Page 49 of Protect Your Queen

“Yeah,” Lea said, her eyes turning dreamy. “He saw his client as alive. I saw him dead. My vision was the correct one.”

“Mm-hmm.” I looked down at my watch, before what she said finally registered. “Wait… what?”

“I was an assassin when we met.” She said it as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Like ‘oh, I used to work in a grocery store’. Except people bought death. “I killed one of Callum’s clients.” She turned, looking at the door where Jestiny was. “I’ll just go pop in and introduce myself to the family.”

Was this the kind of person I wanted near Jes? I wasn’t fucking sure anymore.

Her brother started following her, giving me a wave as he went. Without looking over his shoulder, he said, “Go ahead and find our bad guy. We expect you to have him singing like a canary in a coal mine before the end of the day.”

He didn’t have to tell me twice.

The pencil-thin man, with a noticeable beer gut, and greasy hair sat across from me on his couch. I took a spot on the cheap, knotted-up, cloth motel armchair, caddy-corner to him. A glass of whiskey was on the table between us, as I casually waved the gun in my hand, pointing at the drink with a smirk.

“You’ve got great taste in liquor.” I pushed the glass in front of him with the barrel of the gun. “So that’s something.”

The twins had left me instructions on where to find Pesci. Apparently, they had worked it all out while they were on their way here. They had sent coordinating instructions to Jareth as well. Apparently, this task was something the brother and I were to do together.

There was nothing in the world I wanted to dolessthan that, but here we were.

“If I drink that, will something happen to me?” The look of terror in Pesci’s eyes shouldn’t have thrilled me, but it did. It tugged at a sadistic need that lived buried deep inside my angry little heart.

Along with the twin’s hunt for his location, they had found his phone, and all the messages that outlined how he could harm Jestiny. It had emails where he promised TMZ and other porn sites a picture of her, asking them how much they were willing to pay for her humiliation. Tip after tip in the document made me want to vomit, until I developed a hatred of the man that was so acidic, it tasted like bile.

I cocked the pistol, letting the sound of the metal clang, filling the sad long-term-stay motel room. His bags were in disarray, he had clearly been drunk from the night before. The scent of his puke-laden pillow let off a rancid fume that I did my best to ignore.

“Something will happen to you right now if you don’t drink it,” I told him, pointing the barrel between his eyes.

Choosing how to extract him from here was easy. The man had a reputation for being a drunk motherfucker. The solution dissolved in his whiskey would simulate the uneven balance and slurred speech of a man under the influence, along with the compliance ofa date rape drug. I didn’t want to think too hard on why Caledonia Security had access to such chemicals. I’d worry about that some other time, if I managed to live past this assignment.

“You won't shoot me,” he said, in a quivering voice. “Someone will hear, and they’ll arrest you. You’re… you’re bluffing.”

I was. I wouldn’t shoot him. If I had to kill him, it’d be via a throwing knife to his vocal cords. I’d have to chop him into tiny pieces and take him out of here in garbage bags. But that was messy, wet work and I really wasn’t into it. Not when I was wearing a suit that cost me over four figures.

“You sure about that?” I asked, lifting a brow. He audibly gulped. “If you do it this way, you’ll get one last taste of whiskey, before I take you out of here.”

“What did I ever do to you?”

“You shot me outside of the Black Bird Jazz Club, remember?” I’d be offended if he didn’t.

“But… but… that wasn’t about you. I was trying to… I was…” He placed his head in his hands.

This is the part of interrogation that they need to teach people. You want to yank their hope, then give them a sliver of that light back. That’s how you gain their compliance.

“Hey, man.” I leaned forward, putting on a small smile. “Listen, you’re gonna be fine. It’s not as bad as you imagine. We’re gonna get out of here and have a quick chat. I just need to know who you work for, then if everything checks out, you’ll be on your merry way!”

“What?” He looked skeptical, but it was in our human nature to hope, no matter how stupid it was.

“Look, at this point, you’ve got nothing to lose. But I’m a stand-up guy, I promise.” I flashed a smile. The one that made people think that I couldn’t hurt a fly, even as I imagined disemboweling them. “Take the drink, and I’ll walk you out of here, and we’ll get this all sorted out.”

I was purposely pointing with the barrel of the gun. He kept dodging, bobbing and weaving as if he could avoid being in its way. But he had no such chance. Not in this lifetime, and not with me. If I wanted to shoot him between the eyes, I would do it as effortlessly as I was able to point.

That was the thing about losing my musical dream, I ended up having a lot of free time. In that free time, I decided to become the best fucking soldier there was. That’s how I got as far as I did. I made myself a lean, mean, killingmachine.

The only reason I left was because of the possibility of better pay with a security company. Pay that I badly needed, so I could make Elyse’s dreams come true.

Mario Pesci gave me a taste of blood in the water, and I was aching to have a bite - to get a bit of that Delta dickhead energy back.

“Come on,” I said, checking my watch. “The sooner we get this over with, the sooner I can let you go. Go easy, and I’ll even sweeten the deal for you.” I was going off-script now. “My bosses are more than willing to pay you for your silence if you just leave Jestiny alone.”

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