Hard to Hate You // Michael Langdon

Part XIV - Deals

"I have made my rules clear," Ms. Venable states from behind her desk as she begins to stand.  "Copulation is an offense punishable by execution.  If you think you can-"

"Your rules?" I interrupt.

She stops talking and purses her lips, realizing her mistake.

I smirk as I step forward.  "Ms. Venable, you are not fooling anyone.  We all know that you lied about the rules, and that's why Timothy and Emily had sex.  Sure, it was foolish of them to not confront you first, but it is still not at all justified to kill them."

"I don't understand why you care so much," she responds.

I roll my eyes.  "I don't, but the other outpost residents do."  In all honesty, I don't care about them either; I just want to spice things up in this boring outpost.

She narrows her eyes.  "I don't know what's up with you and Langdon undermining me-"

"Undermining you?" I question.

"Oh, it's quite clear that you and Langdon are working together to conspire against me."

I scoff.  "Please, Langdon and I could not hate each other's guts more than we do."

She raises a brow.  "Why do you spend so much time with him then?"

"You know what they say: keep your friends close but your enemies closer."

"I'm having a hard time believing that you and Langdon are enemies."

I mockingly raise a brow.  "Really?  Have you not noticed both of our headstrong personalities?  They clash constantly; it's not a good combination."

"But if you two worked together, you would be capable of quite literally anything; I'm sure that one of you must've been smart enough to have figured that out by now."

I stare at her silently, not allowing my face to show any emotion.

"Oh, you haven't?" she asks disbelievingly.  "That's shocking."

"Ms. Venable, I believe we were discussing your creating rules of your own in this outpost," I state, bringing us back on topic.

She folds her hands over her cane in front of her.  "And what about it?  Most of the minds that were behind the creation of these outposts were those of men, and we all know that men can't be trusted with shit.  Besides, the two coke whores that granted me control of this outpost had no objections with the idea of my creating my own rules."

"And they were men as well?" I ask.

She scoffs.  "Everybody in that insane cult was a man - of course, besides the prostitutes who threw themselves at the men.  It was absolutely disgusting; if women had been running that company, not a single prostitute would be in sight, but those perverted men couldn't work if there weren't some woman performing obscene acts on him."

"So you're a raging feminist?" I question.

A slight smirk plays across her lips, but she quickly covers it up.  "If you'd like to word it like that," she shrugs.  

I smirk.  "Ms. Venable, now I can work with that.  How about we compromise here?"

She tilts her head curiously.  "Compromise?"

"You see, Langdon wants to kill you for your actions," I lie, although I wouldn't consider it much of a lie since Michael would kill Venable anyway if given the chance, "But I don't agree with him at all.  Withdraw the no copulation rule, and I will somehow convince Langdon to give up on the idea of killing you."