Page 40 of Femme Fatale
“You should see the other guys,” I replied. “What do you want?”
She slid her duffel off the chair, set it on the desk. Then, still making a show, she unzipped it and drew out a manila envelope—no weapons, no threat, just plain paperwork. She tossed it my way.
It landed at my feet. I kept the gun up, but knelt and opened the flap. Inside was a stack of photos, all surveillance shots. Some of me, some of Joker, some of the other girls. Some at Aces Wild, others at our fallback spots, the brothel, and even the mining lodge. The earliest was two weeks ago. The most recent? An hour old, dated and timestamped.
Kara watched me as I flipped through them, her pupils shrinking to slits. She thrived on this.
“You’ve been busy,” I said.
“Not just me. Jack has a lot of friends. Even more now that your girls torched his place and stole three million.”
I put the photos down. “You tell him I’m not for sale?”
She snorted. “You are, but you’re too proud to admit it.”
I let that go. “So what’s this? You warning me off? You think Jack’s going to win?”
She moved around the desk, close enough that I caught the perfume on her jacket. Bitter orange, something expensive. “This is a courtesy call, Selene. My father taught me to kill a dog before it gets rabid. Jack would rather burn the whole city than let you walk away. If you have any brains left, you’ll pack up and leave. Tonight.”
Her hand drifted toward my laptop, fingertips skating over the keys, like she owned it. “Because next time, I won’t be the one talking.”
She leaned in, close, so I saw the brown flecks in her green irises. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “This isn’t a negotiation. It’s a mercy.”
The silence stretched, the kind that demanded a move. I weighed my options. I could shoot her, get shot by the men she almost certainly had staked out in the alley, or let her walk. None of those appealed.
I watched her eyes, saw how they tracked the barrel of my Glock. She didn’t look scared. She looked hungry.
“I don’t do mercy,” I said, and shot her in the leg.
The sound was obscene in the tiny room. She staggered, swore in Turkish, and dropped behind the desk. I vaulted after her, grabbed her by the collar, and drove her head into the wall. She fought back, hard—an elbow to my chin, a knee to my ribs—but I outweighed her, and I was madder.
We crashed into the bookcase, books exploding everywhere. She twisted, caught me in a headlock, and tried to choke me out. I bit her wrist, tasted blood, and broke free. She rolled away, grabbed the letter opener from my desk, and slashed at my face. It was a shallow cut, stinging and hot.
“You want to die here?” she gasped, voice shredded. “For what? These fucking losers? This piece of shit casino?”
I spat blood and grabbed a trophy off the shelf—a bowling trophy from a charity event Buck once ran, heavy and sharp at the base—and clubbed her in the shoulder. She howled, dropped the opener, and went for the duffel.
I got there first, kicked it out of her reach, and stomped on her hand until she let go.
She panted, breath coming in broken gasps. “You think this stops anything? You think you can win?”
I pressed the muzzle to her forehead. “No. But I can make it cost more than you want to pay.”
She grinned, blood in her teeth. “Jack doesn’t care what it costs. He never has.”
I wanted to pull the trigger. God, I wanted it so bad my finger spasmed. But I heard the footsteps outside, the thump of more boots in the hall, and knew I wouldn’t walk away if I did.
Instead, I yanked her up by the back of her shirt and dragged her to the door. I let her see the hate in my face, made sure it burned into her memory.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, eyes shining with pain and something like admiration. “You’re better than I thought,” she said, low.
I pressed her to the doorframe, hard enough to rattle her teeth. “Tell Jack he should have done this himself.”
She spat blood on my floor, then limped down the hall, pride holding her up more than muscle. The men waiting outside didn’t look at me, but I saw their hands on their guns, just in case. They scooped her up and disappeared, leaving me alone in the wreckage of my office.
I sagged against the wall, hands shaking, and counted to ten. Then I locked the door, sat on the floor, and tried not to pass out from the pain in my ribs.
I reached for my phone and dialed Joker.
