I didn't care to hold back the large smile on my face.
If he wanted evil, I was going to give him the most malicious he had seen.
After all, he was talking to the Kresent Killer.
I wanted the bedroom. I craved better living conditions, but I knew better than to give in to the temptation. I held more power in the small cell as his hostage. He couldn't use what he gave me over me.
He couldn't hold him being the bigger man over me. The more I hurt his head , confusing him regarding my decisions, the more power I held.
Slowly, I would have him wrapped around my finger like the perfect ring: only I could wear it and only I could take it off.
He craved malicious power and immortal power. Only I could give him the power, and I would take it away twice as fast.
"Then let's do it." I told him. "But let's crush their bones into a fine powder and throw them into the oceans, where they lay forgotten, never burned. Letting them suffer in any form of the afterlife that could exist, as they watch everything they built, fall into chaos."
"So you'll take the room?"
"Of course not." I only work for myself. I will not give into him by taking the room and joining him as a partner. I will not partner with him, I will rule over him, and the only way to do that, is to stay in the cell.
He narrowed his eyes at me. He seemed to search my face for some sort of answer, but I let my muscles rest, bringing my face to a relaxed position, an emotionless look, as a refusal to his unspoken question.
Why?
"I would like to sleep. Ask away," I ended our staring at each other.
"I want to know everything else about the Cozen family. I want to take advantage of everything before we destroy them. I want to them to become mine in their death. To submit without recognition." The desperate plea for power in his voice was what I needed to hear. The vulnerability at begging for the knowledge for power.
I had never seen this side of Sorin. I had seen rude and power hungry, but I had never seen pure evil.
I couldn't tell if it was because he wanted to release the stress of the Cozen's or just the stress of the job.
My company was doing the opposite of what I wanted. It was not dumbing him down, but making him more power hungry and efficient. I had to figure out a way to use that to my advantage.
"The Cozen's want to completely destroy you. They want to rid every last bit of you, and anything that could be counted a memorial. They want to erase your existence. Calliope craves power the way an alcoholic craves a drink, only there's no rehab. They want to rid you and then the others."
"Including the Geoffrey's?" he asked me.
"They want them out the most. They hate them more than they hate you. They're going after the Windsor's first." I told him and he looked away and his face slightly scrunched in concentration and confusion as if he was a calculus student applying implicit differentiation on a problem in his head.
"I thought I was their prime target, with the boat and everything."
"You were. Plan B is to remove each family one by one until they're left. The Geoffrey's will be the last to go after you."
"So you suggest we aid the Windsor's?" he asked me.
"There are no right answer, but there are so many wrong answers." It was a possibility.
This was the most complicated game of chess I had ever seen. It was always two teams, but here, everyone is their own team, maybe even the pawns. It was chess with too many teams within each team.
"So what do we do?" he asked impatiently.
"I wil need the night to think it through." I paused before continuing. "I can tell you everything else though."
"Go on then."
"The only reason the Cozen's want to start the bloodshed is because the blood of their company is shedding. It's doing much worse than the Geoffrey's, and it's deteriorating at an exponential rate. It's why your numbers are so high."
"How did you know about that?" he asked me a look of surprise and panic took over.
"Nothing gets past me." Duh.
I remember every last word of the documents I had accessed. He clearly looked disturbed.
"Calliope Cozen had twins. I told you, documentation. She keeps zero copies of their birth certificate or anything which might relate them to her except for her hospital bracelet from the night of her labour and the photo of her crying with two bald babies in her hands. The father was infact Cyprus Windsor." She was, in fact seventeen.
"What do you want to do about it?" he asked me.
"I want to bring them forward. I want to find them and watch them spit on her face."
"And if they refuse to?" he asked me.
"Then they will watch as someone else does. Either way, it's humiliating." She either gets spat in the face by her twins, or they watch their mother get spat in the face by me.
It's quite an unfortunate thing I had killed Cyrpus, because I would treat him the same.
"What else do you know?" he asked me.
"They do the same as the rest, tax loopholes and fraud, exploitation, and the same greedy tendencies while spending every last bit on unnecessary luxuries. You're all the same," I snarled at him.
"Enough! Do you have more to say?" he demanded me and I shook my head no. "Then goodnight. I hope you wake up in agony and misery on that unpleasant cot."
"I hope your beautiful blankets choke you, your soft mattress hardens and gives you back pain, your expensive bed frame breaks, and your plethora of pillows suffocate you in your sleep."
