Lily
I sat there staring at Miranda, both furious and sick with dread at the same time.
She didn’t seem bothered at all by the violent drama about to unfold. She lounged in the chair like she was in a theater, waiting for a movie to start. The only thing out of place with her demeanor was the gun in her right hand.
“What were you doing in Tokyo and Italy?” I asked.
“I told you, we’re not talking about that.” There wasn’t any anger or annoyance in her voice, just cool detachment.
“Either I’m about to die, or you’re about to die – so what does it matter if I know?”
She looked at me with mild amusement. “I’m not about to die.”
Her self-confidence enraged me – and at the same time, the double meaning behind her last sentence chilled me to my bones.
Still, I kept pressing. “So tell me.”
“There was a shipment of prostitutes in Tokyo, and a shipment of heroin in Italy.”
“…into the US?”
“No,” she said, her voice registering just the barest hint of sarcasm. “Into Guam. Of course into the US.”
“But… why?”
“Because the profit margin in human trafficking and the drug trade is astronomical.”
Human trafficking.
“They weren’t prostitutes,” I realized, my insides suddenly going cold with shock and disgust. “You mean ‘sex slaves.’”
“I mean human assets. Nothing more.”
I stared at her in disbelief. You see movies with evil people, villains who do things like kidnap women and force them into prostitution, but you never plan on encountering someone like that in real life. I know it’s naïve, but I guess I believed people like that only exist in movies. That, and newspapers. Once you read the news article, you never think of them again. They’re just mug shots on newsprint, as unreal in their own way as the villains on a TV show.
But here was real-life evil, sitting across the table from me.
I knew that she was a sociopath, a master manipulator, a blackmailer, an attempted murderer, and an all-around bitch. Because of all that, I had called her evil many times before – but in the back of my mind, I could still chalk all of her actions up to an irrational rage towards Connor.
But this… this was her preying on the weak and the innocent, people whom she didn’t even know, who had done nothing to her. This was evil distilled down to its purest, most vile form.
And yet, it didn’t make sense. Not from the calculating Miranda I knew.
“Why would you do something so stupid, when you could go to prison for the rest of your life?”
She looked at me coolly. “I will never be caught.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I’m extraordinarily careful.”
“Nobody’s that careful.”
There was a gleam of triumph in her eye. “No one caught me for hiring the gunman who tried to kill Connor.”
I had known all along it was her – but hearing her admit it was like getting sucker-punched in the gut.
Finally I was able to speak. “So you admit it.”
“No one caught me for that, and no one will ever catch me for my other business dealings, either.”
“You don’t know that.”
“They haven’t caught me for the last six years.”
My eyes almost bugged out. “You’ve been doing this for six years?!”
“Yes.”
“But you’re – you’re a hedge-fund CEO! You’re already a multi-millionaire! Why would you do something like this?!”
“I’m a multi-millionaire in the world of legitimate business dealings. But I’m worth almost as much as your fiancé when you take into account all my… other activities.”
“You’re a billionaire because of this?!”
“Many times over.”
“What good is that, though? If it’s all illegal money, you can’t spend it. Not in the US. Maybe ten million here or there if you launder it, but not billions.”
She scoffed. “I don’t do it for the money.”
“Then why do you do it?”
“Why does Connor do what he does?” she asked.
“To make a difference. To make the world a better place.”
“I can’t believe you’re stupid enough to believe that,” she said, her voice dripping with disdain.
“It’s the truth.”
“You may believe that – and perhaps even he does, to a degree – but the real reason is power. He loves it, just as I do… and he will do anything to accrue more. But whatever power he has, I have ten times as much. Third-world economies rise and fall on my whim. Governments – or at least the shadow players who control them – bend to my will. I have more politicians on my payroll than I do criminals. Anywhere there is corruption, I exploit it… and I own people because of it. In every country in the world, I have my puppets and my agents, and they rush to do my bidding.”
For the first time since I’d met her, Miranda’s eyes shone with something like passion.
“It’s not about the money, Lily; it’s never about the money. It’s about power.”
And it was terrifying to see.