Cruel Paradise - A Mafia Romance Chapter 141

“Once the paper has printed retractions of your articles, I’m going to be ordering an exposé of my own. Your name will look good in a headline, I think. Reporter Caught Fabricating Lies, Harassing Witnesses. ‘Phlegmy Remmy,’ they’ll call you. Leonard suggested that himself. Has a nice ring to it.”

He shakes his head and stumbles backwards. His hands paw at the air in search of something to hold onto, but he comes up empty. “No… you’re gonna ruin me. No one will hire me ever again…”

I smirk. “Trust me, Mr. Jefferson: that is the least of your concerns.”

His eyes dart around the office again, probably looking for the red sniper dot he thinks is aimed at his forehead. “W-what do you want from me?”

“It’s a little late to be asking that question, don’t you think?”

He reverses course and stumbles forward, fear winning out over every other emotion as he collapses to his knees in front of my desk. “Are you g-going to k-kill me?”

“It does seem like the cleanest way to end this.”

He sucks his breath and teeters from side to side like a puppet on clipped strings. “Please. Please, I’ll do anything. Anything. Just let me live.”

I lean forward and regard him. If anything, he’s even more pitiful than I pictured he would be. I suppose he’s taught me two things today.

You can always sink lower.

“Alright then. Let’s start with an honest conversation, shall we?”

He gulps. “W-what do you want to know?”

“Start from the beginning. Start from the moment you approached Emma for the first time.”

He’s shivering violently. His hands grip the head of the chair as he struggles to breathe, to think, to talk. “If I tell you everything, will you let me live?”

I tilt my head to the side and consider it. “That depends on how honest you are.”

Words start pouring out of his mouth in a repulsive, stuttering torrent. “I f-followed her, okay? Even after she said no. Even after she told me to take a hike. That’s what you want to hear, right? I figured I just needed to wear her down. Figured that, if I waited around long enough, you’d kick her to the curb, treat her like shit. All you rich men, you treat women the same, like they’re dispensable—” He eyes me warily but when I don’t say anything, he continues. “I figured she’d get her feelings hurt and then she’d come running to me.”

“And when that didn’t happen, you decided to continue stalking her?”

His tongue flicks out to moisten his thin, chapped lips. “I was following a story; I’m a reporter. It’s my job to do anything for a story.”

“Does that include pushing a defenseless woman down a flight of stairs?”

He stops short. His gaze drops. He’s sweating now. Beads of perspiration roll down the sides of his forehead despite the fact that it’s actually quite cool in here. It’ll be even cooler in just a moment, when I throw this poor bastard’s body through the window.

“It w-wasn’t like that! I didn’t push her. I fell; I must have taken her down with me.”

Anger is coursing through my veins now. The mere thought of this son of a bitch laying hands on Emma, pulling her tumbling down the stairs…

He must see the bloodlust on my face, because he gulps loud enough to echo around the tiny office. “I wasn’t looking to hurt her, okay? I just wanted to get her to talk!”

“And when you realized she was unconscious at the bottom of those stairs… Tell me, Jefferson: what did you do then?”

We both know what he did. He ran. I’ve seen the fucking footage. But I want to hear him say it. I get to my feet and he scoots back on all fours like the roach that he is.

“Y-you promised you wouldn’t kill me!”

I laugh and crack my knuckles. “I don’t remember making any such promise. Just like you don’t seem to remember what happened after you pulled Emma down that staircase with you. Memories are tricky things, aren’t they?”

He’s drooling in his terror. It slicks his wobbly chin and the front of his stained shirt. The man disgusts me in every way possible. “I left, okay?” he cries out, more spittle flying everywhere. “I saw that she was unconscious and I fucking ran.”

“Like the coward you are. Say it. Say what you are.”

Emma was pregnant then. I don’t expect this weasel to know it, but it makes all the difference in the world. She had my baby inside of her when he took her down those stairs. She had my future in her womb.

“Y-yes… I’m a c-coward.”

I saunter around the desk and he keeps backing up so far that he hits the shelf on the opposite wall and dislodges a couple of books that rain down on his head.

“Keep going. You’re not done with this story yet.”

“I kept following—”

“Stalking,” I snap. “Don’t sugar coat what you did.”

He swallows. “I kept stalking Emma… and I noticed how things were between her and her brother-in-law.”

I nod grimly. So far, Jefferson’s version of events is lining up with Emma’s story.

“I approached him one day and offered him a payout if he agreed to help me dig up dirt on you and Emma. So he started snooping around for me. A few days later, he found the contract in the glove compartment of her car. I recorded that conversation. It’s on a flash drive in my top desk drawer.”

Goddammit. I mean, I’m relieved. But I’m also pissed off.

With myself, mostly.

She never sold me out. She never betrayed me. It was her deadbeat leech of a brother-in-law who turned her life upside down just to make a quick buck.

“Th-that’s it, okay?” Jefferson pleads. “That’s everything. I told you everything. Just please, let me—”

I swoop down, haul him up by the spit-flecked front of his shirt, and break his sentence off with a fist to his face. I let go of him as the blow lands, so he goes smashing into the wall-mounted shelves. The drywall crumbles instantly and the whole thing caves in on him, a shower of books and wood and asbestos raining on the mudak’s head.

He’s a sniveling pile of limbs as I advance closer. His nose is once again broken to bits, courtesy of me. I’d say he’ll need surgery to fix it, but he won’t live long enough for that to reach the top of his list of concerns.

He blinks open, face streaked with drywall dust, and wails like the little bitch that he is. “P-please… don’t… don’t k-kill me…!” he sobs.

For what he put Emma through, for what he made me put her through, I should fucking slaughter him right here, in the place where he signed his own death warrant. But that would be too easy.

Death is too fucking good for this bastard.

I’ve changed my mind on the fate of Remmy Jefferson. I don’t want to execute him here and now; I want him to live the rest of his days, never knowing which one will be the last. I want him to look over his shoulder every time he steps out of his house, never knowing which shadow will be the one that swallows him up for good. I want fear to be the only thing he can taste. I want him never to sleep again.

Or at least, that’s what I’ve decided now. Who knows? I might change my mind again in the next minute or so.