Dark bags hung beneath Nixon’s eyes accentuated by the bad overhead lighting.
It wasn’t doing his skin any favors either, his sallow complexion resembled something out of a Burton film. His hair clung to the top of his head, oily and flat.
His cheeks looked sunken like he’d dropped fifteen pounds while he was in here.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” he said, coughing as he slid into the seat across from me at the table in the small interview room.
The dull drone of the fluorescent lights on the ceiling filled the silence as seconds ticked away, none of them bringing me any closer to recognizing the man in front of me.
“Neither did I,” I admitted after a minute.
His lips twitched at one side, a sad smirk twisting them upward.
“I’m honored.”
His light, unaffected tone grated on my nerves. Did he think for one second that I wouldn’t snap his goddamned neck just because of where we were?
I’d do it.
I’d do it even if the man outside this door couldn’t be bought and the action bought me my own sentence behind bars.
The syndicate’s hierarchy had to be reshuffled and dealt out after cutting him loose. The bad eggs weeded from the masses. Co-conspirators dealt with.
Nixon Vandermoor had already wasted enough of my time.
“You requested this meet,” I said in an even droll. “Start talking.”
His eyes widened. If he thought asking me to speak to him in person would affect the outcome here, he was painfully mistaken. There was only one place he was headed and I’d see that he got there myself when the time came.
He nodded, coming to the understanding that from here on this would be business and absolutely nothing more.
“I know you’ve taken everything. My phone, my computer. I know you searched my place,” he listed, counting them off on his fingers. “I can assume you’ve also spoken to the undertaker.”
He edged that last bit in a question, but I didn’t do him the kindness of a reply, leaning back in my stiff plastic-backed chair to see if he’d openly admit to anything more.
I watched him across the nominally short distance that the table covered between us. When he offered nothing more, I ground my teeth.
“Why did you do it?”
He scoffed, throwing his hands up. “Why not? The undertaker was an easy target and I was due for a raise.”
A nonchalant shrug lifted his shoulders and I wanted to break both of his arms.
“You know what this means.”
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat.
“I was counting on it being too late for you to find out,” he said. “I just needed a few more things put in place and people in much higher places would’ve seen to your end. The job done for me.”
“You mean from your little camera stunt at Delirium?”
He didn’t answer me, pressing his lips in a taut line.
“What was your plan? Continue to leak footage until the club went under? Until the fucking supreme court justice or the mayor or the archbishop decided to slit my throat?”
I could see the truth of it there in everything he wasn’t saying, his eyes glimmering with malice.
“It was her, right?”
My head cocked. “What?”
“Emily. She’s the reason you found me out.”
A shard of defensiveness sliced through me hearing the accusation.
“You get her name out of your fucking mouth you gutless coward,” I snapped, leaning over the table.
He laughed, running a hand through his limp hair.
“You’re sitting there like this is my fault but really, it’s all her.”
“I won’t fucking warn you again.”
Under the table, my fists clenched.
“Just think, if she didn’t say anything, if you didn’t have her wandering the house like a free-range hen, then neither of us would be here.”
My teeth pressed together so hard I heard them squeak. His mouth was reckless because he thought himself safe in this room.
Think again, Nixon.
In a split second, I was over the table, smashing his face down into the metal surface. I was rewarded with the sweet sound of cracking bone and a splatter of red on the otherwise shining surface.
Nixon brought his hands to his busted nose just as the door opened and I fell back into my seat opposite him.
“What the hell happened?” the guard boomed.
I shrugged. “Bastard smashed his face into the table.”
I kicked him beneath it.
“Didn’t you?”
Nixon glared at me, nodding his agreement before bringing his hands back from his face. “Well don’t just stand there,” he shouted at the guard. “Get me a fucking tissue.”
“Want a lolly, too?” The guard snorted. “You have five minutes.”
He turned on his heel, leaving Nixon to wipe the blood from his face with his orange jumper sleeve and spit on the cement floor.
“Satisfied?” he asked me, lifting a brow.
