Page 76 of Crushed
Scarlett met him in the middle of the walkway, near the barbecue area. Their voices carried over the water. “You got what you wanted,” she said. “Remove the device.”
“Kill him, Scarlett.”
“I’m not going to do it,” she said. “I know you have a gun.” She gestured toward me. “Do it yourself.”
“Stop messing with me, child.”
“I will not kill Cormac Stone.” She turned towards Lizzy and me, and made eye contact with her guardian. “Let’s go.” Lizzy stowed the gun and stiffened her proud shoulders as her walk faltered. Scarlett yanked me to a standing position by the handcuffs. “Someone from the Network will be able to get that off.”
“You won’t finish the job?” Issac asked.
We kept walking. “Find someone else,” Scarlett said.
“You don’t care about your parents?” he yelled. “Where is your loyalty?”
She scoffed. “You don’t know anything.”
He grabbed her arm. “Fine. Here’s your fucking truth.” A thousand bloody images flashed through my mind. I would rip his fucking arm off for touching her like that. “I hired your parents on their last job. I didn’t kill them, child, but I knew that there was a chance that they would die. You see, your parents were the decoy I needed to eliminate the competition for my business. And they didn’t have the moral code you did. They were willing to help an aspiring businessman purely for profit.”
Scarlett’s cheeks turned red. She clenched her fists. “You’re lying.”
“That’s why SNC never approved of my assignment,” he said, a sparkle in his eye. “Cormac used that as blackmail against me. He could have told you about your parents, but he didn’t, did he?”
My ribs squeezed tight against my heart. I had known that Issac had used an assassin’s services, letting several people die in the process, but I had no idea that they were connected to Scarlett.
Shit, shit, shit.
“You fucking bastard,” Scarlett said to Issac.
“Kill him, child. He’s lied to you. He’s lied to everyone. All for the sake of his business.”
“If that was true, he would have told me,” she warned.
“No, child. He puts his business first. He prioritized his work over your parents. Over me. Over you. He prioritizes everything over you.”
“He didn’t kill them, Issac.Youdid.”
“But I didn’t either,” he snickered. “Death is always a possibility in consulting, isn’t it? A security risk.” Issac stepped closer. “You could always die. And if your parents weren’t smart enough, weren’t quick enough to see what was coming, who was I to tell them what to do?”
“You tricked them,” she howled. “You knew they were going to die!”
“Don’t worry, child.” He sneered. “They didn’t die in vain. I made sure that the job was completed, with or without them.” He took the gun from his pocket, aiming it at me. “Just like I’ll finish this, with or without you.”
“Don’t fuck with me, Berman.” Scarlett barrelled towards him. “I amnota fucking child.”
Scarlett elbowed Issac in the face and right as she made contact, he shot his gun, missing all of us. Lizzy unlocked the handcuffs quickly with a passcode and the cuffs dropped to the ground. She went to help Scarlett but tripped and fell into the pool, hitting her head on the way down. I lunged in after her, the water splashing over me, knowing that with her mouth pried open, if she was knocked unconscious, she might drown.
I grabbed her body, pulling her up as well as I could. The silhouettes of Scarlett and Issac waved above the surface.
We emerged from the water. Scarlett was pushing herself up from the ground.
“Fucking idiot,” Issac muttered. He aimed his gun at me. “Trying to be the savior.”
Scarlett jumped on top of him, bringing a heavy brick onto his head. He stumbled backward, falling into the pool too. She held him down, squeezing him in her legs.
They sank deep into the water.
