The Last Boss' Daughter

He frowns in thought. “Could be an act.”

“It isn’t.”

His eyebrows rise, and he’s skeptical of how confidently I answered. He isn’t sure he can trust me right now. Maybe I’ve been compromised; maybe I’m as much a fucking schmuck as any other guy in the world, bewitched by a beautiful woman. What if I sell him out in the name of love and ruin everything?

I want to roll my eyes. Instead I smile, answering his unasked question. “I’m good at reading people.”

The coldness in my eyes despite the smile maybe hints that I can read him, as well, because then he flushes and retrieves his glasses, suddenly busy with his papers again. “Yes, well. If she comes around again, I don’t want to hear it from Lance.”

“Got it. I should’ve said something myself, honestly it just didn’t occur to me. Her visit wasn’t about any of this.”

He nods and is quiet long enough for me to understand I’ve been dismissed, so I turn to leave. Just as my hand touches the doorknob, Raj speaks again. “I can still count on you to show up that night, right?”

A cocktail of uncomfortable feelings trickle through me, but I barely spare him a glance over my shoulder as I open the door to leave.

“Of course.”

Instead of camping outside Annabelle's house after work, I get food and go home.

As I devour my takeout, I try not to think about her plight. About my plight. I shouldn't even have a plight. This girl is a stranger to me—okay, not as much a stranger now as she had been before, but still not worth tanking my life over. She couldn't be. It wasn't an option.

I should have never gotten involved. I should've followed orders and followed her home the first night, and that should've been it. It wasn't my job to protect her. Now, because I got involved like a fucking rookie idiot, I have a moral fucking dilemma on my hands. Moral dilemmas aren't really my thing. I try to tell myself it isn't even my dilemma, because there's nothing I can actually do about anything. I may be a player in the game, but this is not my game.

It doesn't make me feel any better.

I do what I can to keep my mind off it—work out, shower, watch some television, but I can't shake thoughts of this damn girl and her plump, soft-looking goddamn lips. I can't shake visions of tiny little Paul trying to hurt and intimidate her. Images of her goading the man she despises, unafraid. That scares me more than it should. It doesn't when I'm outside in case she needs anything, but from this distance it scares me.

Eventually I decide, just to set my mind at ease, to drive by. He probably isn't even home. If I see that she's fine, I can stop thinking about it.

That's what I tell myself.

That's how I end up driving by her house, even after I told myself I wouldn't anymore. That's how I end up parking my car up the road and creeping into her back yard to peek in her bedroom window, where the light's on. That's how I get stuck with the mental image of her curled up on her bed alone, reading a book and periodically glancing hopefully at the windows like she's watching for me.

Goddammit.

I should've kissed her at the deli. Could've done more than kiss her, I remind myself. Maybe I should’ve, just to get her out of my system. But it wouldn't have been right.

I scoff at myself. Right. Talk about a concept I haven't worried myself over for a long-ass time.

Can't twist yourself up over right and wrong in this line of work. They hire you for a job, you do the job, you move along. You keep your morality and your heart—if you have the misfortune of possessing one—out of it. If you can't, maybe you should find a new line of work.

I've never had a problem with it. Some guys struggle with it at some point, either way early, or way late in the game. Even a guy like Lance may crack eventually, have a crisis of conscience. Not me. This isn't even a crisis of conscience, that's the aggravating part. It's a goddamn crisis of libido.

That's what I tell myself.

She took me off guard by that goddamn tree, her and her weird-ass coping mechanisms. She laughs when Paul wants to kill her and flirts when an armed stranger has her pinned to a tree.

I wonder what it would take to make her show her fear. To break through her defenses.

I wonder if she'll be afraid when her world comes crashing down around her, and I'm standing at the gateway, not allowing her to escape the wreckage.

I wonder if she'll be afraid when she realizes I'm going to kill her.

Annabelle

I’m smack dab in the middle of a tense standoff when stupid Paul comes skulking into the bedroom.

I narrow my eyes at him over the edge of my book, but I don’t speak. My eyes drop back to the page and I reread the last line. I want to finish the chapter, but now I can’t focus because Paul is home and I’m not sure what he’s going to do.