Page 81 of Venomous Games

Soren steps forward and raises his hands, gesturing for us to calm down. “I hired her to kill Edgar. He was going behind the society’s back. So technically, she was not a wife who was killing members. She was a hired assassin,” he announces.

“You knew who she was?” Reon asks me.

“Yes.”

“Damn.” He whistles. “And I thought my wife was crazy.”

“Your wife is crazy. Certified, actually,” Arlo chimes in.

I’m still trying to process that Soren was the mastermind behind everything, apart from me falling head over fucking heels for Maven, and her shiny red heels, of course.

“Who’s going to bury this body?” Reon asks, pointing to Rolland.

“Start digging,” Soren says as he picks up a shovel and throws it at the feet of the member who questioned whether we should kill my wife or not. He doesn’t argue as he picks it up and heads into the forest. Most of us know our way around here, as we’ve been coming out here for many years. We don’t hide all of the bodies in the forest, but there are a fair number of unmarked graves out here.

“Who wants to make a bet on how long it takes for her to come back?” someone jokes.

“I would say you stick to what she says, considering she’s taken out three of you fuckers and none of you had any idea.” It almost sounds like a compliment coming from Soren.

She could also take him out, and he wouldn’t know until it was too late.

FORTY-FIVE

MAVEN

“He’s fucking heavy,” I call out to Victor, who watches from the car as I struggle to pull this fucking body to the trunk. Thankfully, this hit was an easy one, and luckily, I brought my shiny red heels, so I didn’t really have to worry too much. Not only are they my killing heels, they’re also my good luck heels. “Get your big ass out of that car and help me, Victor.”

He mumbles something as he gets out of the car and slams the door shut, but I don’t even know if it’s English.

Thankfully, it’s early in the morning, and the houses are far apart from one another, so the risk of being seen is minimal. When Victor reaches me, he leans down, grabs the body, throws it over his shoulder, and carries it all the way to the back of his car with hardly any effort. He pops the trunk, dumps the body in, then slams it shut and stares at me.

“Now, was that so fucking hard?” I ask.

I didn’t end up killing this target, though I was pretty fucking close. I managed to knock him out, but the first blow didn’t quite do the job, and he turned around to try and hit me. Thankfully, I have quick reflexes and knocked that fucker out the second time. But then came the part where I had to move the body, and because Victor is a lazy ass and sat in the car, refusing to help me until this very moment, I had to do it all myself. Which probably puts my timing just under an hour. But with the drive back, it’ll be over an hour, and I’m going to blame it all on Victor when we get there. We could’ve been done and back all within an hour if he’d helped me sooner.

“I came to drive, not assist in your fucking work,” he grouses.

“Well, we would have been late, and he could have woken up. So this probably would have gone a lot smoother if you’d just helped.”

“How much are you getting paid for this? You won’t even be the one to kill him.”

I smile and look down at my nails. “Oh, an easy two million,” I tell him, and his head swings around to me.

“Who sets the price?” I’m surprised he’s asking so many questions considering he’s usually the quiet one. Though, I think somewhere along the way, he’s started warming up to me.

“I do. And many factors go into how much I charge for a job. Everything has to be considered before the hit, because I need to know what I’m going up against. The more difficult the hit, the higher the price.”

“What’s the most you’ve ever been paid for a hit?”

I think about that for a few seconds before I remember the senator I took out. “Ten million.”

He slams on the brakes, and the body rolls around in the trunk before I hear what sounds like the guy punching against the trunk’s lid, which means he’s awake.

“Do you plan to take care of that? He needs to be knocked back out since you just woke him up,” I say.

Victor makes no move to get out of the car, so I reach down and grab the steering wheel lock. Who the fuck has a steering wheel lock in their car these days? I get out and pop the trunk. Immediately, the guy tries to jump out at me, but I block his swing and punch him straight in the temple, and he drops like a bag of shit. He’s hard to get back in the trunk correctly so I can close it, but when I finally get him situated, I shut the lid, walk back to the passenger side, and get in.

“You get paid a lot of fucking money.”