And then it dawned on me, he didn’t have to steal the necklace to get
rid of the evidence; he simply had to neutralize the drug. Once it was gone, there would have been no way for us to prove anything.
He took his sweet time pretending to study it and I smiled all the while, sipping my wine and watching him until he paused with a frown and looked up at me.
“This is not the necklace I gave you, dearest cousin. Where is the other one?”
“It’s not?” I made my eyes as wide as humanly possible and leaned forward to look at the necklace. “I haven’t taken it off since you gave it to me. I haven’t even changed my clothes.”
I looked down at my party dress, now rumpled and ruined. As soon as Engel was behind bars, I was burning the thing. It had been so pretty when I first put it on, but now, now it reminded me of how much evil there was in the world. No, in the universe.
“How can you tell?”
“No, it is not the same.” He tried to smile at me, but I could finally see the strain around his eyes, the malice breaking through his façade. “The clasp is different. My grandmother’s necklace had her initials carved into the clasp.”
“Oh, no!” I put my hand to my chest in mock surprise and smirked at him as I took a sip of my wine. “What magical chemical cocktail is in your gloves? Whatever will you do if you can’t destroy the evidence? Now everyone will know that you drugged your own cousin with Rush, that you are manufacturing the most hated drug on Atlan and selling it like candy.”
I set my wine down on the table and pulled a blaster Dax had let me borrow—and shown me how to fire, just in case—from the side of my chair, pointing it at his chest. “Poor big, bad councilor man, outwitted by a stupid, fat Earth girl. How humiliating.”
His eyes narrowed as he took me in, his gaze going from the blaster resting in my hand to the open hatred in my eyes.
“What do you think you’re going to do with that, Tiffani?”
“I’m just the stupid Earth girl, right? What am I going to do? Shoot you.”
I waved the blaster at him to emphasize my words and let a few tears slide down my cheeks, part for show and partly because I was so furious with this man that my rage needed an outlet. I actually wanted to kill him, and that made me even angrier. Back home, I felt guilty killing a spider. I’d catch the damn things in a cup and take them outside.
This guy had made me hate, truly hate, and I let him see it in my eyes.
“But now, cousin, I think I should kill you for poisoning him with Rush. He almost died because of you. It only seems fair that you should face the same end.”
I swallowed, then licked my lips. When had they gone numb?
Engel smiled at me then, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms across his chest. “Die? Today? No, dear, I’m afraid that’s not quite what I had in mind.”
The room started spinning and I squinted at him. “What…?” The thought stopped, half formed as my vision got hazy. I felt the blaster fall from my lax grip. Soon, my body slumped, hitting the side of the chair in which I sat.
My eyes were open, but my vision was blurry, like trying to see underwater without goggles. Everything was fuzzy and distorted.
I knew Engel rose from his seat and placed his palm under my chin, lifting my face to look up at him.
“As you said yourself, stupid Earth girl. Did you really think you could outwit me?” He peeled the gloves off his hands and stuffed them in his pocket. “The gloves weren’t coated with an antidote for Rush, sweet cousin.”
He lifted the necklace and placed it back around my neck, the brush of his fingers sending an icy chill down my spine. But my horror never showed on the surface. I was like a mannequin. I felt completely detached. Emotionless. I knew, if I really wanted to, I could talk. I could blink. I could spit in his face, but I didn’t have the energy and the rest of my body was dead weight.
“The necklace really was for you, dear.” His grip on my chin turned painful, and still I could not move. It was as if my entire body was paralyzed from the neck down. “And now, you will tell me where the real one is.”
“Go fuck yourself.” The words were quiet and slurred, but he couldn’t miss hearing them.
He lifted me from the chair as if I were a feather, his hands around my throat. “Where is the necklace?”
I struggled to breathe, but I couldn’t fight him, couldn’t grab his hand and tug it away. “You poisoned Deek,” I coughed out.
He laughed, and the sound was pure evil.
I wanted to scratch his eyes out, but I couldn’t. “I hate you.”
“I don’t need your love, Tiffani.” His gaze raked up and down my body with blatant male interest. “Perhaps I will fuck you before I kill you, see what magic your pussy has that could save an Atlan beast from an overdose of Rush.”