Carlota finished an excellent steak and tried to decide if she wanted dessert, or if she should forgo it tonight. If they were going to kill her eventually, it made sense to just give in to decadence.
On the other hand, she wasn’t ready to be dead, regardless of what Montague and all his worthless ilk thought on the matter.
She sighed with regret and passed it up, just having some decaf coffee, heavy with cream, to settle everything. More than once as she ate, Carlota had reconsidered going hunting. Slipping into town and seeing if she could get as lucky as Armand and Erika.
Something. Anything to fill that vacant hole of loneliness in her chest that seemed to be growing.
A pit that would eventually swallow her whole, leaving nothing but what memories remained in the minds of the ones that killed her.
Would it be enough? Would her sacrifice mean that some future agent wasn’t patted on the head and put out to pasture, just because she was a woman? After all, many men stayed in the game right up to the point that they had to retire due to age.
Why not her? Why not any of them?
She was almost ready to just mail the rest of the manuscript off. Burn everything down immediately and be done with it.
Know that she had destroyed the man, before he had gotten to her.
But she couldn’t. It would be an admission that they’d won. That she’d had to break the very rules she had established at the beginning.
That would be chocked up in her mind as a loss.
Not the way she wanted to die.
Carlota suppressed a growl and rose, maintaining her elegance as she did. The night was early, but she’d simply been too restless to stay up in her room for any longer. There was a bottle of wine up there. Most likely, she’d have a heavy glass, then watch some mindless comedy for a while, hoping to unwind enough to sleep.
That might be a losing battle as well. She would fight that war when it came.
The staff were pleasant as always, which helped. She made her way back to the lobby and the elevators, still fuming some, but uncertain as to how she might resolve everything.
Carlota was finally willing to admit, as she entered the elevator, that she didn’t really want to die. She’d been so wound up in her revenge that she’d forgotten the first maxim of revenge.
Dig two graves when you set out.
One for Montague. One for her. Borlait would be her grave. Bennan itself. All that would remain behind were the legends that would accumulate around however many chapters of the manuscript made it out before they caught her.
It was what it was. She had dug this grave, she just hadn’t realized it at the time.
Carlota sighed.
The elevator stopped midway and the doors opened. A man and a woman were entering.
The woman gasped.
Carlota shifted into full wakefulness and realized that it was Erika herself standing there.
Then the man shoved her backwards against the wall and pressed the barrel of a pistol into the bone between her breasts.
“Do not move,” he growled quietly as the door closed.