Page 100 of Equilibrium
“Storm, I can—”
“You can’t do shit! And when I am done with you, you will never be able to hurt another family, another child, another woman. Never again, Logan. So I can either kill you now, or you can tell me what I need to know.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” he challenged me.
“You have no idea what I am capable of doing.” I pulled the safety off. “I could cut you up into pieces and send you in a box to your wife. How’s she doing? I hope we didn’t scare her too much.”
“You said you would only take her, not scare her. She’s driving me crazy. Going for therapy and all that shit.”
“Well, if she hadn’t tried to bite one of my guys, maybe we wouldn’t have.”
I looked at Atlas and Indigo, both of them aiming at the two guards the shithole in front of me brought with him.
“Tick fucking tock, Logan. I don’t have the whole night. Who gave the order?”
“I did, goddammit!” he confirmed. “I did, and I would do it again. This world needs to be rid of your people. You are the lowlifes that need to be exterminated. Like rats.”
“Is that so?”
“It is,” he spewed.
“Another thing.” I scratched my temple with the gun, the urge to just kill him brewing in my veins. “Were you ever going to let us walk out of here alive, or were we going to die no matter what?”
“What do you think?” He smirked. “You and your kind, you can all burn for all that I care. With you gone, I would’ve been able to take over the West Coast, and soon enough, I’d be able to destroy Nikolai as well. Ophelia would’ve been an additional plus. He cared about nothing but his precious little princess. His precious little heir. He trained her himself, made an assassin out of her. No wonder she managed to escape you.”
“She didn’t escape.”
The smug expression on his face slipped as he realized what I was saying.
“She’s with you?”
“Oh yes. Alive and well, and in my bed. Both you and Nikolai can go and fuck yourselves, because I am not giving her to you.”
“Oh, you poor soul.” He laughed. “Ophelia Aster isn’t a girl you could ever own. She is wild, reckless, psychotic. She can’t be owned because that one, she doesn’t have a soul. She doesn’t have a conscience. Human emotions are foreign to her. I’ve seen her kill men, women, children, and she never once showed any semblance of emotions. They were all just a job to her. So that little lie you let yourself believe in, it was just that. A lie. She could never belong to you. She didn’t even belong to herself. She belonged to the Syndicate because the only thing she is good at is murder.”
“Shut up, Logan.”
“Why? Is the truth too hard to swallow? She belongs to the Syndicate. They are the only ones that could handle her crazy ass. And that girl.” He laughed. “I would’ve loved to have a girl like her in my outfit. She is relentless. When she wants you dead, no matter how much you run, you will end up dead. She is like a shark when it smells blood. They trained her well.”
“You’re lying.”
“How do you think she got that nickname? A boogeyman.Baba Yaga. She was as cold as Russian snow. A true Russian princess, and you, you are nothing to her. Just a little toy. My son was one of her toys, and as you can see, she killed him.”
“She killed him because he fucked up.”
“Maybe.” He shrugged. “Or maybe not. She also killed my daughter, and they grew up together. They were best friends. What kind of person does that?”
“The kind of a person you made. The kind of a person that never knew anything else but the pain you idiots subjected her to. The kind of a person that never knew anything else but darkness, blood, and depravity. That kind of a person, Logan. I know because I am that person. And your kind,” I pressed the barrel deeper, “your kind was the one that made me this way. So, if you’re trying to tell me that she’s a monster, good. So am I.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about, you idiot. She can’t be tamed.”
“I don’t want to tame her.” I straightened up, still holding the gun to his forehead. “I want her wild, free of all of you. Free of your world.”
“You’ll never be able—”
“Goodbye, Logan.”
“No, wait—”
