Silence draped the room like a thick blanket woven from barbed wire. Both men sat in warm leather chairs while Zaida sat gracefully atop of the coffee tables edge.
“Steve, this is Zaida, one of the sisters I was telling you about,” Sam finally said. She gave Steve a smirk and wink.
Steve shifted in his seat, glancing at Sam imploringly. Sam rolled his eyes, then looked to Zaida, waiting for her to say something. She remained silent, knowing full well how it was winding them up. Pointedly ignoring him, she instead grinned knowingly at Steve.
Frustrated with the awkward delay, Sam cleared his throat once, and then a moment later a second time.
"Well, uhh... hi?" Steve tried to smile cheerfully as he said it but it turned into a constipated grimace. Something about the tension in the room made him squirm inside.
"Come on, don't pull fake smiles just for me," she teased. The tilt her head and purse of her lips left him captivated for reasons he couldn’t fully explain. There was this sense that she knew the unknowable, but she also radiated with an alluring aura. Somehow, her essence screamed of both innocence and danger, an intoxicating mixture that alarmed as well as enraptured. "Who died?"
"Benjamin. He was shot by a masked assassin when he flat lined it sent a few messages to a burner."
"And the messages said that my sisters and I knew what was going on."
"How'd you know?" Steve questioned with a frown and furrowed brows.
"I think it would be best for you both to meet the rest of my sisters, everything will become so much clearer for you," She leaned forward arching her back and reached behind her to pull her phone from her back pocket. "We were supposed to go out tonight but I'm sure they won't mind extra company."
ns 15.158.61.46da2
