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“It w-wasn’t like that! I didn’t push her. I fell; I must have taken her down with me.”
Anger is coursing through my veins now. The mere thought of this son of a bitch laying hands on Emma, pulling her tumbling down the stairs…
He must see the bloodlust on my face, because he gulps loud enough to echo around the tiny office. “I wasn’t looking to hurt her, okay? I just wanted to get her to talk!”
“And when you realized she was unconscious at the bottom of those stairs… Tell me, Jefferson: what did you do then?”
We both know what he did.He ran.I’ve seen the fucking footage. But I want to hear him say it. I get to my feet and he scoots back on all fours like the roach that he is.
“Y-you promised you wouldn’t kill me!”
I laugh and crack my knuckles. “I don’t remember making any such promise. Just like you don’t seem to remember what happened after you pulled Emma down that staircase with you. Memories are tricky things, aren’t they?”
He’s drooling in his terror. It slicks his wobbly chin and the front of his stained shirt. The man disgusts me in every way possible. “I left, okay?” he cries out, more spittle flying everywhere. “I saw that she was unconscious and I fucking ran.”
“Like the coward you are. Say it. Say what you are.”
Emma was pregnant then. I don’t expect this weasel to know it, but it makes all the difference in the world. She had my baby inside of her when he took her down those stairs. She had my future in her womb.
“Y-yes… I’m a c-coward.”
I saunter around the desk and he keeps backing up so far that he hits the shelf on the opposite wall and dislodges a couple of books that rain down on his head.
“Keep going. You’re not done with this story yet.”
“I kept following—”
“Stalking,” I snap. “Don’t sugar coat what you did.”
He swallows. “I kept stalking Emma… and I noticed how things were between her and her brother-in-law.”
I nod grimly. So far, Jefferson’s version of events is lining up with Emma’s story.
“I approached him one day and offered him a payout if he agreed to help me dig up dirt on you and Emma. So he started snooping around for me. A few days later, he found the contract in the glove compartment of her car. I recorded that conversation. It’s on a flash drive in my top desk drawer.”
Goddammit.I mean, I’m relieved. But I’m also pissed off.
With myself, mostly.
She never sold me out. She never betrayed me. It was her deadbeat leech of a brother-in-law who turned her life upside down just to make a quick buck.
“Th-that’s it, okay?” Jefferson pleads. “That’s everything. I told you everything. Just please, let me—”
I swoop down, haul him up by the spit-flecked front of his shirt, and break his sentence off with a fist to his face. I let go of him as the blow lands, so he goes smashing into the wall-mounted shelves. The drywall crumbles instantly and the whole thing caves in on him, a shower of books and wood and asbestos raining on themudak’s head.
He’s a sniveling pile of limbs as I advance closer. His nose is once again broken to bits, courtesy of me. I’d say he’ll need surgery to fix it, but he won’t live long enough for that to reach the top of his list of concerns.
He blinks open, face streaked with drywall dust, and wails like the little bitch that he is. “P-please… don’t… don’t k-kill me…!” he sobs.
For what he put Emma through, for what he made me put her through, I should fucking slaughter him right here, in the place where he signed his own death warrant. But that would be too easy.
Death is too fucking good for this bastard.
I’ve changed my mind on the fate of Remmy Jefferson. I don’t want to execute him here and now; I want him to live the rest of his days, never knowing which one will be the last. I want him to look over his shoulder every time he steps out of his house, never knowing which shadow will be the one that swallows him up for good. I want fear to be the only thing he can taste. I want him never to sleep again.
Or at least, that’s what I’ve decided now. Who knows? I might change my mind again in the next minute or so.
“Listen closely, you useless little cockroach. You come within two states of Emma or those children ever again and I will kill you with my bare hands. I’ll do it in public, too, in broad daylight just to prove that I can. You hear me?”
