The Rules Of Revenge

RN | ONE (pt. 2)

He coughed dramatically, practically heaving, before he wiped his mouth on his shoulder. After sparing me one last scathing glance, he said, "Hey...Snider! Come check this out!"

Snider replied, "What is it now? Did ya find another cat? Just throw it out the window!"

"It's not a cat! Come check this out, I tell ya!"

Snider groaned, loudly, most likely unwilling to leave his assigned post. He was quite the stickler for rules, and I was sure he hated Connor at the moment. Nevertheless, he complied with Connor's request, as I expected, and treaded his way over to this side of the floor. I gestured at Connor to keep quiet as the doorknob turned and Snider limped into the stairwell. He was injured, which made this slightly easier for me.

"What the hell happened to you?" Snider exclaimed, as he laid eyes on the handcuffed Connor. "Who did this to ya?"

"That would be me," I said, moving out of hiding.

He turned around at the sound of my voice. "Who the fuck—"

Before he could complete his question, I shot him square in the chest. My bullet went right through his ribcage, in and out of his heart, clean and precise. No sound came out of my pistol, and he had no time to react. He fell on his back, his hands covering the gaping hole in his chest, cold. His eyes remained open, frozen.

"That's not creepy at all..." I said, as I leaned over his body and closed his eyes. "What did you think of that?"

He did not look at the dead body, not even once. Instead, he kept his eyes trained on me, as if I was a ticking bomb, and shrugged. "Never liked the guy."

I nodded, moving back from the corpse. "I'm sure you didn't." Crouching down next to him, I caressed his face with the edge of my gun. "Only two of your buddies remain...how much you wanna bet that Joel's gonna be here in the next thirty seconds?"

"How'd you know our names?"

I grinned, knowing full well that he thought I was insane. "I know a lot more than just your names, kid." I glanced at my watch and silently counted down the seconds. At the twenty second mark, I quickly moved out of the way as Joel hurtled into the stairwell, red-faced.

"What the hell is taking so—Bloody hell!" He crouched down next to Snider's body, and shook his arm. When Snider's limp hand fell, he glanced at Connor's tied up state and said, "What in the world happened here? Who did this?"

Connor jutted his chin at me. As Joel took in my presence, I removed myself from the wall and, with my gun aimed at his head, shoved the door closed with my foot. "I'm starting to think the Klein Brothers don't train you enough."

"Either that,"—I cocked my gun, arrogantly, in Joel's face—"or they just have a bad taste in men."

After taking one look at me, Joel squinted his eyes and began chuckling. He shook his head back and forth, as if he was thoroughly amused with the situation, and then had the guts to cheekily wink at me. "I'm not surprised you got Connor—kid's a loser, but Snider? You've got guts, little girl."

"I don't think you're in the position to laugh," I said, gritting my teeth. His lack of seriousness did not faze me, since my enemies usually did not view me as a threat at the first glance, but his comment got to me. No matter how hard I tried to steel myself against low blows, I simply did not have the tenacity for it. Low blows, after all, were aimed for the obvious sore spots, and, boy, did they hurt.

"You're"—he pointed at me—"gonna tell me what to do?" He clutched his sides, tears of amusement falling down his eyes. "What do you think this is? The girls' scouts?"