God and Monsters

Chapter 30

One Month Later

"Does Francesca happen to have short blonde hair?" Ashley asks, storming into the living room with her laptop in hand.

"No," I answer, sweat dripping into my eyes. Liv drops her hand, which was curled into a fist and ready to drive right into my face. I rub my eyes, feeling the heat pressing in now that I'm no longer distracted with the screaming banshee that likes to use me for a punching bag.

"Well, she does now."

My eyes light up, forgetting all about how hot and exhausted I am.

"You found her?"

"You're goddamn right, I did. Fucking freak accident too. Cam from an old diner tagged her in a small town in South Carolina about eight hours ago. She was walking to the restroom and a waitress collided with her. Her sunglasses went flying, and bam-"

The second the words come out of Ashley's mouth. Liv's fist is flying into my stomach. I tip over, the oxygen ripped from my lungs as pain explodes throughout my abdomen. My eyes bug from my head, and only a wheeze escapes.

"What the hell, Liv?" Ashley barks.

"We weren't done sparring," Liv shrugs. "Never fool yourself into thinking you're safe, even if you do smell like pretty flowers. Did you forget I murder people?"

I cough, hunched over as I turn my head and glower at the evil witch. She giggles and skips away, satisfied that she taught me a valuable lesson for the day.

"I'm gonna kill her," I wheeze, straightening and shooting another round of daggers into the corridor she disappeared through. Another cough bursts from my throat. "After I catch my breath, though," I rasp, dropping to the checkered tile with exhaustion.

I've been sparring with her and Lisa every day, all day. Between the two of them, I'd be happy to take the coward's way out and poison them in their sleep just so a girl can get some peace and quiet. However, I can't lie and say that I'm not slowly becoming a badass. The past month has been full of ups and downs. Lisa was forced to buy a new car since hers was not only identified at Satan's Affair when Liv was caught but now as a getaway car for her this time. Thankfully, Lisa never puts anything under her name, so they still weren't able to identify him. Regardless, driving it is no longer safe, and for a second there, I thought she was going to have a memorial for the damn thing.

The USBs that Liv stole from Jimmy were useless, and due to her being caught outside of his office, his paranoia got the best of him, and he trashed everything.

Normally, it could be chalked up to happenstance that she was outside of his building, but Claire is well aware of the connection between Liv and Lisa, considering her husband was one of their victims, which means Jimmy is aware, too. Hence, why all of his devices were wiped and discarded, including the jump drives. Lisa saw it coming, though, and sent one of his mercenaries into Jimmy's house to plant extra USBs in his home office.
It paid off.

Two weeks ago, Lisa got an alert that Claire had connected one of his drives to her laptop. All of her previous employees are in the thick of their lawsuits against her, and it's safe to say Jimmy's hair has turned two shades whiter. There's no expectation for them to win, but Lisa has made sure to compensate them already for their time and effort. They all have stable jobs and protection from Claire now. Since then, our time has been spent decoding her messages and pulling as much information as possible from her business dealings. We were able to pin her location on a remote island on the other side of the world. We're going over the best way to draw her out from it, but Lisa wants to get as much intel on the Society before we kill her.

It was daunting to learn that Claire's influence runs much deeper than we'd ever imagined. She has her hands in everything. Charities, hundreds of thousands of organizations and businesses, banks, big pharmas and the medical industry, the judicial system, and of course, the entire fucking government. It will take years to undo all the damage she's done and erase her influence.