Page 127 of The Guru: Shadow
“I am not.”
“This is not getting the target off my back; it is making me the target,” she shouted at him. With it, everything else in the room went quiet. It was consuming to see her enraged. There were only a few things more attractive than female rage. To him at least.
“Yes, but it gives you authority,” and whispering he added, “Like I said, to the world outside, you are my queen.”
“My face is on every fucking newspaper and news site! Deis, you are fucking crazy! They will all come after me!”
“They might, only I don’t believe so.”
“Youbelieve?” she spat at him derogatorily.
“They are scared of what else you know. Your father was the most trusted man, he kept all the secrets Richard wanted vanished.”
“Exactly. That’s why they’ll kill me the moment they can.”
“No, they won’t. Because in forty-eight hours, the world will only know you as the one who was the essential element in me bringing down the worst conglomerate on this planet. And if they so much as look at you, people will turn on them.”
It was a bit of a gambling strategy, always having the bigger picture in mind, but he could not let her know what else was there, otherwise she would probably leash out again. And right now, he needed her fully focused. She, however, was intelligent. And she saw exactly what could go wrong.
“You are so, so wrong. If it will be as you say, they won’t have anything to lose. People who have nothing to lose don’t act rational.”
“True, that is why I haven’t put everything out there I could have.”
“And what is that?” She eyed him with crossed arms, which reminded him of his mother when he had done something, but she didn’t know what exactly, only that he did.
“Something in the scope of footage of Delilah fucking a seventeen-year-old and Richard raping a woman, who he had killed afterwards, and him financing an underground organization.”
Emma closed her eyes for a moment, and all of her gave the impression she was on the verge of losing her shit.
She’d come around.
33
EMMA
PLAYLIST: IF YOU CARE - EVAN BARLOW
Aholy fucking nightmare, that’s what it is.He made me, just like that, the enemy. The villain. The one Richard and Delilah DeBarra, with their billions of resources, would for sure go after. Even if Deis held stuff back for leverage, he would destroy them, their legacy. And from what she had heard of them, it was just as important to them as it was to Deis. People like them would never let it go, never.
And somewhere deep down in the depths of her body, a shallow feeling crawled up on her. A foreboding feeling that Deis wanted her where she was now. He was a master strategist. He would never let anything so risky or so loosely play out without a backup plan or a different motive.
So, what is his true agenda?
Because clearly there was something he did not tell her, something that made an icy shudder run through her whole body. And while everything around her became quiet, her anger ebbed, and her thoughts became razor-sharp.
He didn’t know about Denny. He knows everything, but not about Denny. Carl tried to tell me something, that Deis is not who I think he is. Carl, who gave me his phone as a last act. And the number on the phone belonged to the man with the gun waiting at my apartment building, who was Denny.
For a second, her stomach plummeted as she just hoped Deis didn’t look in the inside pocket of her bag while she was out.
I am missing something. There is a connection I am not seeing. Denny and my father were friends. Derrick worked for Richard DeBarra. Deis is not who he’s supposed to be to the outside world. He vanished. And now I am somehow connected to it?
So, when she opened her eyes again, she knew she had to be very, very careful. The noise of everyone buzzing about streamed back into her ears. Her eyes wandered to the screens, headlines jumping at her.
Daughter of DeBarra’s Hitman Speaks Out
Gamma Killing People, Daughter of Hitman Accuses
The Secret Life of Emma Richardson