"Of course you do. I hope you rot in this cell, because you turned down my amazing offer. You only hope for me to rot because you're just a spiteful bitch."
"I don't take charity from those I hate. It's a blow to my ego, and I seem to be managing just fine in this cell."
"At least I am civil. I hate you, but I am decent," He says it as if it's an insult, but in what way was he decent? Luxuries can bring beauty and elegance, but beauty and elegance don't bring decency.
"You don't have a choice. I get to do whatever I want, I hold the information, Mr. Giovanni. I shouldn't need to keep reminding you of how much I truly know. You are decent because you need me. I am rude because I am,
and I just am. I don't plan on changing my decision and you shouldn't have high hopes for such change." Sorin Vincent Giovanni didn't hold power over me.
"I would never. The change I wish, is to see you six feet under."
"If I am, you are too. You are alive because of me," I reminded him. His eyes narrowed to slits. His jaw nearly trembled from how hard he had clenched it.
"I never specified whether I would bury you dead." No, he wouldn't be safe unless he actually killed me, but I didn't need to tell him that.
He turned around and walked away wearily.
We were all tired, but the gears turning in my head had outdone every last bit of tired in me.
I wasn't able to sleep that night until I had an answer to the question.
So what do we do?
We.
I laughed at the word.
Who did the doing?
I did the thinking and he gave the orders, and it could be a team, but I told him what to do.
So the real question:
So what do I do?
It's my decision. It's my doing. It's mine.
As it should be.
~
The next morning I was awoken with a plate of strawberries, two slices of toast, and half of what seemed to be a protein bar. I looked up at the guard and quirked a brow.
"This is quite... expensive for a prisoner, don't you think?" I asked him.
"Well, would you like a crumb and a half a glass of water?" He asked me and I gave him a dirty look.
"No need to be a bitch." I turned my head to see Sorin.
"What's up?" I asked biting into a strawberry.
"You know what's up." He turned to the guard, "Leave," he commanded and he turned back to me. "What do you propose we do?"
"Aren't you the Sorin Giovanni? Aren't you supposed to be smart or something? What would you have done without me?" I asked him as he opened the cell door and sat inside.
In all honesty, I had a plan, but I didn't know how to execute it, so heating something from him should be useful.
Besides, it'll help me understand the way he thinks, the way the gears turn in his head.
"You are the Kresent Killer. If anything, it's you who should have something good."
"Well, I was thinking going after whatever they want first. They're going to go after the Irwine's because they are the weakest link, or they'll go for the Windsor's who will not work with them." I told him.
"How do you know they won't work together."
"The Windsor's are the most conservative of you all. Considering the rumor's there's no way they would want to associate with them outside social gatherings. There was absolutely no documentation on anything related to business either." I answered him. He looked satisfied with my answer, so I ruined it. "They would never work with us."
He rolled his eyes as I continue, "You are an open man whore, and there have been many pregnancy and abortion rumors regarding you and the women. It's safe to say they look down on you even though your seat is higher." I shouldn't have taken such a long explanation. He should be keeping track of what the others think of him.
"So what do we do about it? Cry?" he half attempted to joke and my face was as still as the wind of a humid day.
"We ruin them on the inside. The damage has to be so strong, it'll set up the perfect ruin because their social and economic downfall would be much easier." It was a simple plan I had come up with.
A plan attacking their morals and values would do more harm to them as people. The one thing they held on to like their life depended on it.
Being open about emotions was bad enough, but putting your beliefs into the public for everyone to know, made it easier to attack.
Sorin seemed to understand. He looked slightly uncomfortable at the idea.
"Do you have any issues?" I asked though I didn't give much of a damn about his concerns.
Thoughts and prayers to his mental stability... I guess.
The Giovanni family was never left leaning, nor were they right. They were such centrists that it infuriated the people. But it was a facade to be such a centrist, of course. It just meant they were right but made it look pretty.
I've been through a few of his documents, Sorin Giovanni is more left leaning the the rest of his family, just enough to be on the verge of centrist and liberal.
"No. No issues." I slowly nodded.
"The Windsor's will be at the Tuscany Table's Treat Tuesday night. They're going to be with long time friends. Make a reservation for six thirty."
"It takes months to make a reservation!" he argued. "How do you just expect me to get it in days?"
I looked at him— astounded.
"You are Sorin Giovanni, so fucking act like it!"