The Games We Play | ✓

14. REED BLED RUBIES

11.
[REED BLED RUBIES]

—

IN THIS WORLD, there are assets and there are liabilities.

Assets help you. Like knives, they get you what you want. They deliver the things you desire most. They silence those who get in your way.

Liabilities hold you back. Like gold, they weigh your pockets down. They disguise as shining promises only to burn away as easily as money.

Reed was a liability.

The next morning, Reed found himself tied firmly to a chair as the birds chirped in the early sunlight. He nodded awake, staring in morning confusion at his position.

"We've been exposed," she said quietly from the corner. He immediately directed his attention to her, his eyes still drowsy from sleep, still blurred with trust for her.

"What do you mean?" he mumbled, focusing his vision on the ropes that bound him place.

"People are looking for me now," she said, rising from her seat and coming to stand before him.

"Get rid of them," he said simply, tugging against his restraints.

She sighed and looked away from him. "I have to leave."

"Then let's go," he said. "We can go anywhere you want. What the fuck is this? Untie me."

"I have to leave," she said again.

Reed's mind finally began to refocus. His castle walls built back up, slowly recognizing her as the threat. His eyes met hers once again, this time guarded and obsolete.

"Charlotte," he said carefully. "What's going on? Untie me." His voice was soft and pleading, unlike anything she had ever heard before.

When she still said nothing, he began to realize the true meaning of the situation. He pulled and he pulled, his strength shaking the chair.

"Take me with you," he said almost desperately. "We can run away together."

Rosemary shook her head.

His desperation turned to demands, "Stop this, now. You can't just leave. After all of this, you owe me."

She laughed at his foolish attempts at control, "Don't you get it, Reed? I'm a thief. I steal and I cheat. I don't owe anyone anything."

"Charlotte – "

"That's not my name, darling," she smiled apologetically.

She played him just like she played all the others. She played him exactly like he had feared.

As this fact dawned on him, unmeasured rage and betrayal coursed through his veins like poison. His eyes flickered in conflict but never left hers.

"I-I cared for you," he said quietly, almost as if he couldn't quite believe it himself.

Did killers like them have the ability to care?

She sighed. "Your emotions are baggage I didn't ask to carry," she said, brushing her finger across his cheek. "I appreciate it though. Who knows? Maybe I loved you or maybe hated you, but aren't they basically the same thing?"

He said nothing as he stared at her, his face unreadable except for the slight tremor in his lips.

"What did you think would happen? That your feelings could fix me? That just because we killed together and slept together that we'd stay together? If you truly knew me, you would have seen this coming."

Reed closed his eyes. He did see this coming. He just didn't believe it.

"You played the game and you played it well, Reed," Rosemary said. "But that's all it was. A game." She leaned in and smiled, "And I played it better."

He was taken back to when they first met. She was as cruel and as cunning as she was now. Her untenable heart as dead and as unreachable as ever. He was a fool, fawning after her with senseless delusion, stupidly believing he could've changed her.

"You're wrong," he whispered.

She leaned back and crossed her arms, her empty eyes tracing his face.

"This isn't a game," he said. "It never was. You're fooling yourself if you think you're winning. This is a hunt and now you're scared because for once, you're the prey."

Rosemary was silent for a moment. He always did have a way with words. "This is Hollywood, babe," she smiled. "We're all already dead."

His own words bounced off the white marble tiles, whispering as they taunted him.

"It's been a fun ride. Perhaps I did care for you once, but it's over now," she said, almost reluctantly. "Take this goodbye as a token of my affection."

Her victims never got chances at goodbyes. They left the world in unplanned disasters that cut their strings short. They disappeared and vanished, like they never existed. She considered herself merciful for giving him one.

Reed didn't want to say goodbye. He pulled at his ropes.

He wanted to kill her.

But death didn't care what he wanted. Death took what it was given, and it was excited to take the one that had cheated it so many times.

"Game over, Reed."