Chapter 29: Danger lurking
Nico’s POV
"Did you know that the ears are one of the parts of the body that are completely unnecessary—unless you’re using glasses?" I told her, not surprised to see her meet my gaze with venom in her eyes and all the anger she could muster.
She was furious—truly furious—and if she wasn’t tied up, she would have thrown herself at me, tearing me apart with her teeth. "Kill me!" she screamed in anger. "I’ll tell you nothing," she continued, and I let out a pitiful sigh—a long one filled with exasperation.
"Really? Here I thought you’d want to make up for the wrong you’ve done, or at least save your mother’s life. She’s the reason you agreed to do it, right?" I sighed, my gaze low and calm as I watched her head jerk up in shock and equal parts fear.
Her body trembled as tears welled up in her eyes—enough that I almost rolled mine. It was always the same sad story, the same background. I’d seen enough of it.
"Please..." she began to beg as tears slid down her face, and I scooted closer, placing a finger on her lips as I cooed at her, "Shuuush... it’s okay. It’s okay. I understand," I told her—and I did.
"The money was too good to resist. You had no idea what the package was, and your only instruction was to put it under the car and keep your mouth shut after," I continued, her eyes widening in shock as she struggled to comprehend how I knew.
"Please... I picked it up and that was all. I—I had no idea it was a bomb," she gasped as more tears flooded her eyes, and I was tempted to pat her shoulders to calm her down, instead stretching my hand out to the side toward the guard who stood closest to me.
"Phone," I said, and he instantly handed it over as I began typing into it. "Password," I asked her, and she gave it gladly, more willing to talk than before as she continued to beg. "Please, I can’t say any more than that. If I so much as give you a description of the man I saw, they threatened to kill me and my mother," she cried.
"...But you didn’t see him, did you?" I asked, confident that whoever we were dealing with weren’t amateurs. I was convinced that whatever she thought she saw was most likely wrong.
"We met in an alley past the railway station, and it was too dark to see a thing," she continued as I scrolled through her phone, a faint frown lingering at the edge of my face the longer I looked.
"I see," I whispered, passing the phone back to the guard as I met her tear-filled gaze. Her head drooped. She looked weak and pathetic, yet somewhere in her eyes was something I recognized.
"...You know nothing, so what exactly am I supposed to do with you?" I asked, my tone soft as I got off my chair and stepped away, pulling out the gun in my shoulder holster and shooting her twice in the arms—accurate enough to hear her scream and to watch her bound arms go slack.
A gasp echoed from my side, but I paid it no mind until I heard Carmen speak.
"She knows nothing! If you’re going to kill her, just kill her," she said, a frown on her face and distaste in her tone that she struggled to hide. But I didn’t respond, heading behind the young woman who screamed and howled in pain, pulling at her bindings—not surprised to see that they had been undone.
A small knife was embedded in her binds as she continued to howl, the pain most likely all she could focus on, even as the frown on my face deepened. Trusting my gut, I pulled out my gun and shot the guard closest to me in the knees, watching him drop to the ground in pain before doing the same to the one by the door.
At this point, Carmen had panicked, moving closer to where I stood first before asking questions later. "...What’s going on?" A worried expression was on her face, especially since I had just shot my guards and was still pointing the gun at them.
"Speak, or the next bullet goes into your other knee," I ordered, but the one closest to me simply began to beg. "Boss! I swear to you, we have no clue how—" but there was no reason to wait for him to finish his lies as I pulled the trigger, watching his brains splatter on the wall before focusing on the one closest to the door.
Without my password, there was no way he could make it out—and he knew it. I didn’t ask him the question again and simply waited, only to watch him fall to his knees the next moment, aware that the only reason I didn’t kill him first was because, unlike the other one, I knew he had a family.
"We tracked her, and it was too easy... only to find out that it was a trap!" he began to speak, his head lowered. "...They caught me and Andrew, and they were going to kill us unless we agreed to do as they said. They... they cut one of his—"
"You could have reached out to me," I interrupted, since each of them knew a sure way to do so without being caught. "...Here I thought I’d been a good boss," I told him, even as he lowered his head and shook it, his gaze almost hopeless.
"The money promised was huge. They even transferred half of it. It was a small detail. We could even protect you and get some glory. Honest to God, that was the plan, Boss," he said, a pleading tone in his voice as I slowly nodded my head, fixing my gaze on him.
"We would never let anything happen to—" but again, it was a waste to let him finish as I simply pulled the trigger and watched him slump against the door. Turning, I looked at Carmen, whose gaze was wild with astonishment, almost like she found it shocking to have listened to what she heard.
With the gun still in my hand, I turned to the woman who was still moaning in pain, forcing her jaws open—surprised not to find poison there, which meant that she had indeed thought the plan would succeed.
Removing the bindings from her hands, I went ahead to strip her, pulling the dress from her weak and still heavily bloodied body—only to pause. Beyond the knife, around her waist were two grenades, strapped tight enough to miss at a glance, making the situation clearer than before.
It was obvious that she had no intention of surviving. Her capture was simply another assassination attempt.
