𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐇 𝐊𝐈𝐒𝐒𝐄𝐑𝐒
❝ They're the French Kissers,
that's what they do.
They will lure you in
and then they'll kill you
with a kiss. ❞
━ in which the leader of the french kissers
...
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The last thing Rose wanted to be doing the day after a murder was sitting in an office with a traitor and the prospect of having to commit yet another one. But looking at the brown eyes of the English man in front of her, she found herself faced with that same decision, and wondered how could the universe beg this of her, to have both this man's life and death in her arms, as if she was but a scale through which God imposed its will, just a bridge between the last second on this Earth and the first second of whatever came next.
Rose didn't enjoy being a judge, and much less an executioner. She could argue that it had been life, or the war, to put her in that position, but the truth was that she was ambitious, and more than that she was determined to change society and its ways from within, and the only way that society and governments seemed to listen nowadays was through violence, even the unseen violence she preferred to use.
Some people needed the shadows to fully shine, and Rose was one of them.
"I know it was you who betrayed us," Rose started, painted nails drumming on the cherry wood desk as she eyed the man slowly. She had spent all day trying to find out who the traitor was and now that she finally had, she couldn't quite believe that a traitor's face could look so innocent, that a wolf could look like such a lamb. Joseph was the kind of man who had spent his whole life opening doors and pulling out chairs for ladies; betrayal wasn't in his blood. There were only two things that could make someone change from day to night, that made them shift into someone else entirely, causing them to choose and do things they would have never done before: money or love. "I just don't know why."
"Miss Salvage, please, I never meant you any harm, I—"
"So you don't deny that it was you?" Rose asked, tone slightly interested and eyes dropping to the man's throat. Beneath his skin his Adam's apple bounced up and down like a firefly trapped in a jar. Maybe that's what all humans were, to the universe above.
"I was advised not to," Joseph confessed, his voice a mere thread of sound, as if cobwebs could fall from it if he spoke any louder. It was as if his secret was so old he couldn't bear to carry the burden of it any longer. "They said Rose Salvage knew everything. So if I were caught, it would be best to confess, because Rose Salvage, unlike other criminal bosses, is also merciful, and she might take it better if we confess right away."
Rose sighed. She didn't enjoy having that part of her out in the open, because at the eyes of other criminal empires that quality was a flaw and it made her look weak. An easy prey. But Rose played with that assumption as well; people tended to be sloppier, less careful, if they thought the opponent they were dealing with wasn't scary or strong enough. It was precisely because people kept underestimating her that she kept on defeating them.
