Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 79087 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 395(@200wpm)___ 316(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79087 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 395(@200wpm)___ 316(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
The Butcher shrugged. “I don’t know. The more I think about your situation, the shittier it is. Also, weird. I mean, I get dads not liking their daughters and stuff like that, but he kept you on his property.”
“My dad wasn’t trying to protect me. I was an embarrassment to him.” I told her about the trips to the plastic surgeons. “He was constantly trying to change the way I looked. Besides the fact I refused, the doctors did as well.”
“They did?” The Butcher asked.
“Yeah, which is strange, I know. My dad could have bribed them, or something. I’m not sure.”
The Butcher pulled out a little notebook. “Do you want to do me a favor and write that down for me?”
“What?”
“Write down the name of the plastic surgeons you saw, and their names. I’d like to go and talk to them when Victor gets back.”
“You’re not going to kill them, are you?”
“What? For not operating on a woman that didn’t want it? No, I just want to talk to them about Harris, that’s all. We’re all working to get this target off your back.”
“Is it really that hard?” I asked.
“Yeah, it is. Once The Grid has been initiated, there ain’t no pulling it.” The Butcher sighed. “It’s like one of those ... blood debt kind of things. The only way to end it would be with Harris’s death, or he might have put some other agreement on the table. Again, I don’t know what he has up his sleeve. I’m just guessing.”
“This—The Grid—I guess you’ve worked for them before?”
The Butcher nodded.
“And they’re as bad as they seem. The people there are worse than monsters, Freya. They’re a group of men and women that don’t give a fuck about who they are told to hunt. It doesn’t matter if they deserve it or not.”
“Why are you not taking this job?” I asked. “I’m guessing it is worth a lot of money.”
“I’m a wealthy woman.”
“Yeah, but you’re also a killer.”
The Butcher nodded. “You’re right.”
And then I tensed up. Was I attempting to convince The Butcher to kill me? I don’t even know why I was questioning her motives.
“A long time ago, I always assumed The Grid’s kills were legit. That everyone on their list was meant to die. I guess you could say they were. Then, one day I took the call for a hit. It was for a guy, thirty-something, recently divorced. I figured he had some shady shit in his life, and I snuck into his house and waited. It was while I was waiting to kill him that he came home with his three kids. All of them were under ten years old. I listened. This guy was not a bad guy. That day, I stayed, and then I went and did a little digging. It turns out he was a wealthy guy and his wife was a whore. She had slept around, but those kids had been his children. He got the paternity test done. His only crime was being wealthy, having finances in place, and being a damn good dad. She hired the hit. He was innocent. I took this information to The Grid. They didn’t care. They refused to listen. While I tried to plead his case, one of the other hitters took the hit, killed the dad and the three kids. All the money went to the wife.”
“Wow,” I said.
“So, I started to dig, and that was when I realized The Grid doesn’t give a shit if it’s a good guy or a bad guy. They follow the money. I had killed a lot of people who were good guys.”
“Did you do anything about the wife?” I asked.
The Butcher smiled. “She didn’t get the chance to enjoy the life she had made for herself. Karma was a bitch, and trust me, by the time I was done with her, she wished she hadn’t even met the guy.” The Butcher took a long swig of her drink. “I’ve been trying to find ways of ending The Grid. From time to time, they go quiet. It’s only when a really wealthy person puts out a hit, that they come out of the woodwork.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For everything you must have gone through. That couldn’t have been easy, realizing what you had done and who you had been working for.”
The Butcher pressed her lips together. “Yeah, it fucking sucked.”
It was the first time I saw how upset The Butcher actually was. This did bother her more than she let on.
Chapter Ten
Victor
I traded places with The Butcher. I hadn’t intended to come back to the island, or at least I had hoped for The Grid to have been dealt with before I returned to take Freya back home with me.
We’d been unable to locate Harris. He kept moving, and that was just suspicious. I didn’t get it. His sons had been useless. Although they lived with their father, they knew next to nothing about the business deals. They were just told what to do, what to say. They were nothing more than puppets. They didn’t even realize their sister had a hit put out on her, and it had come from Harris.