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“Wha—?”
Benny’s words were cut off by the sick sloshing sound of the letter opener on his desk piercing his cornea and sinking into the white meat of his eyeball. The circular organ plopping out on the other end like a dead fish on a spear.
“It’s smaller than I’d thought it’d be,” I commented before flicking the little bundle of nerves off the tip of my makeshift weapon. I paused to watch his eyeball fly across the room. Itlanded with a sticky-sounding splat against the far wall and quickly tumbled to the ground, leaving a trail of gore in its wake. Then I turned back to Benny, a smirk tipping up one side of my mouth. “Though I bet that’s not the first time you’ve heard that, am I right, Benny Boy?”
His shrill screams were piercing through my eardrums, passed the plugs I was smart enough to shove into place at the start of this shitshow, and somehow the muffled sounds were still making my temples pound. The first sign that I was teetering dangerously close to another blackout.
I took a deep breath, held it for two seconds, and released it to try to center myself. While Benny continued flailing on top of his desk, his T-Rex limbs flapping around like a parrot that had its wings clipped a little too short.
Before I knew what I was doing, my hand was reaching into my bra outta muscle memory. My palm tugging my pink Kershaw free and running the clean edge across the fucker’s jugular. He made a gurgling noise in the back of his throat, what was left of his neck craning to one side as his head tapped itself out on the veneer surface.
I grabbed a handful of Benny’s sweat-slick hair and lifted it up off the desk to look the fucker in the eye. “That’s another thing my pops taught me. Don’t keep shit nearby that can be used against ya. Especially something as stupid as a fucking letter opener. I mean, really, Benny? Who even uses a letter opener in this day and age? Or were ya just tryin’ to look sophisticated?”
I released my grip, allowing his head to hit the desk with another audible thud as I eyed the length of him. The various knickknacks on his office shelves. The brass accents.
“Hate to break it to ya, Uncle Ben, but the whole old-school vibe… it just ain’t working for ya.”
Then I smeared the blood splatter across my forehead and made a beeline for the door just as the second bomb went off in the distance.
Two down, three to go.
63
The shriek coming down the hall was like nothing I’d ever heard before. But it was the eerie silence that followed it a few minutes later that would really live on in my nightmares. Like a goddamn horror movie come to life. The type of shit that got sexed-up teenagers killed. Got your ass turned into leather masks and your body chopped up into tiny bits.
What could I say? I had an active fucking imagination as a kid. Guess that shit stayed with ya into adulthood too.
I cracked my neck from side to side to alleviate some of the chill traveling up my spine and turned the corner, the floor vibrating beneath my boots as another blast went off somewhere that wasn’t here. An explosion that had nothing to do with me this time around. Though I had a pretty good idea as to whowasbehind it.
The same woman who was slipping out of Benny’s office with a bloody knife in her hand and a blank expression on her face.
I reached out an arm and tipped up her chin, forcing her glassy eyes to meet mine. But she wasn’t there. “Dani, you okay?”
She narrowed her glare, and whatever she saw staring back at her… it wasn’t fucking me. Because she immediately lifted her blade to my throat, pressing it deep enough to draw a line of blood. Then she began walking me down the hall. Towards the chaos. When we shoulda been running from it.
“Dani, it’s me. Do ya know who I am?”
“Leo…?” she whispered the name, a name that sure as fuck wasn’t mine, and the knife clinked against the floor as baby girl appeared to blink herself outta ona her weird-ass trances. “Connor?”
“Yeah, though I’m not sure how I feel about being option number two,” I grunted, grabbing her palm in mine and dragging her back the way we came.
We pushed out the closest fire exit seconds before another bout of explosions sent the building crumbling in on itself. The sounds of sirens were already going off in the not-too-distant distance, but for some fucked-up reason, my feet were glued to the concrete as I eyed what was left of the club I called home for the last few years.
It was an odd feeling. The not knowing what was coming next. What life would be like now that someone didn’t own you. Own me. 'Cept they did. Only it was a different someone, in an entirely different way. And that same someone seemed to still be hung up on her ex.
“Come on.” I tried to tug Dani towards the side alley. And she dug her boots into the ground, refusing to follow me. “We gotta go, dollface. It won’t be a good look if the hats and bats find us standing 'round an active arson site, 'specially when they discover there’s a shit-ton of bodies beneath that rubble.”
She held up a hand, gesturing for me to wait. To listen. And I clamped my mouth shut in time to hear a familiar rumble come barreling down the street moments before a dark-blue car pulled up in front of us.
64
“Zeke…?”
I watched the way Connor’s face contorted with his obvious confusion, his eyebrows knit and his head tipped to one side like a pup trying to learn his first commands. As amusing as it was, we didn’t have time to clue pretty boy in to what was turning out to be a perfectly orchestrated plan, if I said so myself. So I quickly shoved him into the back of the Civic and signaled for Zeke to hit the gas.
“What the fuck is going on?” Connor turned his head in my direction as we sped off down the street. Missing the barrage of cop cars and swat vans that surrounded Mollies with seconds to spare.
Zeke’s eyes flicked up in the rearview to meet mine before refocusing on the road in front of him, and I clapped a hand down on his shoulder, a silent instruction for him to continue with phase two of our plan.
