your father’s remains.
NOW, had you done that to mine, I would have been hurt.
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to put my mother and father somewhere else—safe.
Thanks for doing the hard part of digging a hole or two. ”
As the bodies went up, she tossed Rogue his lighter back to him.
“Thanks,” she said.
He didn’t mind.
“Any time, Honey.”
Elizabeth let Devon scream and wail over losing his father again. They all stood there, admiring the bonfire. Oh, and it was getting bigger. The roof would go up next, and then, this would be an inferno within the next ten minutes.
“Anyone have any marshmallows?” she asked, not the least bit concerned about his pleas.
Zayn giggled.
“I mean, we could have gotten some. I do love me a S’more,” he admitted.
Elizabeth watched the fire.
“My only regret is your daddy was already dead. Devon. Because had I gotten to him, I would have taken off his dick, and fed it to you for fucking around with my family,” she admitted, calmly.
He was rocking in the chair, trying to soothe himself. He had tears running down his face, and he was broken as he watched the ONLY thing that mattered to him be destroyed.
Yeah, she knew what his ultimate collection was.
HIS MEMORIES.