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I reach to swap a card. It's an ace, which is fitting. Even a bastard like me appreciates a little serendipity from time to time.
"What kind of story were you hoping tonight would be?" I ask.
The man eyes me over his whiskey glass before taking a sip. "One with new beginnings."
Wait for it. Wait. Any second now, he's going to reach for another card, his arm stretched across the glass table, fingers wide to grasp...
Beneath the table, I find the cold metal with my socked foot. Pull it silently along the rug, just a little closer. Run my tongue along the three neat stitches inside my bottom lip.
"Shit." I drop my hand of cards, duck slightly to pick them up again. Manage to pick up something else.
Here's what you do with a story that won't bend to your liking, sports fans: you deus ex machina the bitch.
Wentworth sips his whiskey again, surveys the splayed cards in his hand. Reaches toward the deck. It almost happens in slow motion, and then—
Pulse. Pulse. Thumping in my ears.
Fluid movements. My arm comes up, my fist clenched around the knife, which soars in a perfect arc towards his hand where it lodges between the fine bones, cleaves through the meat, and grates against the glass in a way that sets my teeth on edge. Kkkkksssscccch.
A beat.
Cue the squeals.
His pale eyes bulge, eyebrows shooting skyward. God, he squeals like a child. Like a guinea pig. Oily crimson oozes up around the knife; I'm holding it down so hard that the veins on my arm have popped up like ribbons. Blood seeps on to the glass below our piled hands.
"What the ffffff..." He can't get the words out. Doesn't know if he should move. "Ffff!"
Now I'm the one maintaining eye contact. I won't let it go. It's important that I distract him before he finds a use for his free hand; the pain must overtake his fight-or-flight instincts. "I'm going to give you a choice, Mr Wentworth. You tell me what I need to know, and I will remove the knife, allowing you to leave. No harm done." I want to grin at him, but it's too cliché. "Or you can refuse, and we'll be sitting here a very long time. One by one, you'll lose feeling in your fingers. And you'll lose blood. Perhaps too much." I nod once at the growing spill of syrupy red. "Have I made myself clear?"
He says nothing. Just sucks the air through his teeth again. The skin around his mouth has turned white; the tendons in his neck stand out accusingly.
"One question. That's all." I tip my jaw to him. Eye him sideways. "You look to me, Mr Wentworth, like a man who works in private security. No—don't trouble yourself, I don't need clarification. Perhaps you're reasonably new to this job, or you took for granted that I'd be a little more afraid than I actually am."
Still, silence. Fear is a cripplingly beautiful thing.
"I wonder if they told you exactly what I did to Miss Fordham." I stare at him, all cold hell and quiet fury. He's beginning to tremble. To fall. "No? Well. On to my question. I think you can guess what it is, can't you, Mr Wentworth?"
His whole arm shakes.
"Tell me who you work for." I'm almost whispering. It would be such a shame to drown out the soft patois of his panic. "Who?"
"N-no," he bites out.
"I see." I give the knife a little shake; the glass grates again, and the flesh of his hand gives almost too easily. I've fucked tighter pussies.
Poor Wentworth, trying not to squeal again.
"Let's try again," I say. "Were you hired by Redworld Media?" They have dirt on Montgomery; maybe they're coming for me, too.
A bead of sweat drips from his brow. He glances between me and his pinned, bloodied fist. "No," he utters.
"Good boy. Well done. Now. Were you hired by Montgomery?"
"No." The word is harsher. He's losing patience, losing the will to fight.
I scowl at him. "Are you absolutely sure?"
"S-ssssure." He begins to rock back and forth very slowly.
"Fuck. Huh." I give the scalpel another shake, inducing another pathetic squeal. "So who is it?"
Wentworth's breathing is shallow and hoarse. He says nothing. Just rocks, rocks...and that's when I see it. Right behind his ear.
Motherfucker.
