"He's drunk a lot of the wine," Sorin told me. My back was facing them, so he would constantly update me about their current state with a flirty smile.
I had ordered a plate of Gnocchi with tomato and basil vodka sauce and he ordered an Eggplant Parmesan.
Basic dishes, but we weren't really here for the food. I wasn't complaining though, it did taste amazing.
"He's staring at your back," Sorin told me.
I slowly got up from my seat.
"I'm going to the bathroom," I said and gave him a look under my smile, telling him to stay ready.
I wasn't sure how to feel about what I was about to do. As much as I didn't want to do it, I had to for the women who weren't able to call for help.
After this, I'd tell Sorin how to find the evidence; payments to people to rid the bodies. They were quite descriptive: his first mistake.
Tonight would be bad enough, but when the evidence for the murders is released in a few days, it will cause a huge uproar.
Taking down the Windsor's before the Cozen's can even blink.
I felt a hand on my shoulder right as I was about to open the door to the bathroom.
Just as I had planned.
"Do I know you from somewhere?" Laurent asked me. I felt sick to my stomach at the question, I didn't know why because I knew he only thought I was Thalia Sage.
"Well, I was with Sorin when you approached us," I responded. He wouldn't recognize me by my voice. Thalia's voice was smooth and graceful. A quiet but empowering voice, which drew people to her.
Selena's voice is sultry and seductive with a hint of raspiness to it. It isn't quiet or loud. It's a leveled voice.
"I noticed," he said. "That dress does your body wonders, doll," He took a step closer to me, and I took one back. I looked up at him, to make eye contact with with his jet black eyes.
His hand went to my waist and the other cupped the left side of my face and he backed me up to the closest wall.
I saw one of Sorin's men with a camera recording us from my peripheral vision, but I didn't give a reaction to it.
"I have to get back to the table. Sorin is waiting for me," I stuttered out in a fake fear.
"Give me five minutes," he said, his mouth getting closer to mine, and I lightly pushed on his chest in resistance. I couldn't push with full force, or I would actually push him off.
"No thank you. I've really gotta go," I told him and turned my head away from him, he only got closer.
Now.
I looked a few inches away from the camera the man was holding.
"Help!" It wasn't very loud, but it was loud enough to freak Laurent out.
He quickly got off of me and a few people approached. The man with the camera rushed away.
"Something going on here?" one of the people asked. I went to speak, but Laurent beat me to it.
"Nothing, she just almost slipped."
"On carpet?" One of the women asked.
"I'm gonna go," I rushed away from them back to the table where Sorin was seated, eating his food.
"He showed me the video," Was all he said.
"Sometime this week, after that video goes out, I'll show you where all the evidence is for the murders and sexual assault, and you can leak that too," I told him.
"Your acting was good."
"I know."
The conversation was dry as a desert, but I still couldn't get Laurent out of my head.
What was so familiar about him?
"We can leave whenever you want." I didn't have much left on my plate, but I wasn't hungry.
I wasn't hungry. I was so angry at myself, I lost my appetite.
"Selene, what is going on? You got the job done right, and now you're freaking out." He was annoyed with me and he had no right to be.
"I should be looking scared and traumatized. I got the job done amazing, and now the aftermath should be played out too." I was very bothered, but by something else. Using my flaws to my advantage was not something I didn't often.
I didn't have flaws.
"That is what matters. Besides, we should leave, people saw me with him with a terrified look on my face. If we just sit here, they'll be confused."
He didn't respond to me and took one more bite of his food and proceeded to call over Jacob with the check.
We made sure to tip him right.
We got up from the table and his arm went around my upper waist pulling me in close and I leaned into him.
I looked over at Laurent's table as we were walking out. The man was seemingly engaged in a hysterical conversation with a colleague, but only I could see the restlessness and anxiety behind his outgoing persona.
After all, he had been caught for the first time.
I was impossible for me to tell whether or not Sylvia knew what had happened.
She's a victim to her emotionally abusive, manipulative, unfaithful husband. As a woman, I sympathize with her for her tragic relationship.
She knew how to hide every last bit of true emotion on her face unless desired. She had mastered the art of emotional isolation.
