“ What the Fuck?” She burst through the doors to the lab, the heat hitting her face at a blast.
The scientists looked up from their work.
She stood there for a second, staring at him reading a
secondhand magazine fished out of a trashcan. He looked at her lifelessly.
“ What. The. Fuck. Are you doing?”
“ Nothing.”
“ Nothing? Then what is that girl doing in the cell?”
“ What girl?” He feigned innocence.
“ What girl, huh? Perhaps the naked one covered in blood. Rita?”
“ She was getting in my way. I was working on a prototype.”
“ In your way? She was tied up.”
“ Rita came undone. She was bothering me.”
She stared at him accusingly. He looked weak, his black t-shirt hanging listlessly on his muscled frame, loose at the neck. She hated weakness. She would not, could not, tolerate it. She hated him for looking
weak, as it only served to make her look weaker.
They had met at a party. She was there to
assassinate a world leader, he was a guard. She had initially loved his looks, the hard jutting cheekbones and chiseled jaw encased in chilly white skin, cold, steely gray eyes to match. He had been dressed in an all black tuxedo, with a magnum hidden underneath his snug jacket and a 5 inch
dagger in his sleeve.
She remembered the way he pulled her aside behind a pillar and
frisked her, his eyes meeting hers for a moment when he discovered the paper thin blade strapped to her inner thigh. And he had let her go through.
And later, when guests were fleeing in panic as the leader sat dead with a knife through his heart, he had grasped her arm above the elbow and lead her away to her car, saying only “ This way if you please.”
She had had a background check run, listening excitedly to the results. Trained to the hilt, and the name: Heir Presumptive
Lord Anton Von Grimm. She ran it over in her mind, Anton Von Grimm. She imagined it with hers: Lord and Lady Von Grimm.
She felt that awkward, aching feeling in her chest, and the goose bumps that felt painful when she ran her hand over them.
She wanted to rule the world with him.
It was he who found her.
He came to her father’s lab facilities, stalking her associates and minions. Her father’s guards caught him on the grounds of their estate, and beat him soundly.
The Doctor had asked her afterwards, “ My dear, why did that man ask for you?”
She had blushed softly as her father injected a serum into her vein.
She was the daughter of the infamous
villain, Doctor Albert Durand, and the skillful assassin Hoshiko Kasumi Shimizu. Her father had taught her everything he knew, genetically modifying her to be the most deadly weapon in his arsenal. Her mother taught her social discipline on her monthly flights to the Academy in an undisclosed location in the hills of Japan, as well as calligraphy and advanced martial arts. She spoke 14 languages and was proficient in over 30 forms of fighting. Other children were read to sleep with nursery rhymes. Her father read her
The Art of War, and his personal manifesto on the
enslavement of humanity was her grade school primer.
Von Grimm never told her how much he loved her. Yet he had always cared so deeply. He had seen her at his prime-minister’s functions, always resplendent, always in red. She had watery green eyes with an obvious
Asian slant that caught the light and glowed was in the heat of
battle, and pale skin like cream. He had wanted to run his hands through her hair, black as
India ink and so soft.
They finally spoke, when he snuck into her bedroom at night, his hands still bloody from where he had vaulted over the barbed wire. He still had scars.
They had talked for hours, lying in her bed with a torn piece of her nightgown wrapped around his hands. They lay there and she told him of her plan for world domination.
It was then that he
first kissed her.
It had been thirteen years, and they had been husband and wife for eight. And he still never said it. Never.
She stood in the Laboratory and looked at his dejected form, slumped over a Scientific Review. Together they had conquered the world.
But she was lonely for his words. She missed what she never had. He had never said it, and would likely never say it.
She wasn’t upset about the girl. They had been planning to murder her ages ago.
She had realized it the night before, that he had never said it. Not at the times he should have, not at their
wedding, during their honeymoon conquering
Russia together, not even the night she had assassinated the President of the United States. Not once could she remember it.
She began to sob, big heavy
tears that blurred out her vision. She fell forward as he caught her and took her out of the lab, down the hallway.
He set her down and she immediately slumped to the ground, her body heaving with ragged sobs. She gurgled and choked, big fat tears running down her face.
He sat down next to her and buried his head into her shoulder.
" I'm so
sorry," He said, not knowing what he had done.