I reach forward, yanking away the little camera attachment with my free hand. Wentworth winces as I bring my fist down on it, crushing it against the glass table. It stings my skin; a few shards of plastic leave tiny, acidic scratches. No matter. My heartbeat echoes so far up my throat that I can almost taste the bass.
"SilentWitn3ss? You have got to be shitting me." I jerk the knife, and he lets out a low, strange sound somewhere between a moan and a scream. "Was this streaming?" Because if this asshole not only dares to come in here with the thing on, but has actually poached my WiFi for the purpose, I will be first-world-probleming all over his jugular.
Dread claws at his brow, furrows it like a volcanic landscape. "J-just recording."
"Wise choice. Very wise." I sound far calmer than I am. My mouth moves, but the voice seems to come from the next room. "You've been of great use to me, Wentworth. I appreciate your co-operation." With that, I tug the knife from his flesh and he crumbles in toward his maimed hand.
The moment I turn my back toward the kitchen, I forget about the mess of a man. All I feel is the sticky knife in my hand, and all I see is Leontine.
Flashes of teeth and smoke and honey. Her ass shifting beneath my palm.
Leo who had this all figured out before I even met her in that boardroom.
Leo who knows about Rachel Fordham. Nobody knows about Rachel Fordham.
Mother fucking fucker.
Somewhere in the background, Wentworth clutches his hand and croons to himself. I wash my hands thoroughly in the kitchen sink before grabbing a large dish cloth, which I toss to him on my walk back.
"Wrap yourself up and get the hell out of my apartment." The words are toneless. Cool. No molecule in my body will properly engage, or do as I tell it; they flock and cluster in sensitive areas, growing fat with adrenaline and anger.
Wentworth dashes toward my elevator, clasping the dish cloth around his hand. I follow him step for step, making sure he doesn't drop blood on my hard wood floor.
When I'm sure Wentworth is gone—and has exited the elevator to the lobby—I down the rest of whiskey in one short swallow. Pour another, demolish it, no ice. Then I sit and stare at the clotting red mess of blood on my coffee table, its mass casting a shadow on the rug below.
Leo played me. Hired a private security firm to taunt me with information she should not possess. This isn't all because she wants a merger. No. It's a lot more than that. Lion, indeed—though not as clever as she thinks she is. Only an amateur would have sent Wentworth to my home and expected this to come out in her favour. The advantage here is mine.
There are two reasons she'd want to fuck with me. The first is because she wants something: money, perhaps. Information. Revenge for some imagined wrong; a task she has taken into her own manicured hands.
But I suspect it's the second reason. Leo is fucking with me because she can.
Isn't that interesting?
Tonight, I was too cocky in the grip of excitement to contemplate the idea of surveillance, or to consider that Wentworth might have come in bugged. And it can't happen again. Of course I never considered anything official; the FBI or FCC are a bunch of meatheads, but even they fall with a certain amount of grace. Nothing about this attempt to manipulate me was graceful.
After a third glass of whiskey, I grab my phone and speed dial Tuija. It rings out longer than my nerves will tolerate.
"Oh, hi," she calls over the static of a crowd. EDM music throbs in the background. "You rang?"
I flex my free fist, stretching fingers in and out, over and over, trying to will the anxious tension away. "I don't care who you have to fuck," I grind out, "but I want a key to Leo's apartment."
"A what now?" She coughs. Smoking, no doubt. Disgusting. "A...? Oh. Right. Jeez, Hitler. You don't think that's going a little too far?"
"I'm not asking for your opinion. I want a key, so you get a key, and it had better be on my desk tomorrow or I promise, firecracker, I'll beat seven shades of candyfloss-flavoured shit out of your silicon ass."
More static; clinking glasses. Tuija gives a heavy sigh. "Well. Since you're asking so nicely."
"Tomorrow."
"Or else. Okay, I get it." She takes a very obvious drag on a cigarette. "I'll bring them right in with your unicorn poop on rye."