As a woman, I wanted to support her for how she's been treated, but as a person, seeing what she supported even before her relationship to the Windsor's, it makes me makes me want to throw her off a never ending cliff, wanting her to worry about the impact of the fall.
The way those women worried at the abortion clinic when she tried to take away their right to terminating the pregnancy. I had watched her scream at them, calling them murderers and 'false' women.' I was much younger back then, much more naive, but I wasn't stupid or dumb. I have never been.
How bad would it be? The insane costs of having a child, including birth and then even more to take care of the child. If the woman put the child up for adoption, is this family truly in to love the child. Will they accept the child? Will foster homes treat them with respect? What about the corruption in the foster-care and adoption systems?
A never ending cycle of worry.
They want the child out of the womb so bad, but they turn a blind eye to their trauma once they leave the womb.
As a woman, I sympathized with her for the traumatic relationship she was in, but also as a woman I wanted to ruin her for ruining other women.
Blurred lines.
There is no good and bad.
It's a measurement. Just how good or bad can something be?
Chances are, it will land closer to the middle than the ends.
Everything had consequences.
Tomorrow morning, Laurent Windsor and picture perfect family photo will shatter.
The frame has broken and tomorrow the glass.
The image will always be there, but no longer protected by the glass. The glass which once prevented foreign touch, will be the very thing scratching it as the shards lay on the floor with no hope of redemption for eternity.
I looked away from their table as I continued to walk out the restaurant with Sorin.
The drive home was an uncomfortable silence.
I knew the tension radiating from me was from my anxiety. I felt powerless, at not being able to remember his face.
It won't matter next week.
But it will. In the grand scheme I wasn't sure it mattered, but in my head it was the biggest deal.
Selene doesn't forget.
"Are you going to talk about what happened?" he asked me. "I saw the video, you know."
"Can you shut up? It's not about the video." He was really getting on my nerves.
"Can you not be civil with me?" His voice stayed leveled as he spoke. It was an angry kind of normal.
He was like a bomb. If I say one wrong thing, he would explode.
"I am civil. I don't need to be polite to be civil. I just need to be not rude."
I didn't care if the bomb went off.
"Telling me to 'shut up' didn't seem very civil about you."
"Your problem not mine," Was my only response.
My temper seemed to be worse than his until he was completely fed up. He knew how to hold it in, how to appear a bit calm.
I was passive aggressive, rude, and loud. When I get mad, I unleash it like. The most prominent emotion of mine has to be anger. Everything in my life had been driven by it.
"I put you in cell C17 to be terrible to you, you know that? You know what C17 is?" he asked keeping his eyes in the road. "C17 is the cell for the prisoners who I plan on brutally torturing before leaving for a slow death. You want the C17?" He asked as a sarcastic laugh slipped out.
"I'm not afraid of death, nor am I afraid of pain. I don't give fuck what you do, just know that you are alive because of me." I honestly didn't care. Everyone dies at some point, and at an early age, I began to ponder over growing old with a person and a family wasn't for me.
I decided it after the first person I killed. A serial killer like myself would never be able to love a family in peace. My life was never made for simplicity. I was made for chaos and, and chaos I would become.
But even chaos fades away.
"You think you're better than me? You aren't. You are just as bad as me." He was so mad he almost choked it out.
"Worse."
My correcting him seemed to be the last straw.
He pulled over the car and his hand went to the back of my neck and slid up as he bunched a bunch of my hair in his hand.
He yanked my hair so my face was a few inches from his and he just stared at my face.
I impatiently sighed.
"Are you done being a drama queen?" I asked.
"Fuck you," He cursed as he pushed away my head, letting go of my hair. My head almost hit the window, but my the edge of my rough seatbelt scraped the side of my neck, stopping the crash.
I chuckled and adjusted my chair, so I could sit more comfortably.
He was still staring at me.
"Drive!" I commanded. His face hardened at the roughness in my voice as he began to drive. His hands gripped the leather steering wheel so tight, I was afraid he destroy it with his short nails.
His loss.
~~
Hey!!!
I don't normally put an A/N at the end of this story, but what do you guys think???
Don't forget to vote (if you want)!