Payback

No sharing of personal shit.

But I wanted to.

I wanted to tell her about my life.

What it was like growing up in my house.

How I never felt anyone had ever had my back until I joined the force.

Don’t get me wrong…I know I skirt the edge of disaster. I willingly flirt with devastation.

But Ivy made me want things I’d never even considered before.

Frankie was right about one thing — Ivy was a good person.

She would stick out like a sore thumb at Chester’s.

Even though I’d obliterated her innocence, she shone with an inner light that radiated through her eyes and found its way to her smile.

A lucky man could bask in that light forever.

But, fuck knew, I wasn’t that man.

Luck had never been my friend.

“What was her name?” Ivy asked.

I didn’t play stupid. I knew what she was asking. What was the name of the girl I’d let get away.

Or pushed away because I knew she deserved better than what I was offering.

“Roma.”

“What was she like?”

I didn’t like to dwell on the past. Especially when there was nothing I could do about the events that’d gone down.

“She was…everything you’re not.”

Ivy drew back, stung. “Oh.”

That’s not what I meant but it would be an easy thing to let her assume that it was. Maybe it might even simplify things between us.

We had scorching sex.

There was nothing else there.

But it wasn’t that simple. I chaffed at the obvious hurt in her expression even though she tried to hide it.

And I couldn’t let her continue to make assumptions.

“Roma was hot-tempered. One time she punched me in the mouth so hard, I bit my own lip.”

Ivy’s eyes widened. “Oh? She was violent?”

“I deserved it.” I pushed my plate away and wiped my mouth with the napkin. “Look, Roma was full-blooded Italian and she didn’t take no shit. But she was a good woman who deserved a helluva lot better than me. When she left, I didn’t blame her.”

“What happened?”

“The job,” I answered simply.

“What do you mean?”

“Undercover work isn’t a healthy place. In order to blend in with scumbags, you gotta do as scumbags do. When I’m undercover, I’m playing a part. I’m no one’s loved one. I’m just the job.”

“That sounds awful,” she said with a faint frown. “That’s no way to live.”

I shrugged. “Works for me.”

“You must have cared for her.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because of the look of guilt in your eyes. However it ended bothers you.”

I hated that she could read me that well. I was a master at shielding my thoughts and feelings but Ivy stripped me bare.

“Yeah, well, it didn’t work out.”

I didn’t want to admit that I’d pushed Roma away out of guilt and fear. I knew I was going to fuck up eventually, so why prolong the inevitable?

“You want the truth?” I said, almost desperately. “I told her I fucked around on her during a detail. It was part of the job. But no woman wants to hear that so it was better that she left.”

Ivy looked at me curiously, picking out what I hadn’t said. “So…did you cheat on her or not?”

“What difference does it make? It’s ancient history.”

“It matters to me.”

The breath squeezed from my lungs. Was it better to lie and let her think the worst of me? Hadn’t I already ruined any chance of any good feelings between us? What difference would it make if I layered on another coat of hatred?

“Yeah,” I lied without flinching. “I did.”

“I don’t believe you.”

I stared, uncomprehending. “What do you mean?”

“You’re lying. I don’t know how I know it but I do.”

I started, tilted on my axis by her keen observation. This was dangerous. I couldn’t have Ivy falling for me. I was no hero.

“Look, baby girl, just because I like fucking you doesn’t mean there’s something between us? Got it?” I made sure to hammer the point home. “Once this case is done…”

“Yeah, I get it. You’re gone.”

The edge to her voice cut. Why did she care if I stayed or went?

“We should talk about the case,” she said, releasing my gaze.

She was right. The whole point of coming over to her place was to prepare her for her role but I was dragging my feet. I didn’t want her to do this. The fact that I was reluctant to put her into play said a lot that I didn’t want to acknowledge.

I grunted in agreement, determined to get focused. “Play up to the manager. If Frankie does his part, you should be a shoe-in. They’re short-staffed so likely they’ll want you to start work right away. Our intel says that Rodrigo is meeting up with his Chinese contact tonight. Your job is to get in, make yourself available to Rodrigo and try to listen to what’s going down.”

She shuddered, plainly uncomfortable with her role. I couldn’t help but hear Frankie’s warning in my head about getting her killed.

The Cobalt Vipers were no joke. They were bad ass and they didn’t play.

Which was why I needed them off the streets.

“The first time I met up with the Cobalt Vipers I was following up on a homicide. At first blush, it was nothing anyone would care about. A young girl, probably about seventeen, shot in the head, execution-style. If anyone else would’ve been working the case, they would’ve chalked it up to a hooker who ended up getting killed by a john. But I knew this girl. She was a good kid.”

“What was her name?”

“Brianna Murphy,” I answered, the name bringing back a host of bad memories. “She was trying to get clean. Trying to get back to school and start a real life. But Terano wasn’t interested in letting go of his favorite girl. When she tried to make a break, he had her killed.”

“How did you know it was Terano?”

“The blue viper carved into her belly. I couldn’t pin it on him specifically but the Vipers don’t make a move without Terano’s say-so. We never were able to connect Terano to Brianna’s death.”

“That must’ve been rough,” she murmured.

Yeah, rough wasn’t the word. I went on a two-week bender disguised as vacation time. And then I threw myself back into undercover work.

I wanted Terano bad. But the fucker kept slipping through my fingers.

That’s why I’d busted Frankie early.

Desperation.

And I never acted without being sure that I could close the case.

“Why was she so special?”

“Because…” frustration ate at me. I’d asked myself the same question many times. Dead hookers weren’t new. But there’d been something about Brianna that had tugged at my sense of fair play. I wanted to help her find a new life. Maybe I just wanted to believe that second chances were real. But I wasn’t ready to share any of that. “Look, I just want to nail Terano to the wall. The fucker deserves it.”

Ivy nodded as if she could hear what I wasn’t saying.

r /> “I’ll do what I can,” she said.

It was more than I could rightfully ask for. She had no reason to care beyond saving her brother’s ass.

But I sensed she was doing this for me.

Why?

I don’t know but a strange lump clogged my throat, making it hard to speak.

So I just nodded.

And then gave her a crash course on undercover work.

Ivy

I didn’t know whether to be relieved or distressed that Frankie had managed to smooth the way into a position at Chester’s. All I knew was that Chester’s was everything I’d ever heard it to be — which was pretty gross.

The floors were sticky with God-only-knew-what and the clientele were just as sketchy.

There was a reason I never considered working here before.

I’ll admit, in the beginning, all I was thinking of was saving Frankie but now, I was interested in taking down this Terano Rodrigo.

My parents weren’t the best of people. They lost custody of us very young. Frankie and I spent our lives bouncing from one foster home to the next.

I knew men like Terano. They were evil.

Politicians liked to talk a big game about cleaning up the streets, welfare reform, and making America safe again but that ship has long passed.

The reality was the poison coursing through the veins of America was too deep.

It would take an entire reboot of the system to make it work again and we all knew that wasn’t going to happen.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an activist.

I spent my life trying to survive and with Frankie’s help, I emerged relatively unscathed from my childhood, but it doesn’t mean I didn’t see what was happening all around me.

“There’s only one rule in Chester’s,” the manager said with an oily smile that gave me the willies. “And that’s the customer is always right. No matter what. Got it, sweet cheeks?”

Sweet cheeks. Blech.

Coming from his mouth made me feel as if I needed to wash out my brain.

I nodded dutifully, earning an approving smile. “You’re gonna do real good here, sugar. I can feel it.”

The lascivious grin that followed was too suggestive for my tastes but I was here to play a part. I needed to appear vapid, completely incapable of rocking the boat so that Terano wasn’t spooked.