A beat of silence passed between us before he folded his hands into his lap, as if he were some sort of civilized King. “I’ve always been a bit jealous of you, if we’re being honest with each other.”
Hmph, he couldn’t be honest if his life depended on it. Treachery ran through his veins like blood.
Then, he continued. “I was thinking about killing you, along with your pack of testosterone-fueled man-dogs that follow you around like puppies, but then I realized that wouldn’t fix the jealousy. If I killed you then you would just become a martyr in my own mind.”
“Sounds like you have quite a conundrum then,” I said sarcastically.
“Exactly. So, then I thought about killing all your boyfriends and watching you suffer.”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “I swear, if you lay a hand on them I will—”
David raised his palm in the air to me. “I’m just going to stop you right there before we get into an argument about how you’re not in any position to be making threats, because I decided that option wouldn’t do me any good either. I admit, it was a bit of a puzzle to figure out.”
The word puzzle left such an awful imprint on my mind. It was amazing how innocent things of childhood can become so sinister when they are tied to memories that you simply can’t wipe from your brain no matter how hard you try.
David smirked. “But I eventually came up with the perfect solution, as I always do. One in which I wouldn’t need to be jealous of you anymore because we would be working together.”
I couldn’t help it; I laughed out loud. There was nothing funny about the situation that I was in and certainly nothing funny about the guys still being locked up inside the stone room. But there was something sickly amusing about David thinking that there was any way in hell that I would ever work alongside him. He looked insulted at my outburst which made it all the more entertaining.
“I am offering you a chance that won’t be offered to you a second time, Lisette” he said, looking more than a little vexed. “Join me in taking over our father’s empire of corruption. You can have all the wealth and power that you want.”
“I don’t want wealth and power,” I said. “I want freedom.”
“Wealth and power are freedom. Or haven’t you been paying attention?”
“I’ve been paying enough attention to know that you are a sick and depraved piece of shit. You are lacking and that is why you act out of such bitter inferiority.” I expected a slap across the face or maybe even a gunshot wound to the thigh for running my mouth against him. But it would have been worth it. “You want to know why you feel jealous of me? It’s because I have the one thing that you will never have.”
“Oh?” David said.
I could see his knuckles starting to turn white from how hard he was clenching the edge of his desk, and he was biting his teeth into his bottom lip so hard that a thin trickle of blood was beginning to trail down his chin. “And what is that one thing?”
I grinned. “Purpose.”
Now it was David’s turn to laugh. He lifted his hands from the desk and wiped the blood from his chin as he howled in laughter that sounded like a wounded hyena. “You have no purpose Lisette, other than to possibly beg for your own life and the life of your friends. If avenging your mother is still your purpose, then that ship has sailed. I, on the other hand, have tremendous purpose. A purpose that I just offered to you to join me, but that you so foolishly tossed aside. Do you know what made our father so rich?”
“Drugs,” I said.
That was an easy question, everyone knew our father ran one of the biggest drug rings in Charlotte.
“Yes, drugs. But he simply trafficked the drugs. He made big and small deals, ran drug circles, even managed to use two elite rival universities to hide one of the biggest drug operations around within the campus walls, and it managed to make him a sizable fortune. But I think bigger than that, bigger than simply trafficking drugs that other people also take a cut of. I am going to do much, much more than our father ever dreamed of doing. I’m not just going to move the drugs and sell them; I’m going to create them. I’m going to develop and make new kinds of drugs that I will sell myself and keep one hundred percent of the profits. I’m going to turn this place into a breeding ground for addiction. Addiction to the drugs that I make.”
I rolled my eyes. And honestly? I would have slow-clapped him if I thought he was worth the energy. “What, so you’re some kind of chemist now too?”
I tried to seem unfazed by what he had just said. If he truly managed to accomplish being the developer, manufacturer, and distributor of the largest drug circuit in the city; it would be nearly impossible to take him down.
But, David simply proceeded forward, as if he honestly believed in what he was saying. “I don’t need to be a chemist, that’s what all my money is for. I’ve already hired some of the smartest people I know and very soon they will present me with viable drugs to begin making. You’ll wish you had jumped in on this opportunity with me when you were offered the chance,” he said.
And I answered with the clearest, most concise statement that I felt permeating through my veins.
“No, I won’t.”
When the guards came to take me back to the stone room, I wondered the entire way there how long David was going to keep us inside that box. That’s what it felt like—a box. I didn’t want to go back inside of it.
“I have to pee,” I said before we had made it all the way there.
One of the guards rolled his eyes at the other.
“Didn’t you hear me?” I said louder this time. “I have to use the bathroom.”
They took me to one of the campus restrooms and stood outside the door. I knew this only bought me a few minutes of freedom, but a few minutes outside that room was better than none. I stood inside the stall and felt guilty for being here and enjoying a few minutes outside the stone room without the guys.
This is what my life had become now: feeling guilty for stealing three minutes of time inside a dingy bathroom stall.
“Hurry up in there!” one of the guards called.
“Give me a minute! I’m taking a shit, too!” I hollered back.
I washed my hands under the warm running water as slowly as I could until one of the guards finally came in and dragged me out. I had half a mind to throw a punch to his gut, kick him in the cock, and make a break for it as quickly as I could. But, I couldn’t leave my boys behind. I had to save them.
So, I let them drag me away and we were well on our way back to the box.
My eyes had just started getting used to the light when they opened the door and threw me back inside. Then I was all the way back to square one with not being able to see anything again.
“Lisette, are you okay?” Adam’s voice said somewhere near my ear.
I felt the hands of all three guys running over my body to make sure that I hadn’t been hurt or mangled in any way.
