"I can't imagine how—"
"Well well well," a male voice said, making my stomach drop, making Celeste's head whip to the doorway where a man I wasn't familiar with stood, gun pointed on her. "What do we have here?"
"Terry," Celeste said, smile cold, eyes level with the man who had been her warden for so many years. If I lived a thousand years, I was pretty sure I would never be as badass as Celeste as she slowly unfolded from her position, seemingly unconcerned about the gun pointed at her. "Came to deal with the loose ends before you make a play for power?" she asked, making her way closer to him.
"You should have been taken care of years ago."
"Probably," she agreed. "Yet here we are."
"Who the hell is she?" Terry asked, jerking his chin toward me, but his focus was on Celeste who was still advancing on him, slowly, like a cat. Did she plan on trying to take him down? Sure, she was a tall woman. But years in a cell with bad nutrition had made her thin. I couldn't imagine she would overpower Terry. He might have been older, but he was bigger.
"Oh that? That's the woman who killed Art," Celeste declared proudly, almost like a mom would.
"What? No."
"Tell him, Giana, darling."
"I, ah, yeah," I agreed, nodding, playing along, hoping she had a plan. "That was me. Peanuts in his coffee."
Terry glanced at me for the first time, surprised, confused.
It was the shortest of glances.
But long enough.
Celeste darted to the side, hand reaching out, closing over the handle to a letter opener.
The rest of it seemed to happen on fast-forward.
Celeste lunging.
Terry yelling, deflecting, getting a cut to the side of his hand that had the gun flying out into the hallway, sliding across the floor, out of reach.
It was seconds, it seemed, between when Celeste lunged, and when the letter opener flew from her hand as she went down, Terry coming down on top of her, hands going around her neck.
Her body writhed; her hands punched, slapped, scratched.
To no avail.
He was going to kill her.
Right there in front of me.
Her gaze cut to me, her eyes darting to the side, making me follow their direction, seeing the letter opener.
I didn't think.
I didn't consider my body count, the dark marks on my soul, which circle of hell I would be suffering in for all eternity.
I rushed over, ducked, grabbed the letter opener, charged forward, and stabbed it into the side of Terry's throat.
"God, I was covered in blood," Celeste said, snapping me back to the present, shaking her head as she looked at her son. "I never thought I was going to get it out of my hair. In fact, that was what I was attempting to do in the kitchen sink when this lovely young gentleman showed up," she went on, reaching over to pat Christopher's hand.
"How the hell did you end up there?" Lorenzo asked, completely at a loss. His eyes looked small and pained, and I couldn't help but worry about his condition, what directions the doctors had given him that he was likely already disregarding.
"It's funny how much a woman in a bright red party dress and blue flip-flops stands out in a crowd," Chris said, giving me a warm smile. "It wasn't hard to track her. And once I knew what town she was heading to, I knew where she was going. Terry used to talk about that fucking house all the time. When I got there, it was a mess, blood completely covering those two," he said, shaking his head. "Looked like a horror movie."
"So you cleaned it up," Lorenzo guessed, knowing his men had been trained well.
"Started to. Then Anthony showed up," he said, smirking. "It was like a fucking party in that place. Between the two of us, we got the body out of there, cleaned everything up. But it wouldn't hurt for a team to go back and do another scrub."
"Noted," Lorenzo said, nodding. "I appreciate it."
"Doing our jobs," Anthony said. "Well, not exactly," he admitted. "I was supposed to be the one doing the killing."
"Killing?" another voice asked, making us all look up, finding Brio walking in through the house toward us, smile a little devilish. "I missed more fun?" he asked, coming into the space. His gaze cut to me, and that smile grew warmer. "I told you those were some nice shoes there, doll," he said, walking over toward the coffee pot.
"Nice shoes?" Lorenzo asked, looking at me.
"No," I said, shaking my head at Brio's back.
"Yes," he countered, turning back, taking a long, slow sip of his coffee.
He'd intentionally drawn my attention to them.
He knew the buckles could be used to escape.
"The candy bar too?" I asked, watching as his lips twitched.
"Nah, doll, that was all you. Took me a while to figure it out, too. You're fucking slick, G."