I Want Off This Merry-Go-Round

Ting

Ting

Ting

Ting

Daisy Pemberton could hear the piano coming from the radio as she began re-reading her email. She felt her stomach give out and felt dizzy. Her long time aide at Rapt Media had sent her this email at great risk to himself. In it, he described the conversation he had overheard. Her company, her baby she had dedicated her whole life to create and bring to the top was about to be handed over to a new CEO. And the man who made it happen was none other than her beloved fiancé and her best friend.

She cursed under her breath. She looked up at the time. Midnight. The email had come an hour ago and Frank and Trinity were supposed to be coming over tonight to help her pick out wedding music and she was supposed to sign half of her shares over to Frank before the wedding. She looked at the paperwork next to her. She had already signed it, though she hadn't given it to him yet. If what her aide said was true, Frank and Trinity had been screwing each other behind her back for a long time. Pushing her chair back, she put her head between her knees to keep from fainting.

Ting

Ting

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*Breathe* she thought to herself. *This can't be happening. Not when I am so close.*

Creak

She heard the door to the house open and could hear the Frank and Trinity bustling in. She panicked for a moment and stood up too fast, only to fall back on the chair, light headed.

"Honey?" Frank's slick voice called out to her before he stepped into her home office.

"Y..yes." Daisy looked up at her fiancé. His gentle smile made her hands clench and she decided in that moment that she didn't want to make the mistake of suspecting her husband before they were married. *No way he could have arranged a hostile take over without me noticing anything... right?* she thought. *And Trinity introduced me to Frank, there's no way she would have done that if they were lovers...right?*

Ting

Ting

"Daisy! I missed you." Trinity rushed over to her and engulfed her in a hug. She hugged her back out of sheer habit.

"Honey, is this the music for the wedding?" Frank came over and turned up the volume on the radio as the music played. "I really like this for our song." He smiled and gave her a peck on the cheek. He hummed a few notes to the song. Daisy started to let the tension in her body relax. This was her fiancé and best friend. No way they would hurt her like that. The aide must have miss heard something. She flashed a genuine smile at Frank but noticed that he was looking at her desk.

"What is this?" The email that her aide had sent was still up on her computer. Daisy was about to reach over and close the computer and reassure him it was nothing when his demeanor suddenly went cold.

"So... You know."

Daisy's world went still. She took a few steps back in horror and looked at Frank and Trinity. Frank's smile had changed to an evil leer and Trinity started laughing. Frank walked over to the shareholder paperwork. The greed on his face was disguising. Frank pulled Trinity into a passionate kiss as Daisy's legs gave way beneath her.

"Why?" Daisy whispered.

"I'm glad we finally have a chance to be honest to each other." Frank looked at Trinity. "Do you want to tell her?" Trinity smiled and approached her, placing a finger under her jaw, she made Daisy look into her eyes.

"I hate you. You were always such a bitch and nothing I did was good enough. All my ideas fell flat while your ideas always took off." She spit in her face. "This should have been my company. My father backed everything, but I got nothing from him!"

"This is because your dad didn't acknowledge you? Why didn't you say anything?" Daisy screamed at her. "How could anyone be so petty?"

"You don't know what it is like to fail. That is why I sent you Frank." She smiled and walked over to the desk chair where Frank was sitting. She straddled him and kissed him again, grinding her lower body against his in a vulgar display of dominance as she looked at the disgust on Daisy's face.

"Did you honestly think any man would really want a woman like you?" Trinity purred. Daisy's face flushed. She didn't know much about the opposite sex, but had heard the whispers about her. They called her a maneater and dominatrix in private due to her ruthless business practices. Of course any man who accomplished the same things she did would be held high on a pedestal but she thought that her love with Frank was pure and innocent. They had even agreed to wait to take their relationship to the next step till after their marriage.

"Three years?" Daisy's eyes filled with tears and she looked up at the two most important people in the world to her. The crazy thing is that she probably would have given them anything they had asked for, she loved them that much. This betrayal grated at her very soul.

"So, what are you going to do now?" Daisy looked down to the floor. Her tears fell onto the dark wood, tiny splashes in the darkness.

"I don't need you." She looked up at Trinity and could see what she had been missing in her friends eyes for years. The hate and jealousy was laid bare. She looked over at Frank and could see that Trinity was all that was filling his eyes. Daisy felt herself burn with rage in that moment and she stood. She wanted to reached to pull at Trinity's hair or slap Frank until his cheek was marked red as her rage.

Ting

Frank pulled a gun from under his shirt and pointed it at Daisy.

Bang

Daisy's world went black.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Jasper Indigo's car pulled up to the warehouse. He didn't normally come out to the desert warehouses when something was wrong, but tonight, everyone seemed to be tied up. A vicious grin spread on his face. His right hand man was dealing with some greedy cops downtown and he had sent a few of his other trusted men to quell a turf war between some thugs on the east side.

He didn't mind a greedy cop or two. Most of what he asked was for them to look the other way when he did some not so above ground work. But he couldn't stand blackmail. It took a lot of work to keep the criminal underworld in line and most of the cops knew that they couldn't handle it without him. And he made sure that the law was upheld for the most part.

He chuckled at his image of himself. An honorable criminal was hard to come by these days with the sleaze that tried to find a foothold. He put his phone on Bluetooth and put a bud in his ear and made a call.

"Max, are you there?"

"Hey, boss."

"You still getting those alerts?"

"Yeah, the first one was really big, but now, I am just getting a few fluxes. It could have been a bigger animal or someone just on a night walk, but I can't help but worry about it because of the meeting at the warehouse tomorrow."

"Roger. I'll stay on the line, so make sure you let me know if anything comes up." Jasper took a flashlight out and grabbed the gun from the glove box, loading the rounds one by one into a magazine. Whoever was trespassing on his property was going to be in for a rude awakening if they didn't have a good reason to be there. Whistling to himself, he inserted the magazine into gun and pulled the barrel back to prime the next round in to the chamber before opening his car.

The motion sensors triggered to the west of the warehouse, not far from where his car was parked and he held the flashlight up, looking off into the desert night. Sand and brush popped into view and he even saw a scorpion and snake as he surveyed the area.

"Max, I am almost to where the sensors were triggered, are you getting anything else?"

"No, and it has been a while since the sensors were triggered. It must have been an animal. Sorry boss." Jasper knew that Max was usually on the money with his worries, and he didn't mind being drug out in the middle of the night.

"No worries." Jasper lowered his flashlight and put the safety on his gun. He stared out into the desert. Millions of stars winked at him in the sky and he took a deep breath. His nose twitched at the metallic taste of the air. He knew that smell. He lifted his gun and light back up in the direction of the smell and could see a body a few years away. It wasn't moving.

"On second thought, I think you may have been onto something." His senses were on hyper alert as he approached the body. Long sandy tendrils covered her head and she was dressed in an expensive business suit. He knew how expensive it was because he liked the same designer. She was wearing one of the white suites, but in the darkness, he could see that the front was stained dark with blood.

He couched down and checked her pulse. For a second, he didn't hear anything, but after an quick adjustment, he found a weak steady pulse.

"Max, you remember the ambulance company we just took over?"

"Yeah."

"Have them send someone over immediately."

"Shit, what did you find?"

"Looks like someone wanted to hide their bad behavior by pinning their misdeeds on criminals." Jasper stared down at the woman's face and his heart wrenched. Someone had tried to kill Daisy Pemberton.