“No way?” Disbelieving laughter bubbles up inside me. “Funny, I can think of a couple.”
There’s still playfulness in his tone, but I’m not sure if he’s all the way joking. “I kidnapped you and you got over that pretty quick. If I made the wrong call back there, I could’ve fixed it.”
“How? By buying my village some goats?”
“And a cow. Don’t sell yourself short—you’re worth a cow.”
I smack him in the side, causing him to laugh again and pull me a little closer. He kisses the crown of my head and I snuggle into him, slightly mollified, although I’m not sure he’s really earned it. “How come you’re not married?”
“How do you know I’m not?”
I freeze, pulling back to give him a wide-eyed look of censure. To my immense relief, he laughs. “That’s not funny.”
He gives me a squeeze. “Sure it is,” he says, but even as he says the words, I notice some of his good humor fading. “Men in my line of work… some of them do get married, have kids, but… I don’t know, I’ve never seen it as a good idea. I think it’s kinda reckless, kinda selfish, definitely risky, and not really fair. A lot of times, the women involved know the risks, but even if the woman agrees to put herself in that position, kids don’t get a choice. In my experience, most women want kids eventually.”
“Some don’t. I do.”
“I know.” He absently kisses the top of my head again. “My life is a lot different from yours. It’d be hard to make you really understand. You haven’t seen the things I’ve seen.”
“What kind of things?”
Jasper sighs. “Ugly things. Tragic things. Violent things. In your world, there are rules that pretty much everyone lives by. There might be the occasional outlier, but for the most part, you have a set of mores that everyone respects, lines you don’t cross, and sure, tragedy strikes in your corner of the world too, but it’s rare. It’s a perversion. It’s… nothing anyone could have seen coming.”
I tilt my head back so I can look up at his face.
He’s not looking at me. He’s gazing up toward the ceiling. “In my world, those ugly acts are the norm. Yeah, we have certain rules everyone is supposed to follow, but the thing about a culture made up entirely of rule-breakers… not everyone plays by them. Families should be off limits, but that’s not always the case. What we do in the dark can come back to haunt our loved ones. Doesn’t matter if they’re innocent. Some of the guys we cross—they’re merciless. They’re brutal. They won’t bat an eye to do things that would turn your stomach. And I’ve done things that would turn your stomach, too, Autumn. You haven’t seen that side of me, but I have.”
I didn’t expect him to get so serious. I slide my hand across his chest, pausing my hand over his heart and gently caressing him. “I get that,” I say softly. “I’m not naïve, Jasper, I know… I mean, the night we met, you confessed to having killed before. More than once. Working for the people I know you work for, I expected that would get ugly from time to time.”
“It does, and I’m good at what I do, but that’s not enough to keep you safe. When you’re dealing with shit like this, vengeance always comes up. I can’t always see where danger could be coming from. A few years back, I had this job. I had to eliminate a troublemaker. I didn’t feel bad about it. Guy was a loser, a blowhard, just an all-around pain in the ass. Honestly, I couldn’t imagine anyone missing him, but people are always missed once they’re dead, no matter how much people hated them when they were alive.”
My stomach drops hearing him talk so casually about murdering someone, but I tell myself to suck it up.
“Anyway, so that was no problem. It was a clean job, everything went to plan—it was over, right? Wrong. His sister turned out to be an even bigger pain in the ass than he was. She went around telling everyone who would listen that she believed the mob killed her brother. Now, my boss… he does not tolerate things like this. He has worked pretty hard to get to a place where the public doesn’t explicitly acknowledge that he’s anything more than a successful businessman, except in hushed whispers and urban legends. But this lady… she wouldn’t quit. She was writing opinion pieces on the internet, trying to get media attention. She would not shut up. We tried sending someone to talk to her—a woman, not an aggressive intimidation, just someone pointing out to her under the guise of friendliness that if the mob did kill her brother, they probably wouldn’t appreciate her yapping about it, so maybe she should stop before someone got hurt. She couldn’t be reasoned with. I don’t even really think it was about her brother at that point, I think she just liked fighting about something, but regardless of her reason, she became a thorn in my boss’ side. Once all attempts at managing her had been exhausted, there was only one recourse left.”