My personal list is finished, I have billions in the bank, and I don’t need to swim in the underbelly of New York’s ecosystem anymore. I can focus on making Meredith happy with me, continue cementing our relationship so I won’t lose her again.
I really am becoming a fucking sap…
“What suburb, Meredith?” I ask. “I need to know exactly what you want.”
“I want you to tell me what a D-27 job is. That’s what I want.”
“Fine.” I give in. “It’s a very basic threat job in New Orleans, possibly Las Vegas as well. Hypothetically, if I were to take it, I would follow the target for a few days. Then I’d get him alone and make it known that he owes the wrong people money. I’d make it clear that he has a few days to pay it, and if he doesn’t, he’ll be handled by someone else.”
“That’s it? No violence?”
“None at all,” I say. “D-27s don’t typically escalate that far. They’re not bad people, they’re just greedy as hell, and they usually steal from the poor.”
“So, they’re pay-day loan executives and banker type of guys?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“Hmmm.” She taps her lip. “How much does someone pay you for something as simple as that?”
“It varies.” I tap my phone and open the text message from Trevor. “This one is two million dollars. It’s a lot less than usual.”
Her eyes widen, so I start to text Trevor that I’m not interested.
“I want to go with you on this job.” She grabs my hand before I can hit send. “I want to help you do it.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” she says, looking dead-ass serious. “I don’t want to live a boring, bland life in the suburbs and I don’t want a typical happily ever after. And I know you don’t either… I want to live in your world.”
I blink, completely stunned again by the way her mind works.
I shouldn’t entertain this idea at all, but from the look in her eyes—that familiar, longing and intrigue when she first found out what I did for a living, I know that she’s not bluffing. She wants this.
She wants me as I am.
“My world isn’t a pretty place,” I say. “It gets darker the deeper you go, and once you step in and work with my type of people, you’ll never be the same. You’ll start reading people like you read books—looking in between the lines for their lies and their secrets, and you’ll start to realize that they’re never who they say they are. It might ruin you.”
“On the first night we met, I told you I was already ruined…” She pauses. “I meant that.”
I smile, but I don’t say anything else.
“I don’t think you could leave your world if you tried anyway.” She starts talking again. “I definitely can’t see you trading it in for Wall Street or a nine to five.”
“You’re wrong,” I say, cupping her face in my hands, feeling the beta-male shit seconds away from slipping from my lips. “I’d do it if it was the only way to keep you.”
“Do you really mean that?”
“I promise that.” I run my fingers through her hair. “I would give it all up for you. If that’s what you want.”
“I don’t,” she says. “I want you to share it with me. I want to keep building our legacy.”
“Our legacy?” I smile, pressing my lips against hers. “I wasn’t aware that’s what we were doing.”
“Well, now you know.”
“You are aware that this means you’ll be pursuing a life of illegal crime, right?”
“Yes,” she says, nodding. “I also know that if we ever get caught, you’ll do all the prison time and leave me out of it.”
“I will…” I laugh and move down to the floor, pulling her on top of me. “After we fuck, let’s get to work…”
Epilogue
Michael
Now that you’ve reached the end of this story, you can see that I wasn’t lying about the lack of a warm and fuzzy “happily ever after.” There were no grand displays of love, long monologues for no reason, or any soft and soothing chats about the hero wanting to become a better person.
Sure, I ended up in love with the “beautiful, feisty heroine,” but that’s a known spoiler for any fucking romance story. Even a twisted one.
And maybe—just maybe, I can admit that the minute she served me the first loss of my life, when she beat me at my own damn game, that I started to question who I really was. But the moment when I refused to grovel like the other weak book heroes, was exactly when I remembered.
Deal with it.
No, I’m not completely healed or fixed. I’m far from it.
My past still shows up in flashes from time to time, waking me up from my sleep on nights when I least expect it, but it’s nowhere near as often. And it’s nowhere near as lonely since the woman I fell for is always by my side.