My phone beeped and buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out to see a text message from an unknown number.
‘System online. Enter code 7di%4HN*tz into the remote app. Battery packs will last a year. Sale completed. We will be gone in a couple days. See you in the news. Track me down in the place I told you about in a few years.’
I’d been waiting for that message for over a year. It meant the noose was sitting nice and snug around the Acardi Crime Family’s neck and all I had to do was put on my executioner’s hood, pull the lever and really fuck up their day.
However, my priorities had changed. Once my mother was cleared to leave hospital and we had a plan in place for what care she needed to get back to 100%, it was time to leave Highston, and The F King, behind us in the dust.
Somehow, the idea of coming clean to Sarina didn’t seem like an insurmountable problem anymore. As long as I could tell her it was all in my past, surely there was nothing we couldn’t get over.
She held on to me so tight whenever we embraced, like she never wanted to let go. Well, she’d never have to. All I had to do was actually get all this shit into the past.
I fucking loved her. I loved her when I was inside her and she was making my ears ring, I loved her when we whispered in the dark, I loved her when we were completely silent. I fucking loved her and I wanted to fill my life with her.
The best part was that I was sure she loved me too. More sure than if I mixed an acid and a base I’d get water and a salt.
The hard part was going to be working out the logistics of taking as much of the Acardi’s money as I could and disappearing with my mom, Sarina and my own money all in one night. I had a month or two to figure that out, and in the meantime I had to play the model employee.
“Sir?”
I turned in my chair and saw one of my assistants, Pablo, standing at the entrance to my office and looking nervous. He held a few sheets of paper in his hand.
“Yes?”
“Here’s the results from the latest batch, would you like to look at them now?”
“Yeah, hand them over.” I waved him in.
Pablo gave me the test results and I flicked through them. “Has the last batch been weighed?”
“Yes sir.”
“What’s our level at for today, in total?”
“107% of target, sir.”
“Good, good. Hmmm. It looks like the initial filtration unit might be introducing trace amounts of impurities. Take it apart and see if there’s any kind of buildup in there.”
“Yes sir.”
Pablo left and I double-checked the printout to see if there was anything else that required my attention. There was nothing that needed the tweaking of a master chemist; they could carry on making perfect product just by each of them doing their little part.
I put the sheets of paper through the shredder and leaned back in my chair. That factory Tony told me about in Redmond sounded like the biggest single stockpile of cash for the Acardis any of my “informants” had ever seen, so at some stage I was going to have to take a little trip up there and see the lay of the land.
For now, though, I could do with some Sarina-time. I pulled out my phone again and sent her a message asking where she was. The answer came back after only a few minutes.
‘In the library. Millie dragged me here to study for a test we’ve got next week. What are you up to? xoxo’
I sent her a message saying I had something for her. Anvils tied to little strings at the corners of my mouth couldn’t have kept the smirk off my face. My jacket was already on and I was halfway out of the lab when the reply came through.
‘What is it? Want to meet up somewhere?’
Sitting in my car, I told her to hold tight, I’d find her there. Highston University Library was a fucking huge building. Lots of books on lots of shelves. Lots of places a sexy little human resources undergrad might get fucked hard, if somebody was willing and able to do it… and if she was able to keep quiet enough.
I started my engine with that smile still on my face and pulled out of the parking garage. I may have been planning on leaving the F King title behind, but I’d never felt more like royalty. I didn’t give much of a damn for monarchies, but I did know that one thing a good king should do is fuck the ever-loving bejesus out of his queen, so that was exactly what I was going to do.
Sarina
When Millie and I arrived in the Library, we found it a lot busier than we expected. There must have been several papers with tests and assignments scheduled for shortly after the break.
As such, we couldn’t even sit together, and the first spot I found was at the end of a long row of private desks, set up like office cubicles with temporary walls separating them. I had all my books and printouts of the PowerPoint lecture slides spread out, with scribbled notes all over them, but I couldn’t have cared less about the test.