“Not even remotely.”
He sniffed, wincing. “You never should’ve brought her in.”
“I know you’re not telling me how I should run my business.”
“I could do it a hell of a lot better than you, that’s for damn sure,” he lobbied back, eyes rolling as he tipped his head back, trying to staunch the flow of blood.
“That’s a hell of a statement from where you’re sitting.”
He looked down at his scrubs, then back at me with a face that said that I had a point.
“I can’t believe you let some pussy cloud your mind.”
“I can’t believe you’re giving one the credit for your downfall when you orchestrated it so beautifully all by yourself,” I clipped shortly. I didn’t want to hear another word about her. Not from him. Or anyone else.
Emily hadn’t done anything but report what was already happening.
“You took her because—”
“Is this why you called me here?” I asked. “To talk about…”
Jesus fuck I couldn’t even say her name.
“Emily,” I ground out.
As soon as I lingered too long on thoughts about her, my mind froze, stuck in a loop. A reel of her face, her voice, her body, playing over and over again like a hypnotic mantra.
“Heard you sent her back.”
I resisted the urge to ask him who he’d heard that from, knowing he wouldn’t rat out his rat. But he wanted me to know he still had one. He knew it would make my fucking skin itch to know there might still be a filthy traitor in my ranks.
“You’re stalking her again, aren’t you?”
He smirked, seeing something in the twitch of my expression that he thought gave me away. ”I knew it. You can’t get enough of that bitch.”
“I’m going to relish the sight of the light leaving your eyes.”
His jaw flexed. The guy in front of me continued to cleave a clean line down the version of him I thought I knew and the one sitting before me.
I never knew Nixon. Not really.
Did anyone really know anyone else?
I knew there wasn’t a soul walking this earth who could ever understand the depth of my mind. The things that forged me. What I dreamt about when the world went quiet and the incessant buzz of life evaporated between my fingers.
I wasn’t naive enough to think I sat on my throne uncontested, but I hadn’t seen this coming. Not from Nixon.
It would never happen again.
Violent shame gripped me from the inside, twisting my gut. The fact this had been brewing in my ranks all this time and I hadn’t noticed…
And worse, my faith in Nixon never shook, even when I suspected the client breach at Delirium was an inside job. I never imagined it could be him.
I dismissed Emily when she brought it up; someone with no reason to lie to me. Maybe a foot soldier was responsible, someone lower ranked, but not him. Not my right hand man.
Not Nixon.
“Was it worth it? Your blind grab for my position?”
“Oh, fucking, please,” he said, his fists balling on the table. He leaned forward, the whites of his eyes flashing. “You act like you’re the only one who could do it, like you earned it or something. You were fucking lucky, big deal. Thane liked you. It had nothing to do with your leadership skills. The last straw,” he said, pausing, leaning even closer as contempt flushed through his dull complexion.
“The last straw was that slut you were fucking. You’d do anything she wanted. You’d stage all-out war with the Salvadorans down south if she told you to. Someone needed to take care of business, and it wasn’t you. It’s not you. Not anymore.”
At this point, I was salting the wound, knowing it was painful but doing it anyway. In some sick way, I needed this. It was catharsis, seeing him this way, knowing I was going to end his life.
I was going to look my closest friend in the face as he took his last breath. I wanted to make damn sure that there was no room for regret. That whatever tiny sliver of mercy I even thought of showing him would be ill-deserved.
I’d accomplished that, though not much else in coming here. Not even his further comment about Emily, spoken only to test my limits, could get to me now. Not with all respect for him lost.
“You made a mistake,” I said simply, my chair scraping over the rough floor as I stood.
There was something profoundly destabilizing about finding out that you built so much on the shaky foundation of lies.
“Say hi to Emily for me,” he said, one last jab for the road.
In a knee jerk reaction, I whirled, my chest tight with fury as I stared him down. “No need,” I hissed. “She’ll see your face again. I’ll make damn sure she’s the one who pushes your sorry corpse into the flames.”
