A Coin Has Two Sides || Kaz Brekker x OC

18. The Dime Lioness

Winnie had been working for the Dime Lions for a whole month now.

Pekka Rollins was right when he said it would be easy transferring from one gang to another. She hardly noticed the difference most days. Working the floor of the Emerald Palace was a lot like working the Crow Club. Winnie had persisted in maintaining her cold nature towards everyone around her.

No one compared to Jesper and Inej. For every conversation she had in the Emerald Palace, she would imagine she was talking to them instead of the braindead idiots who chose to work for the Dime Lions.

She had even begun to find an odd sense of respect for Pekka Rollins. She shivered at the thought of one day having that shift into loyalty like she had done with Kaz Brekker.

But she had accepted the fact that this was her life now. No one was coming for her. No one cared. And by no one she meant the one person who could save her. The Bastard of the Barrel himself.

The first week Winnie had spent suppressing the overwhelming urge to murder everyone in her sight. It left her utterly exhausted. She wasn't sleeping either as she found herself kept up by her cries and begs for anyone to help her.

In the second week, she completely shut down. It was like a switch had flipped inside of her, removing all emotion from her body. She stopped crying as she had simply run out of tears and energy. Pekka Rollins had begun using methods to get her to spill any Dreg's secrets she had learnt whilst working there, but he hadn't yet found a way to get her to talk.

The third week was when she accepted her fate. That was the week she had been given a job to get information out of a member of the Dregs. Her name was Imelda and Winnie had known her from working the Crow Club floor.

"Winnie? Is that you?" a Suli girl asked as Winnie approached her in an alleyway.

She had been tracking Imelda for the past two hours and chose the best location to get the job done without any of the other Dregs coming to her aid.

"Hi, Imelda", she said with sorrow in her voice, knowing what she was about to do to someone she had once called a friend.

"We all thought you were dead or something. Kaz had told everyone you had left Ketterdam, but you know that's just code for when someone gets killed or taken by a rival gang", Imelda explained.

"Unfortunately for you, it's the latter", Winnie spoke calmly as she summoned the shadows to surround them both, enclosing them in a dark sphere.

"Wait. What are you doing?" Imelda questioned. Winnie could detect genuine confusion in her voice.

"I need you to tell me about the Dreg's new chip collection system, Imelda", Winnie said with as little emotion as possible.

"Why do you need to know that? You're a Dreg", Imelda questioned.

"Not anymore", Winnie replied. Something pulled at her heart when she did.

Imelda slowly understood what was happening and reached behind her for her knife.

Winnie knew her tricks. She knew Imelda found throwing knives as easy as breathing.

Before Imelda could grab her knife, Winnie had her held in a grasp of shadows.

"Please don't make me do this", Winnie begged, a small tear forming in her left eye.

"You're a traitor. We all knew it from the moment you walked into the Crow Club dressed like a Ravkan princess. We all knew you were evil. It was only a matter of time until you did something like this. Why Kaz kept you around for as long as he did astonishes me", Imelda spat.