Assassins Academy

Chapter 21 So Be It

The silence in the car is defining except for the occasional direction that escapes from Lyle's ever deceitful lips until he speaks up. "She could have learned to love me, you know." After a few seconds, I shake my head, looking out the front window. "She was never going to Lyle, and she definitely never will now." I could see he was mulling this over and over in his head, trying, in his own messed up way, to make sense of my words. "That's exactly what your girlfriend said." Lyle blurts out.

I set my broad shoulders and straighten up in my chair uncomfortably.

"And so what happens when you don't need me anymore?" He says, speaking up again.

I look off into the distance, where everything seems to be molded into the horizon. It's got to be late afternoon by now, and it'll be dark soon and beautiful pink and yellow colors are streaked across the sky. "We'll lock you up, put you in a prison, and like so many other horrible things that I'm sure each of us has seen, we'll move on, and try to forget about you."

The driver beside me shifts a bit uncomfortable in the wake of my words. Lyle, from what I can see through the review mirror, just stares off into the distance for a while, until just like a huge stone that he sets down with a booming thud, he says three impossibly weighted words,

"So be it."