Wrong For Me

I wanna rip her head off, but I need more information, so I say nothing.

My eyes slide to the door and back to her.

“You’re thinking she’ll walk by and hear us, might even burst in at any minute and save your sorry ass?” Marissa stands tall, the gun now pointed at my dick. “Not happening. My plan has worked far too well for that. I knew she’d be so desperate to follow me in here tonight, just like I knew she was more than the pawn in your dirty little heart, you’d never let anything real happen. She thinks we’re fuckin’ like animals. No way in hell will she come out of that room tonight.” She drops onto the edge of the mattress.

When I give her nothing but a bored stare, her eyes twitch.

“I came here against Daddy’s orders, you know. He believed in you, said it was all ‘part of the plan, but a little something told me to make the trip and surprise you. Daddy always thinks he knows best, but I knew it seemed too easy, too ... clean. I mean, I know you’re good with words, but I found it hard to believe you showed up here and got your in with Blaze ... just like that. So I snooped, and imagine my surprise, finding out the little boyfriend’s last name wasn’t the one listed in the file you built us on him. And to learn he went by the name Daniels?” She lightly shakes her head. “Bold move, Alec. We could have found you out months ago based on that alone.”

“How did you find out?”

“Guess Trick was a bit of a pack rat. Found the girl’s old notebooks and drawings in the garage, nothing but pink hearts and flowers and Mrs. Rowan Daniels.”

She laughs when my mouth forms a hard line. “God, you must really be whipped for a ten-year-old girl’s scribble to get under your skin.” She tilts her head, and then her eyes light up. She straightens. “Oh! I almost forgot to tell you. Oakley has all the answers in her gym bag. I’ve already read them, so I know the entire truth and all about this mysterious Blaze you were supposed to be infiltrating. She must have found the paperwork at the academy because I searched every inch of this place and found nothing. Now, all the evidence against my family will burn with this shitty house.”

I take a step forward, and her arm lifts, pointing the gun directly between my eyes.

“What do you mean, burn with the house?”

“Duh, silly. Same way you burned Daddy’s warehouse to the ground. By ‘accident.’ He doesn’t know about that part yet, by the way.” She winks, her other hand coming up to support the pistol better, her lids lowering as she tightens her aim. “No one plays me, Alec. You’re dead. But how about one more little surprise for you to part with, hmm?”

I hold my hands out wide, more than ready to let her shoot me, knowing Oakley will hear it and at least have a chance to attempt an escape. If my dying keeps her from being captured, tortured, and raped by Marissa’s bastard of a father, I’d be happy to go right here, right now.

“I slipped a little paper of my own in between the pages, the contract you signed—you know, the one where you accepted a two-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar payment to play executioner?”

When my nostrils flare, she giggles.

“Best part? You’ll die before she has a chance to ask for the truth, so she’ll go on alone, if the little wannabe Daniels brother doesn’t swoop in to keep her warm at night, thinking her baby daddy killed her daddy.”

The vile look in her eyes mixed with the sick satisfaction that makes her lips twitch have my breath locking in my throat.

“The fuck you just say?”

“That’s right, dear. Your whore?” She tilts her head, reaching into her pocket to pull out a small blue plastic stick. “She’s pregnant.”

I dart forward, ready to take her ass out, determined to make it out of this room … but the bitch pulls the trigger.Chapter Thirty-TwoOakleyTears fall from my eyes, bleeding into the words on the cream-colored paper in front of me.

I’m on file number five of what I’ve realized are all records of the active jobs.

This one is titled Oakley. The objective? Protection.

It’s dated two years ago, the day before my eighteenth birthday.

The day Alec disappeared.

Only, according to these papers, he didn’t disappear. He took a job far from his family in a new, scary place with people he didn’t know. Alec forced his way into the life of a man my father had been paid to ruin. Alec said he went in undercover, but it was more than that. He took on an entirely new life.

Turned out, the man Alec told me about, who had murdered that little girl and gotten away with it, was looking to pass his torch at the top just before everything went down. The timing was a happy coincidence, as my dad needed an inside eye to find out what they knew or were searching for in regard to Blaze, just as Alec mentioned before. So, Alec went in, stronger and braver than the rest, and earned the coveted spot.