1. Blackmail
Chapter 1.
Leanne Collins looked down at her teacup, and once in a while she’s staring outside at the sky from the clear-glass-window with her empty-looked. She got a lot on her mind, but the first thought she always think about the most, is how she can get away from the life that she’s been living for the past five years.
She’s looking around inside the-not-so-trending coffee shop from her seat, but her mind is not really there. Leanne is in a small town called Dermont— a city that quite far from where she actually lives.
She is waiting for her blackmail-victim, a successful married guy in his late thirties. Of course, she’s only a messenger, a pawn, a puppet holds by its puppeteer who’s own her. She would never have the heart to destroy anyone’s life, but she had to do it for the last five years because she doesn’t have any other choice.
This wicked role has eating her inside, makes her life miserable, further more because she still can’t find a way to free herself from it.
The door’s bell is ringing once it got opened by a man whose frustration showed on his face. The man is handling a big size gym bag on his hand. He’s the guy that Leanne’s been waiting for, and he quickly recognise her. He came over her table and take the seat across to her while putting the gym back on the table.
“I’m sure you had put the right amount inside?” asked Leanne while doing a quick check on the stacking money inside. Five years of that kind of ‘job’ makes her good in covering her emotions on the outside—even though the opposite thing happens inside.
“Of course. I’m perfectly aware with the fact that I won’t be safe, if the money is short even only by a dime. You’ve made it pretty clear as well!” The guy’s look is very desperate at the moment, he worries that his mistakes will ruin his family and career –since he’s trying to run for the mayor of the city too. Everybody in Dermont town knows Ty Bronson.
“How can I be sure that there will be no more extortion on me? And all the evidence has been wiped out?” he said with his fist on the table.
Leanne took the SD-card from her cosmetic bag and she dropped that memory card underwater, inside her tea—making sure her fingerprints won’t be found there.
“That’s the only evidence, you can have it. My suggestion? You better let this go—as if it never happened.” Said Leanne briefly. She stands up, taking the money and about to leave the place.
Ty grab her arm, not satisfied with the possibilities that he might get lied to. “You’ll not get away from this. Mark my words!”
“You’re the one who should LISTEN! I’ve been doing this A LONG time—a long time so I can say to all the victims as yourself—that you DON’T play games with this kind of person! I’m not the one who put you in this position. You did it on your own!” Leanne burst out, feeling mad for a while.
“Next time— better think again before you decided to cheat on your wife! Or not. It’s your call.” Said Leanne while giving him a clue with her head, so that Ty know where to look outside, and he knows that Leanne is not alone.
Any of his actions that delaying or harming Leanne, can make the exchange operation in jeopardy. But he refused to take another extortion from his blackmailer.
“I’m not going to give you the money IF you can’t assure me that, that memory card is gonna be the last evidence ever.” He said.
“Did you even hear anything that I said?! You are NOT my first victim okay? When I said; let this go, you should LET this GO. If you lay low after you pay, they wouldn’t bother you again.”
Leanne started to feel a little bit panicking, she can’t fail the job there is too much innocent people at stake. “Where do you think they can get your pictures the first time, huh? They are EVERY WHERE. They can BE everybody you don’t expect. I’m sure they even know where you live, and everything about your family. You want to fight against them?! Go ahead. I can let you talk with them.”
When Leanne is about to give her ‘bodyguards’ the code, Ty is finally giving up and releasing his grip on her.
“Just lay low, and try not to cheat on your wife again!” said Leanne before leaving Ty at once. She instantly walked out the coffee shop, using her sunglasses and walk toward her ‘bodyguards’ whose duty were to drive her back to their boss too.
Maybe Ty will think for her of someone hypocrite, since she herself works as the blackmailer for the boss, yet she dared to suggest him to go back at the path of truth.
Not that she never cares about anything they were thinking about her—or the fact that even if she cares, she can’t change a single thing anyway. Mainly, she can make herself to keep going under pressure of her boss, is because all of her boss’s victims are the ones who put themselves in troubled, by choosing bad decisions on the first place.
Secondly, she happened to know that money is never an issue for all of the victims. Most of them payed the demands in comply, and move on.
For those victims who’s even wish to give a fight usually was not ‘heard’ at all anymore, hence, they got killed—got wiped out from the world as if no one ever knows them. Or if someone knows, they would have to accept that her boss always gets away from the murder accusations upon him.
So, it is better—at least everything is getting better for all the victims who’d complies.
It’s different with her and what she’s been dealing with. FIVE YEARS. No one ever know about the situation she’s in— or what she’s been through to be free from her boss.
Leanne has done everything she could, and have been accepting all the consequences from her every attempts too. Where every failed attempt, she’ll learn it in the hard way until she realised that she just had to be her boss puppet doing wicked things, and she can’t keep trying to run away. Because even she is her boss’s right hand, her chance of life still can be run out too.
