STRANGER, jesper fahey

CHAPTER SEVEN

"What's your favourite colour?"

There was a certain excitement festering inside her corpse for the next couple of days as she danced around her house, silent footsteps echoing through the thin walls as she began to plot and scheme with a mind filled with dangerous intentions and madness. Because Gwen had finally found a weakness in Brekker's armour, finally found something that she could chip away at, something she could use to bring him down to his knees like she had done to many a man before him, and there was something so powerful about the thought of it.

And it had only taken almost three months of pure, mindless flirting with the sharpshooter, his supposed second in command, to get it. Kruge, how could she of not made that simple connection before? Was she losing her touch or was she just stupid? If there was one thing Brekker seemed to care about most in the devastating and cruel world around them, it was his money, his building empire that was threatening to take the whole of Ketterdam and make it anew. And it had only been when she'd went home after making sure Jesper didn't die of alcohol poisoning did it all finally click into place like a broken puzzle.

It had been something he'd said in his drunken ramblings, something that hadn't struck a cord because she'd been far too...distracted by a pretty face which had made frustration stew in her gut like the violent tides of the sea.

"I almost lost Kaz his precious kruge." He'd said, slurring his words and leaning heavily across her burdened shoulders, too intoxicated to even truly notice the weight of what he'd been saying, and perhaps never actually knowing the truth of her mocking betrayal if she played her cards right. Maybe...maybe there was a chance she could kill the so-called dirthyhands and still see Jesper. But as soon as that thought had tempted her, she'd shoved it away in the same breath, locking it up tight, stored away in her haunted mind and refusing to even give herself a moment to think about it even more than she should.

She couldn't allow such weakness to control her, she couldn't allow him to make her feel unless she wanted to be completely and utterly ruined by her own humanity. Gwen didn't regret any of the sins she'd committed, done through stained hands that begged for salvation...and that was because to be wicked, was to be alive, to force the world to give her something when it had taken everything from her, making sure they were even through stolen breaths and bloodshed. But she knew, she knew that if she continued with the sharpshooter, allowing him to strip her naked of all defenses...that cold scrutiny would come crumbling down.

Gwen Rietveld should be dead, she'd made sure of it, she'd been buried alongside her brothers, giving a chance for the Stranger to begin anew...and yet there was just something about Jesper Fahey that made her rise to the surface...and she had to put a stop to it, quickly.

However, she didn't exactly have a plan on how that was going to happen, and unfortunately, she didn't have time to that evening considering Scruffy had decided to help himself to all of the fish once more, meaning that after she'd managed to clean it all up and only throwing up four times instead of the usual twelve, she found herself hunting through the market, her head bent low, focusing down on the dirty ground beneath her feet with her upper lip curled and ever thankful for the inventor of shoes that prevented such things from touching her bare feet and making her scrub her soles raw.

And then, when she finally looked up, she saw the very person she didn't want to see, time seeming to freeze in place as their eyes caught over the masses, the air thick with tension as the winds began to howl and the sky began to rumble...and then that moment was broken as he grinned and moved towards her, a thin sheen of sweat gathered across his forehead as he weaved his way through the crowds, shoulders bumping into people who didn't move out of his way and barely sparing them a glance when they cursed at him. "Gwen! Just the girl I was looking for!"