"You were not there." Brandon snarled into the phone when it rang.
"Easy there tiger." Baby Doll answered, her voice over the phone sultry.
It grated on Brandon’s nerves. He hated to be played with and he was running out of ti.
Soon he would not have any more chances to get her, he needed to work fast. His patience was worn thin.
He had to get her before the full moon.
He paced around his apartnt like he had been doing for the last hour.
"I know everything. I have your file, I’m sure the police will be interested in what I know."
He could hear her breathing, soft even breaths.
He heard a soft chuckle. "You’re cute when you think you’re in control." Her tone was condescending.
Brandon fought the urge to hang up. He needed her.
He hated that he needed her. He hated her.
"Where are you, Baby Doll?"
She laughed.
Brandon’s grip tightened on the phone.
The silence stretched, filled with a static humming that seed to get louder with each passing second.
"I’m on my way to et soone."
Brandon was not in the mood to play gas. "Enough! Where are you?"
He was losing her.
"Temper, temper. We wouldn’t want to lose that head of yours, would we?"
She paused.
"Or any other piece of you, for that matter."
Brandon shuddered despite himself.
He felt his control slipping, his temper rising. He forced himself to take a slow deep breath. She wanted him to lose control.
He couldn’t give her the satisfaction.
"I have promised you money, what else do you want?" He cried in frustration.
"More money." She answered.
There was a long pause for a mont then Brandon spoke.
"I will give you whatever you want, I just need you to destroy Levi Van Doren."
He could hear the smirk in her voice. "That’s what I like to hear." Her tone was smug.
"et at the old abandoned warehouse by the docks. You know the one."
Brandon’s mind raced. This could be a trap.
He had no choice.
He had to et her.
"No." He snapped.
"I am sick of you tugging around like a toy, I’m not so fool you can play with.
"How do I even know that you are capable?" He added, calling her bluff.
"I don’t take insults lightly." Ca Baby Doll’s quiet answer. "But I understand that you are frustrated with the way I have handled our prior eting."
"So, in good faith I will send you a little sothing. check your emails."
Brandon reluctantly went to his laptop and saw that he had received an email with an attachnt.
"What is this?" He demanded suspiciously.
"Sothing to make you stop doubting ." She answered.
He clicked on the attachnt and he eyes grew hot as he watched a video of Levi on his knees proposing to Lyse.
His breath began to co out furiously as Lyse’s voice ca from the computer.
"Yes."
"When was this?" Brandon roared. "Tell this is a deep fake!" He demanded, half pleading.
"Not at all Brandon." Baby Doll answered calmly. "Levi proposed last night, they kept it under wraps."
"So how did you get it?" Brandon asked in a quivering voice, his heart shattered in pieces.
"I have my sources." Was Baby Doll’s glib answer. "Now do you believe when I say I am capable?"
Brandon watched the video in disbelief and he still refused to believe the scene before him.
He thought of the fact that he was late in destroying Levi because Baby Doll had flaked on him.
If she had co to their agreed eting spot, Levi and Lyse would not have gotten engaged.
He boiled in anger and imagined his hands around Baby Doll’s throat.
"When I had used you to get what I want, I will deal with you." He swore inwardly.
The video continued to play with Levi slipping the ring onto Lyse’s finger. She bead at him, her face bright with joy.
Brandon’s heart hamred against his ribs, a frantic drumbeat of rage and despair. He watched as Levi’s fingers, thick and capable, slid the simple platinum band onto Lyse’s slender hand. A band that should have been his. A mont that should have been his.
Each fra of the video was a fresh wound. He could almost feel the cool night air on their skin, see the way the city lights blurred in the background, hear the distant lapping of water against the pier. Levi’s face, so earnest, so full of a love Brandon felt he had invented and Lyse had stolen, filled the screen. And Lyse... her smile was a sunrise he hadn’t seen in months, a sunrise she now shared with another.
He slamd the laptop shut. The plastic casing groaned under the force. For a wild, dizzying mont, the room swam, the edges of his vision blurring into a nauseating gray. He braced a hand against the wall, the rough texture of the wallpaper digging into his palm. He was drowning on dry land.
His phone was still pressed to his ear. Baby Doll’s silence was a living thing, a patient, reptilian presence waiting for him to break. He wouldn’t give her that.
He straightened up, pulling the raw, chaotic energy coiling in his gut into a tight, cold knot. "The warehouse," he said, his voice dangerously low, stripped of all its earlier heat. "One hour."
"You’re learning," she purred, and the line went dead.
The click echoed in the silence of the apartnt. Brandon stood there for a long mont, the phone a dead weight in his hand. The engagent video had been a masterstroke of cruelty, a precise cut to a nerve he hadn’t known was still so exposed. But it had also done sothing else. It had burned away the last of his hesitation, the last vestiges of the man who thought he could play these gas and walk away clean.
He moved to the window, looking down at the street below. The city lights stretched out in a glittering, indifferent tapestry. Sowhere out there, Levi and Lyse were celebrating. Sowhere out there, Lyse was wearing a ring that symbolized a future she had promised to him. He pictured Levi’s hands on her, Levi’s laugh in her ear, and the cold knot in his stomach turned to ice.
He wouldn’t just destroy Levi Van Doren. He would erase him. He would make him a ghost, a cautionary tale whispered in dark corners. And Baby Doll... she was a tool, a wicked, sharp-edged tool, but a tool nonetheless.
And when she was done serving her purpose, she would be gotten rid of like evidence in a cri.
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