Page 38 of Crushed
No. He probably thought that I was sent by someone from a competing company. Maybe even from TSP, the company Scott Warden owned. But if I made our conversation more personal, and less about business, he would relax.
I shrugged. “Maybe I’m an amateur spy.” I winked, and at that, he smiled.
“The research they’re conducting right now, the experimental treatments, the prevention—I have a personal stake in owning that research.”
“That doesn’t say much,” I said. He sipped his wine. “Why is it personal?”
He turned sharply towards me. “Why do you want to know?”
What was with the antagonization? Did he truly think I was after his business? “I’m curious?” I tried again. I lifted my shoulders, but Cormac shook his head.
“It doesn’t matter why. As long as I get my hands on it.”
There was an edge to his voice, a coldness that seemed devoid of emotion. “What do you mean?”
He glared, his full gaze set on me, analyzing whether I truly couldn’t read between the lines. But I knew what he meant. I wanted to hear him say it, to confirm what intuition told me.
“I’ll do whatever it takes to own TSP,” he said.
“Like blackmail?”
He lifted an eyebrow and turned away. It was worse than blackmail.Murder.
“Be careful of where you step, Scarlett,” he said slowly. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with.”
I held my arms around myself, acting more nervous than I actually was, but the truth was that there was an eeriness to what he said. Even to me, a trained assassin. How many people had Cormac killed in order to get to where he was? Had he sold his soul long ago, leaving his entire life to corruption? Ruining people’s lives and killing the owners of companies wouldn’t bring his wife back. And it was clear that he knew that, but he did it anyway. Because power over those that controlled the system was worth more than the lives spent.
Cormac wasn’t a good person. I could kill him tonight. Ishouldkill him tonight. I could promise him some sort of secret meeting off of the clock, and get him alone. But my gut instinct told me to hold on, to wait a little longer. That there was more to his story, and I needed to know all of it before I could take his life without regret.
Or was that what I was just telling myself? Did it have to do with my desires, to see where he would lead me? Maybe I wanted to go deeper into that tunnel of darkness with him. To see if we would ever find a way out.
“Let’s go,” Cormac said. He stood and took my hand. I flushed at the touch, but he dragged me through the main floor at such a fast pace that the flush was quickly replaced by nerves. We were in the same private room as the night before in less than a minute. We had even forgotten our drinks.
He reached underneath the bench and found a sheet of paper. It was a blank copy of the Terms sheet, a form that each server and club member was expected to fill out before beginning any activities. He had burned ours with the fire cane.
“I thought those kinds of boundaries don’t work for you,” I said.
“I want to go through this list and see what interests you, and what doesn’t.” He leaned back against the long couch. “Think of it as preparation for Decadence. One of your final interviews.”
I could work with that. “Okay.”
“Fire,” he said, looking down at the paper. “We already know you’re fine with fire. But did you like it?”
I lifted my shoulders. “I think I liked the pain of the cane more than the actual fire.”
“I could tell.” He grinned. “Which brings us to impact play.”
“Impact play?”
“Floggers. Whips. Chains. Canes. Anything that can be used with force against the body. That excites you, yes?”
I shrank down. Was I that obvious? Why was it worse to be interrogated for something like this, than anything I had gone through with my previous assignments? “Yes.”
“Restraints?”
The controlling way he had grabbed my wrist to take me back to the Terrariums, brought me back to the memory of when he strapped me to the cross. I shivered at the thought.
“Yes.”
