AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“We’ll do what Olivia was planning to do to us.” Vic tilts his chin toward the pit where Olivia had us all trapped earlier. “We’ll dump them in that hole and cover them up with cement.”
Malice lets out a savage sort of growl. “Fuck, yes. It’s what these fuckers deserve.”
Ransom grabs the bleach and other cleanup equipment we stashed in the trunk of the car before coming to meet Olivia, and then the guys start hauling bodies to the pit. I do my best to help them clean up, standing the equipment that was overturned back upright and gathering a few stray weapons.
They leave Jonah’s body where it is, coming for Olivia’s corpse last.
I look down at her one last time, almost as if I’m trying to memorize the stillness on her face. She wore so many expressions in the time I knew her. So many of them were fake, just masks to make people see what she wanted them to see. Polished and polite, just a kind, rich old woman. But something so monstrous and evil lurked underneath.
She was nothing more than a cold-hearted manipulator.
A murderer.
A monster.
“You did well, butterfly,” Victor tells me in a low voice.
“You did,” Ransom agrees. “That shot was clean as hell.”
My hands, so steady when I took the shot that killed Olivia, shake a little now. But the truth is, I don’t regret being the one to take her down. I know Malice promised me I wouldn’t have to be, but when it came down to a choice between her life and his, the decision was incredibly easy.
Relief washes through me when her body gets tossed into the hole, and I watch as Ransom and Malice start filling it with concrete, covering everything up.
Vic and I walk the space, wiping away fingerprints and making sure there’s nothing left behind that could tie us to this scene. He does a few other things as well, and when he’s satisfied, he gives me a nod. I gather the papers Olivia wanted so badly and keep them with me, leaving nothing behind.
Once we’re done, there’s still the matter of Jonah’s body.
“We should take him back to his people,” Malice says. “We can’t leave him here, and they deserve to know what happened.”
We’re all in agreement, even though I’m dreading delivering the news to his crew. Especially Quinn.
Malice and Ransom carry him outside, and Vic’s head swivels back and forth as we leave the unfinished construction site. The street is dark and quiet as they load Jonah’s body gently into the trunk, and we all slip into the car.
Ransom hands Vic his computer, which we brought with us, and the look on Vic’s face almost brings a smile to my lips. He looks like he’s being reunited with a long-lost friend, and he gets to work immediately, scrubbing traffic footage and anything else that could link us to the Oberon construction site as we drive.
Even though it’s late at night by now, there’s a group of men hanging around outside the tattoo parlor when we pull up into the alley, and they eye us warily as we get out of the car.
I can tell they’re looking for their leader, since even though he refused to involve his gang in his personal vendetta, they knew about his arrangement with us.
“Where’s Jonah?” one of them asks.
Malice opens the trunk and steps back, and a couple of Jonah’s men come forward to glance inside. It only takes one look for them to understand what’s happening here, and they go tense, looking at Malice with angry eyes.
“What the fuck?” the taller man demands. “You son of a bitch!”
Before Malice can say anything, the two of them are pulling out guns, aiming right at Malice. That kicks the others off, even if they don’t know why yet, and they draw on the rest of us, cranking the tension up even more.
Malice lifts his hands, his jaw clenched.
“We didn’t do this,” he says in a low voice. “It was—”
“Why the fuck should we listen to anything you have to say? You show up here and talk Jonah into taking on this job, and now he’s dead.”
Malice’s jaw works, every line of his body taut. Defusing situations like this isn’t his strong point, and I can tell he’s getting tired of having a gun pointed at him. My stomach ties itself into several tight knots as I glance between the brothers and the Enigma gang.
Fuck. Please don’t let this end badly. Not after everything else that’s happened tonight.
Malice glances at Ransom, and the younger Voronin brother steps up as much as he can without getting shot.
