Euan

 

Elsie flopped on to the couch. The disappointment on her face wasn’t hard to miss, although she did try to conceal it.

“Hey,” I offered as I settled down beside her. “He’s just one guy.”

“One guy who holds my genes. One guy who is the only one to know anything about my mother. One guy who could have been so much.”

Her openness surprised me. She was usually so guarded, and the emotion, in both her words and her expressions, made a rare change.

“You’re better off without the cunt, Els,” Felicity offered, giving Elsie’s knee a quick squeeze of support. “We need to take him down.”

Ebony narrowed her eyes on Elsie when she didn’t respond to Felicity’s proposal. “Elsie, what’s going on in there?”

Elsie sighed and rubbed at her tired eyes. “I’m just tired.” Looking to Tehni, she asked, “Did you find anything out?”

Tehni clicked her tongue. “Not much, but Caroline knows more than she’s letting on.”

“Caroline?”

“Caroline is Frank’s ‘bit of everything’,” Felicity divulged. “She caters to his personal asks, but she keeps his finances and business affairs in order for him. She’s the only one that he ever actually shares things with.

“I just want to know that Sally is safe,” Elsie huffed out. Rolling her head around her stiff neck, she shook her head. “What the fuck is going on?”

“Beat if I know,” Felicity grumbled, stifling a yawn of her own.

“This is useless,” Ebony muttered. “We’re all as fucked as warm farts. We should get back on this tomorrow.”

Everyone nodded, agreeing. I was as exhausted as the rest of them. “You manage to pick me up some stuff, Ebony?” I asked. All I needed was a hot shower and to sleep for a decade.

“Couldn’t find an open store. Sorry.”

I noticed Elsie frown, but she remained quiet.

“No worries.” I smiled and took the stairs. I needed to peel myself out of my clothes. Blood and guts hid the simple grey pattern on my t-shirt, and the smell was becoming seriously offensive.

Switching the shower on, I preheated it until the bathroom filled with steam. The first snow of the season had settled, and the nip in the air was seeping into the old cabin. The wind was howling outside and penetrating through every weak spot in the building’s structure, causing the plumes of steam from the hot water to dance in the faint draft.

Stripping out of my clothes, I wrapped a towel around my waist and walked back into the bedroom.

“Shit, sorry.” Elsie blushed and made a point of fixing her eyes on my face instead of my bare chest as she retreated a little. “Umm.” She held out a couple of toiletry bottles and a bar of soap. “I thought you’d need something to wash the shit off.”

She smiled and threw them across the room from her spot in the doorway. They hit the bed and bounced onto the floor.

Quirking an eyebrow, confused by her nervousness, I tilted my head. “Why are you so flustered? Surely you’ve seen a guy’s chest before.”

Her eyes dropped to the floor, and her cheeks burned scarlet.

“Jesus,” I breathed out in shock. “You haven’t. Have you?”

She stood stiff, as though traumatised by my perception. “Of course I have.”

I’d never seen her so anxious. Elsie was as physically tough as they came, yet I had a feeling her spirit wasn’t as strong. She had come to rely on muscle and skill to protect her body, but what protected her heart and soul?

“Are you a virgin?” It rolled off my lips before I had the chance to stop it. Why I was so interested was beyond me.

“No.” Her eyes lifted back to mine, and the sadness in them put a bullet through my heart. The story behind her heart-wrenching expression was narrated by the crystal-clear horror that looked back at me.

She flinched when I stepped towards her, but she didn’t move away. Taking her hand in mine, I held her gaze. “How often does Frank use you?”

Her eyes snapped wide in shock before she squinted in bewilderment. “What?”

“Frank,” I reiterated. “How long has he been hurting you?”

Her jaw dropped, and she shook her head, unable to speak.

“It’s okay, Elsie,” I pacified softly. “Ebony told me.”

She continued to stare at me with wide eyes and an open mouth. “What the fuck are you on about, Euan?”

The way she was defending herself had me stalling. Embarrassment wasn’t causing her to deny it; it was pure astonishment.

“What the fuck?” I shook my head, perplexed. “Ebony told me that Frank uses you… physically.”

“She said what? Why would she say that?”

She spun on the spot, anger riding her. Following her down the stairs, needing to hear Ebony’s explanation, I was slightly disappointed to find only Tehni and Felicity in the kitchen.

Elsie checked Ebony’s room, finding that empty too before she gave in on her search and grabbed her phone from where it sat beside her bed.

After multiple tries, she resigned her attempts to call her and threw her phone onto the bed.

“Where the fuck is she? And why would she say that? Frank’s a cunt, but he wouldn’t do that!”

“But, before, when you wanted to meet with Denny Wells, Tehni said something about he’ll want your ass, and you replied, ‘it wouldn’t be the first time you paid in that way for Frank’s mistakes’.”

She sighed, and her face paled. Pulling her lips behind her teeth, she bit into them and slumped onto the edge of her bed.

“Frank’s mistake, yes. But that’s what it was, a mistake. Frank was horrified after it happened.”

“After what happened?” I probed, taking the space beside her on the bed.

She narrowed her eyes at me. “Why are you so interested in me, Euan? Your job is done now; you delivered me to Peter.”

Her sharp tone made me chuckle. “You’re quite a pissed off person, aren’t you?”

My declaration had her staring at me in shock and anger. “You know what?” she bit out. “Don’t pretend to know me!”

Sighing, I shook my head sadly. “Oh, I think I know you, Elsie Grey.”

“Of course you do,” she uttered with sadness that seeped from every single one of her pores. It was choking, thick and viscous. “You and everyone else. But none of you does. None of you actually take the time to know me.”

“You think that your ability to kill makes you strong, Elsie? Do you?” I couldn’t understand why I was so angry with her. She riled me like no one ever had before. The innocence and fear in her were engulfing, so why, like the rest of us, couldn’t she see that? “Let me tell you something!”

She stared at me with blazing, furious eyes, my argument making her heart beat harder and her blood run hotter.

“Every life that you take takes something away from your soul. It chips away at it, little by little, drowning it in hatred and sorrow, wounding it with pain and suffering, until all that is left is a mass of scars and hurt. A chewed-up version of who you once were.”

Fury shimmered in her eyes, warning me, but I didn’t let up.

“Each one of us can see it. You say we’re all ignorant to who you really are, although, in actual fact, Elsie, it’s you who refuses to see the woman behind the Weapon.”

“I know who I am!”

I scoffed and stood from her bed. Stubborn fucking mare!

“You’re just a person, just one person among many. That’s who you are. A person that craves love and affection, and has dreams and hopes like every other person on this planet. You’re not as cold and unfeeling as you like to make out. However, until you allow happiness in, all that hurt in you will feed on your resentment, and it will grow. It will spread like a fucking virus, into your bones, through your veins, until it destroys you!”

She was silent, unable to fight back as I quietly closed the door behind me.

Elsie Grey was the strongest Weapon ever to grace the planet, yet she had the most fragile of souls. I just prayed it didn’t splinter inside her and massacre her little by little.