Page 60 of Ricochet
I never really gave a fuck who had to die and who got to live. Maybe in the beginning when I still thought what I did was wrong and there was something bad inside of me, but I learned, I improved, and I realized that no matter what, there would always be people who had to die. And they did. It didn’t really matter if their death came today by my hands, or in fifty years by natural causes. All of us would end up in that coffin, or well, in the cold ground, six feet under, and there was no running away from that.
“She’s fucking playing you.” Kieran shook his youngest brother, who still seemed to be in some kind of shock. A killer my ass. If you couldn’t kill a female who you thought destroyed your family, how in the hell would you kill somebody assigned to you.
“Weak, weak, weak, weak,” I sang, laughing at their pissed-off expressions. “You all are weak. No wonder my father didn’t want to do business with your family anymore.”
“Shut up, shut up, shut up!”
Cillian ran from the other side of the room and stood behind me, yanking my head back with a pull of my hair. Something cold nestled at the bottom of my neck, and I knew it was the blade of a knife he was holding. His eyes were crazed, unfocused, lost to the here and now, and I relished in every single moment of it.
That’s right boys. I want to see you fall apart. If I am going underground, I am taking your sanity with me.
Well, what was left of it.
“Cillian,” Kieran started in a calm voice, and I could see him in my head, trying to be the reasonable one in this situation. But there was no reasoning with a person when the bloodlust takes over their body. There were no words you could say to bring them back to the land of sanity.
I knew it, I knew it very well, because I couldn’t even count on the fingers of one hand, how many times I’ve been in the same situation. How many times I couldn’t see anything else, but the object I had to kill. It wasn’t about the job, it wasn’t about what the Syndicate wanted, it was always what I wanted.
And I wanted to see them dead. I wanted to see their blood seeping from the wounds inflicted by me. I wanted to hear them scream, because if you were so fucked up that they would send me after you, you deserved the worst ending ever known to humankind.
This broken son of a bitch that held me down, he was the same. It was as if we were cut from the same cloth, and I always wondered why it was that I fell for his brother, but not for him. Kieran was the light, he was always the proper one, the kind one, the one that wanted to save everyone around him, but Cillian…
Cillian just wanted to see everybody burn. He wanted them dead just as much as I did. Oh this wonderful look in his eyes. His hatred for me was almost palpable, almost visible, and I wanted to play with it. I wanted to have fun with his pain, because there was no better way to break somebody’s mind than to play with what they’d lost.
“Awww, you brought my favorite, Cillian,” I choked out, my voice breaking from the strain in my neck. “I didn’t know you loved me that much.”
“Shut the fuck up, you psychopathic bitch.”
“But, Kill,” I pouted, “I’m not the only psychopath in this room.”
“Cillian.” I felt Kieran’s presence in front of me, but Kill was too far gone to listen to his brother. He started pulling my hair lower, and the blade slowly started cutting into my skin. Blood broke out of the wound, and I could feel it trickling down my chest, onto the shirt I wore. It’s such a bummer really, I actually liked this shirt. It was a bitch trying to remove blood from light-colored clothing, but maybe I could ask K where they bought it.
“Let her go, Kill.”
“She has to die.”
His chest was rising and falling in fast intervals, and I could see his pupils, enlarged, the black almost eradicating the brown of his irises. I knew what excitement was when I saw it, and this one was excited to kill me.
I knew it because I always felt the same. Those couple of minutes before I dragged my knife through their bodies, before I removed the safety of my gun and shot them between their eyes, those minutes were filled with excitement —my heart racing inside my chest, my breathing going erratic, my hands almost shaking from what would come.
It was addictive, it was fulfilling, and only fools would say they didn’t feel it before taking another person's life.
“She will die, but we need her first.”
Oh, they needed me. How beautiful was that, huh? Cillian’s crazed eyes never left mine, the promise of hell on earth in them, the promise of terror.
“Come on, Kill. You know you want to push that knife deeper. You want to see the blood gushing out in rivulets.”
“Shut the fuck up, Ophelia!” Kieran yelled at me, and I really wanted to see his pissed-off face. “Cillian—”
“Word of advice, though.” I lowered my voice. “You might want to move the knife a couple of inches to the left. It’s really beautiful seeing somebody bleed out from their carotid artery.”
“Cillian,” A hand landed on his shoulder, and the heat from Kieran’s body seeped onto mine, as he stepped over me, his legs on the sides of my hips. “Step away, Brother.”
“I want to see her lifeless eyes—”
“And you will.”Jesus fucking Christ, could they be any sappier?“Take the knife away, Kill.”
But we were just getting started. Don’t take the knife away, I almost came from merely the pressure it had on my neck.
