Mallicks: Back to the Beginning (Mallick Brothers 5)

"Okay," I agreed, maybe liking the old-fashioned manners more than I was willing to let on.

"Now, I will see you here when you are done," he told me, giving me a panty-melting smile before swaggering off.

"Girl," Vicky said, coming back smelling like the perfume she kept in her apron to cover up the smoke smell. It didn't work, not really, but she tried. "You are in so much trouble."

And as I watched him climb in his car, tipping up his coffee at me before backing out of his spot, yeah, I was pretty sure she was right.

I was in so much trouble.FIVECharlieI tried to talk myself out of going.

To the diner.

To see her again.

To inevitably start something that I had no business starting.

Because it put my job in jeopardy.

Because it put her in more danger.

Because she was leaving.

Normally, the fleetingness of it would be the most attractive part of the whole situation.

We could both get to know each other just enough, get sweaty, get what we needed from each other, then move on.

But, somehow, for maybe the first time, the idea of that sounded lacking, sounded empty.

Which was asinine.

I barely knew the woman, objectively.

But there was simply something there.

She was beautiful, sure, but it was more than that. Pretty was something I would just need to get the taste of, the feel of, and move on.

This went deeper.

There was something about her.

About this woman raised by wolves who somehow managed to maintain her softness, her sweetness, who had yet to realize that being born of them meant she was one of them, that she had claws and fangs as well, that she could use them if she wanted to.

I'd barely been able to look Christopher in the eye when he met me at a coffee place to discuss some upcoming jobs. Not since I knew what he had planned for his own flesh and blood.

It was easy, at times, to compartmentalize my work. I worked, almost exclusively, for scumbags. Which, in a way, made me one by association. We all did shit that decent men wouldn't even think about. We scared, intimidated, and beat our way to the top.

I was no better than the men I worked for.

Except for, maybe, Christopher Eames.

Because while I was generally of the mind that no one knew what they were capable of, that no one could ever say 'never' with any kind of certainty, I knew that this was the one situation where I could say it. Never. Never could I sell my own goddamn daughter to a contact to end up raped and trapped for the rest of her life.

Fucking never.

But Christopher Eames could.

He could do that.

So it told me one thing.

I was better than him.

It was maybe the first time in my life I really felt that way.

And it made it difficult even to be in his presence as he talked about debts owed and second warnings needing to be more fierce than first ones.

I could do fierce.

But in that moment, it wasn't his welshing client that I wanted to haul off and beat down; it was him.

But I couldn't.

For my safety.

Even for hers.

Hers.

That's what was on my mind as I sat in my room later, trying to convince myself to stay, to open up the bottle of whiskey on my nightstand, and guzzle it down, to do something only the laziest of jackasses did - stand her up.

Because I knew it would be bad for both of us if we got caught.

For me, I'd get my ass handed to me. If he was gracious enough to let me keep my life.

But for Helen?

Yeah, he'd probably put a rush on his plans to ship her off, so she couldn't get too involved with anyone else. So she wouldn't run off, and fuck up his plans.

And because, well, if she got attached to me, she would keep putting off her plans to get her freedom, to get shot of this bastard once and for all.

I couldn't be in her way.

But I couldn't seem to make myself stay away either.

Because almost forty minutes after I was meant to meet her, I was opening the doors to find her chatting up Collings.

He was a decent enough guy, destined to be a beat cop, then a detective. Just like his old man. A man who was going to live out his life putting men like me behind bars for torturously long spells.

Not that we didn't deserve it, but in my mind, there were criminals, and there were thugs. Criminals provided a service that people needed - whether it was legal or not - gambling, sports drugs, guns, the list went on and on. But we had codes. We only hurt those who fucked with our livelihoods, or were stepping on our turf.

Thugs, yeah, thugs didn't have a code. They were the guys out grabbing women off the streets and into back alleys. They were the ones beating the shit out of people they came across just for shits and giggles. They provided nothing, and took everything.