TAINTED LOVE ▸ BILLY RUSSO

chapter four - shooting

As soon as the moment ended and Eve told me she had fixed Juliet's problem I had got out of that house as fast as I could, dragging Billy with me. I had asked him to sleep in his house so that I wouldn't have to deal with my drunk mother, which was only half a lie.

The next morning, I woke up by his side, again. He had an arm around my waist while the other was on my face, waking me up.

"Good morning." Billy smiles, placing a soft kiss to my lips, making me let out a small moan. "Someone's eager." He teases and I laugh at his words. "As much as I would appreciate spending the day fucking you, we have to be at ANVIL. I have a meeting at ten."

"Isn't that my job? To tell you what your meetings are?" I say, my eyes still closed.

"Who cares?" He gets up from the bed and I start to open my eyes, closing them right away when I see the light entering his room. "Get up, Scarlet."

And there it was again.

The amused look on my face changed to an almost regretful one. But I didn't regreet that. I couldn't regreet that. I needed to kill Rawlins. He had to die and this was the only way. I reminded myself.

The day passed just like all the others. I could barely notice the time passing as I had no idea how I would kill Billy. The mission kept getting harder and harder to process, maybe there was another way. The more I studied the files, the more stressed I would get. There was no other way. He wouldn't tell Rawlins to fuck off. ANVIL would go down with him, and so would Billy. After all this time, I was sure he wouldn't give that away, not for anything and certently not for me.

As I was in the same place I would be every weekend, buried in files, Eve calls me.

"Hey, remember that girl you talked about? Karen Page?" She asks and I hum in aproval. "She's a dead end. There's nothing off about her."

"Shit." I mutter, throwing my head back not knowing what else to do.

"Maybe you were right, Stacy." She breaths out on the other side of the line. "Maybe you should get him alone and kill him."

"What? I can't do that! He's the boss of a fucking security company, are you insane?" I argue, getting taken back by my response.

"Stacy, Juliet is in there! We need to get her out, if he sells her out, we're fucked. All of us." Eve argues back. "You think your boyfriend will help us? He won't-"

"Would you stop? You don't know what it's like to be in my place, Eve." I say angrily. "I'm not attached. I will kill him but if I get caught we will all die. Me, you and Juliet."

"Let's meet. We can find a way." She tells me and I nod to myself. "At the same place, at the same time."

I hang up, doing my best not to throw my phone against the wall. I decide to let out my frustrations somewhere else. I scroll down my contacts and click on Billy's name.

"You busy?" I ask.

"No..." I can hear him smirking on the other side of the line. "You wanna come over?"

"Yeah, I'll be there in ten." I hang up.

In ten it is. I ring on his doorbell and as soon as he opens the door I kiss him as deeply as I can. He kisses me back and I push him inside the house, closing the door behind me.

He wasn't in a formal suit like usually, he was wearing sweatpants and a white shirt, clothes that were quickly pushed out of the way.

After doing anything more intimate, Billy stops for a second. "You okay, Scarlet?"

"Shut up, Billy, please."I almost beg and he gets the message, going back to what he was doing.

The time passed as fast as it could, I got off him and laid on his side, catching my breath and staring up at the ceiling. Before we're able to talk, I grab my phone to check the time, noticing that in half an hour I needed to be with Eve.

"I need to gp. Thanks... for whatever this was." I sit up on the bed, getting dressed

"Yeah, me too. We talk about it later, yeah?"

"Yeah." I nod, getting my things and leaving, getting in my car and driving to Eve.

I wanted to cry, to scream. How did I let this happen? It wasn't supposed to be like this. It would be something with no feelings, I would put a bullet in his brains and then get on with the next one. There was no place for thoughts or feelings in this. It was a matter of survival. His boss ruined my life, I can't ruin his' if Billy's alive. On the other hand, if Rawlins' alive he'll never stop looking for me. I won't be able to live again. It was either me or Billy.

Eve was on her usual place, I walk to her, sitting on her side.

"How are you?"

"Who cares how I am?" I ask rhetorically and she looks down for a second. "How do I... how do I kill him?"

"Okay, so, there's this-" before she's able to end her sentence a gunshot sounds and I scream in pain as it hits my arm.

"Fuck!" I say as I push her down, hiding us behind the bench and taking my gun from my bag, shooting their way.

I groan in pain as my arm kept bleeding.

"Stop! You'll bleed out!" She yells at me, the sounds of the bullets being fired covering her words.

Eve rips her shirt and tied it around my arm. When she's done, I get back to shooting at them. Not long after that, I run out of bullets. I almost jump over Eve to grab her bag, trying to see if she had a gun or something, but she didn't.

We were on a bridge, in front of us was water, behind us were crazy men trying to shoot us down.

"We won't make it." Eve tells me noticing what's going on on my mind.

"When they notice we're out of bullets, they're coming in our direction and they're gonna kill us. If we jump, we might live." I yell at her and she nods. "We go on three." I say. "One-"

"They're out! Move in!" A voice came from behind us. I knew it, I just couldn't say from where.

"Three." I skip the two and grab her hand running out of the bridge, getting shot in the side on the process.

"No!" The same person yells as we fall into the water.