“It happened around four months ago. I was locked up. When my old boss went down, the feds scooped up his entire crew on RICO charges. They tried to flip most of us, but didn’t get the chance. The old boss did business with the worst kind of people and they weren’t going to give any of his lackeys a chance to throw a wrench in their operations. Most of the crew got whacked while they were waiting for their trials or working on making deals. They never got the chance to rat the boss’s suppliers out.” His fingers moved to the scar on his neck and I couldn’t resist the urge to touch anymore. I stretched my hand out and brushed my fingertips along the raised, smooth line along his neck. It felt hot to the touch. I wasn’t surprised at all when he dropped the bomb that he was an ex-con. I knew he was dangerous and he’d been disarmingly honest about the man he was before he was an executive lumberjack.
“I was never going to turn on anyone. I knew it was going to mean life in prison, or as long as I lasted, but I’m not a rat.” He chuckled into the darkness and wrapped his fingers around my wrist, where my pulse was thundering as I traced that wicked scar over and over again. “I thought I was doing an alright job watching my back. I was in for a couple months, had an in with one of the gangs we did business with on the outside. This kid—and I mean he literally was a child, no more than eighteen—I didn’t see him coming. He got me when the guards were doing cell checks and distracted looking for contraband. Filleted me open like I was a fish, with nothing more than a razor blade from a plastic razor. He could have been working for one of the crews that was worried I would turn. He could have been trying to earn his prison cred by taking out a big fish. He might have owed one of the guys I pissed off on the streets a favor. Who knows why he did it, because one way or the other it was coming. The prison doc did his best to save my life but it was the feds who came in and really made sure I didn’t kick it. They got me to a hospital and put the best otolaryngologist they could on my case. When I pulled through, they told me I owed them and I couldn’t argue. I sang louder and prettier than a choir on Sunday.”
I went to pull my fingers away from where his pulse was strong and steady under my touch, but he trapped my fingers in his and I sucked in a breath as he brought them to his lips. He brushed a kiss across the tip of each digit before letting my hand fall so that it was resting on the spot in his chest where his heart was beating.
“How much of that am I not supposed to know?” The words whispered out and disappeared into the darkness.
“All of it.” There was humor in his tone. “But I’ve never been very good at following the rules. If you want to sell me out to the highest bidder you can find, more power to you. As it turns out, I’m pretty fucking hard to take down. I’ve got more lives than a cat.” I’d already wasted more than one of those lives and I wasn’t about to squander any more.
I curled my fingers into the warm skin and lulling beat they were resting on. I wanted to hold his heart. I wanted reassurance that it was as strong as it seemed to be.
“I’m lucky I never ended up in jail. I’m even luckier I didn’t end up like my best friend. I have a habit for drifting toward things that aren’t good for me and a lot of those things could have gone much worse than they did.”
He turned his head to look at me and even in the mellow darkness I could make out the sharp edge of his nearly silver gaze. “How long have you been clean?”
I barked out a laugh that had no humor in it. Of course he would be able to spot an ex-addict when she was in bed with him. From the sounds of things, he used to be the reason people like me could feed that kind of habit.
“Almost a year. When Halloran, my friend that got killed, hooked up with her last boyfriend and started making choices that were really dangerous for her kid, it was a wakeup call. That little boy needed someone he could rely on and that someone was me. Plus, my sister moved out of my parents’ house finally and in with me. I needed to get my act together for her as well, but in both cases, it was too late. I lost them both while I was sober, so there was no hiding how bad that hurt or drowning out every regret and mistake I made along the way.” I had been tempted…so tempted to go back to my old ways. I could numb everything eating me up inside with a single hit, but then I’d need another and another. It was an endless cycle and I knew the only way to deal with the pain was to confront it head-on. I couldn’t be afraid of it; I had to face it.
He rolled over onto his side and stretched an arm out so that it was resting across my middle. His fingers curled around the side of my hip and dug into the gentle swell of flesh. My hand ended up curled around his ribs, trapped by his weight and the mattress underneath.
“Tell me about your sister. Tell me why you think it was your job to save her and avenge her. Tell me why you would risk everything for her.”
I tilted my head on the pillow so we were looking at each other. I exhaled and he parted his lips and breathed the sound in. It was probably the most intimate act I’d ever been a part of.
“She was my little sister. Isn’t that enough?” I’d always done my best to take care of her even when I wasn’t taking care of myself.
“It’s enough…for most people. But for you to feel like you had to come all this way on the limited information you had when you are clearly a smart and capable woman, I’m sure there is more to it than familial obligation.”
He thought I was smart and capable.
If I could have moved, I would have rolled toward him and crawled all over that big body, leaving no inch of taut, toned skin untouched. He had no idea how much those words meant to me. How hard I had worked to be that woman.
“Xanthe was always a little different; hell, we all were. Horatio was born to find peace and harmony in everything, Xanthe was born to make everyone smile, and I was created to bring chaos and disruption. My brother and sister were always easy kids. Warm, loving, kind. I was none of those things and my parents never let me forget it. As my brother and sister got older, Horatio came into his own, found a balance between his ideals and the real world, but Xanthe didn’t. She lived in a fantasy world where everyone was as nice as she was, where no one would ever hurt anyone else. It made her a target.”
Without realizing it, my whole body tightened and tensed.
“Men took advantage of her because she was pretty and sweet. She didn’t understand boundaries and that what she was giving away, she wouldn’t get back. She handed her heart over to whoever smiled at her and was crushed when she figured out they weren’t interested in forever. She went from as high as anyone could be, to the lowest of the low in the blink of an eye. Once I got my head out of my ass and focused on what was happening around me, I started looking into what could cause those kind of mood swings. She’d always been delicate, fragile, but my parents wrote it off as nothing more than her being temperamental.” I inhaled a sharp breath through my nose and dug my fingers into his side as memories rose up and threatened to choke me.