The Negotiator (Professionals 7)

“What did he do?”

“Took a cut off my earnings.”

“He did not.”

“He did. He told me it was a lesson.”

“What was the lesson?”

“That no one made money in Greece without him getting something. Not even his own son.”

“A little insight into the man you’ve become,” she said, sounding pleased to know me better.

Or maybe that was wishful thinking.

Though why I was wishing for shit like that was beyond me.

She was a fascinating woman. But she was a transient one. Even if I was in the market for that wife I had always considered a part of my future, Melody wasn’t an option.

Maybe it was just the sexual frustration, the fact that I wanted her. I couldn’t remember a single instance in the past where I wanted to go to bed with a woman and then didn’t. When both of us clearly wanted it.

The next two rounds went to her, making me seriously question my poker skills, and making her get louder and prouder of her victories. She asked more and more invasive questions, but mostly about my childhood, about my upbringing.

No one ever asked me things like that. If they were going to ask me questions, they wanted to know about the man I was. Or, more accurately, about my profession, about how I got to be what I am.

It was strange, in fact, to reflect on my upbringing on my own, let alone with another person and their input.

I found I liked her interest, her lighthearted comments, the way she accepted the unusual childhood I had without much judgment. Being exposed to so many men from… alternative lifestyles made her immune to the strangeness of my early—and current—life.

“Damn,” she hissed when I laid my cards on the table, shaking her head.

“Where are you going?” I asked when she got up, and walked away.

“Getting another drink. I’m going to need it.”

“Why’s that?” I asked, watching as she went to the tequila bottle, pouring three fingers, dropping a lime wedge in the glass, then grabbing the bottle of Scotch, and bringing it back toward me.

“Because I know what you are about to ask me,” she said, stopping at my side, pouring the bottle into my glass. “And I have a feeling you might want a drink too,” she added, face guarded.

It was the first time I saw her face completely closed down, utterly unreadable.

It was then that I truly understood how she managed to do her job, how she managed to wheel and deal with men who didn’t want to compromise, how she looked terrible people in the face, and never showed her true feelings.

“How do you know I am going to ask you that?” I asked, raising my glass to take a sip.

“Because it’s been bugging you since I let it slip.”

“You could tell me to go fuck myself,” I offered.

“That wouldn’t be fair, now, would it?” she asked, taking a long sip. “Alright,” she said, putting the glass down on the table. “Ask me,” she demanded, lifting her chin, keeping unnerving eye-contact, daring me to ask it, wanting me to do it.

I finished my drink, leaned forward, and rested my arms on the table.

“What happened to you, Melody?”

ELEVEN

Miller

This was that one story.

The one I never told anyone.

The one I held close to my vest.

At first, back then, because it was too unfathomable to share.

Then, as I got older, because I worried others might use the information against me, would see it as a weakness of some sort.

I didn’t tell my crew.

They knew that I ended up on the streets, hustling for money.

They didn’t know how that happened.

They didn’t know what would make a seventeen-year-old girl quite that desperate.

To get away from her family.

To live on the streets until she could afford to sleep indoors again. To go hungry for days at a time.

They didn’t know that part of my life.

I didn’t want them to.

The crazy thing was, Christopher was right. I could have told him to go fuck himself. I could have refused to answer. I could have told him to ask something else.

I didn’t, though.

I didn’t want to.

Because, and this made absolutely no sense at all, I wanted him to know.

I wanted to give that part of my life to him.

“I guess I have to go back to the beginning,” I told him, taking a deep breath, but it still somehow got caught, strangled me.

I had grown up without my mom.

We’d established that. Everyone knew that.

My father was a piece of shit.

I alluded to that with my coworkers. Some of us had commiserated about that. The others, the ones with happy home lives who couldn’t relate, they sympathized.

They couldn’t have known, though, not really.

You couldn’t make someone understand what it was like to have the only person in your life, the person you were wholly dependent on, be unreliable. Without experience, you couldn’t truly understand an empty belly, uncertain living arrangements, the shame of having a parent who was a mess. When everyone knew it.