4 Everett
March 26th, 2022
I watched her from behind the cover of the trees. How many times would she look back before she gave up?
She chewed on her bottom lip, staring back towards the trail, towards me, one last time before turning and heading back through the park.
In the last few days, I had done a deeper dive into Ms. Olivia Rose, AKA Olivia Lemont, AKA, Abigail Ross.
She published five books under that name, Abigail. Trying to stay out of the limelight as much as possible, I suppose. Shocking given the silver spoon growing from her tongue.
I came to the conclusion that Steven couldn’t have possibly known about the money she had or else he would have paid off the debt a while ago, and Olivia did have money. She was smart with it. Hardly spent a dime unless she wanted new clothes or some art, some writing supplies.
Her books were good too. I had spent my spare time between sessions and hunting reading them to get to know her a little better. Figure out if she was really crazy or if I could use her to get the money that was owed to us. While Steven might not give a fuck what happened to her, I’m sure if I pushed her far enough, she would give me everything I wanted and more. If not by painful torture, then by seduction.
I could bleed her dry of every cent and bury her deep in the woods and nobody would ask a single question, not even her parents, who were so buried in their own gold, they couldn’t have cared less about the daughter that ‘abandoned them’.
She wasn’t stupid though, maybe she had a cracked psyche, but she certainly was not stupid.
She was also a curious little creature. I wondered from which parent she had inherited her heterochromia. One eye was a bright green, and the other was half blue and half brown, almost perfectly, with a little blot of green on the underside of her pupil as if the paintbrush that had painted her into existence had an extra drip hanging onto the bristles only to let go right before the painter had caught it.
Hmm.
I straightened and headed back the way I had come, pulling out my phone as I did.
“Did you find anything useful regarding Mr. Pelgard’s family?”
“The girl has money,”
I finally revealed now that I had enough information to prove it useful. “Millions.”
Malachi was quiet a moment. “Do whatever you need to do, but Jack is busy, so you’re on your own.”
I hung up, a smile flittering across my lips. Sorry, little writer, a pawn is just a pawn in this game of chess. Steven shouldn’t have been so careless with his finances. I was going to like tearing her apart, she looked like a screamer.
I called Azrael, hoping he had the time to answer his phone during his tight schedule he wouldn’t tell anyone about.
On the sixth ring, he finally picked up. “Why, the mountains do call,”
he hummed.
I worked my jaw tightly. We had each picked our own names when we had entered into the program. Due to where I had come from and the name I had picked Azrael had come up with hundreds of little quips about mountains just to get under my skin, despite the fact that the name of the mountain was Everest not Everett. He hadn’t stopped since the moment I set fire to my old self and created this new one. It was highly annoying. “Do you still have that storage unit in Colorado?”
“I have many storage units all across the world. Some might say hundreds.”
“Azrael,” I warned.
He chuckled. “My, my, someone is in a sour mood today. Couldn’t find your next loan guppie to interrogate?”
He hated the long assignments. He didn’t see any use in them, and perhaps he was right to an extent, but the issue was that he went on long assignments too. Usually, it came without notice and without communication during those assignments, but when we did it, it became a problem. It was too bad I didn’t give a fuck about how he felt. “Where?”
Azrael sighed dramatically. “There isn’t one far from where you are, I’ll send you the address.”
I glared. “Stop tracking me.”
He laughed like a madman. “No.” Click.
I sneered and shoved my phone away. God, he was irritating. I kept my head low until I reached my GSX-S1000GT, my helmet waiting for me on the seat.
I loved my bike. It was the only thing in this world I was capable of loving, and I suppose that said a lot about me, but we each had our vice. I glanced around, making sure there were no lingering eyes before I quickly exchanged my mask for the helmet and slid on. Everything I needed to handle Steven and Olivia I would have in that storage unit, I was sure.
Right now, Steven was our biggest client. He had the most money out with the least amount of return, so all of my focus was on him while Evelyn handled some of the others.
I sped off towards the unit, packed what I could into one of Azrael’s bags, and headed back for The Club.
We had an unspoken rule in our family. Never speak of the things we see or hear about Azrael. This was one of those times. That storage unit held things even I wouldn’t go near. Barbed wire dipped in the venom of snakes. Collars laced in barbs, long enough to pierce your skin, but short enough to keep you from bleeding out. Buckets of acid. He liked the old school torture techniques while we remained in the present. We liked to cause pain, but there was always a means to an end with us.
Azrael just liked to hear people scream.
Jake was behind the counter when I entered The Club, drying yet another glass. I frowned deeply. “The place hasn’t been open since last night, why are you still drying glasses?”
He shrugged, setting the glass down. “Relaxes me. What’s in the bag?”
I adjusted it. “A few chess pieces,”
I answered, eyeing the glass on my way to the back.
Malachi and his fake wife, Diedra, were in the basement cleaning up some of the blood from the last guest. They both looked up when I walked in, Malachi taking in the bag I was pulling from my shoulders. “What did you bring us?”
“You want money from Ms. Rose, I can get it for you,”
I said, placing the bag on the bench. I opened it up and dumped the contents out.
Basic tools of torture. A few different varieties of pliers, some rope, gags, lighter fluid. I wasn’t sure what my plan was yet. For now I’d keep my distance, keep following both of them, test her out again when she returned to The Club. Maybe I’d even pull an Azrael and install some cameras in her house. He loved his cameras, which was why I took the initiative of borrowing some. They were small, undetectable. I just had to wait until she left the house again to install them.
There was no harm in adding a little extra layer to my studies.
She didn’t stand a chance, and perhaps I could get a little extra pay from it too. Nearing a billion, she the youngest, richest person in the world.
Her money would be mine, she and her boyfriend would be buried together six feet deep for the rest of eternity, and we would move onto the next target. Just another day in the life of the Kingsmen’s.