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13

MAEL

I leaned against the railing of my apartment balcony and looked out at the city lights twinkling in New York.

The city that never sleeps.

And sometimes, I wondered if the city worsened my insomnia. Perhaps I should move somewhere with Lia once all this shit was done.

Was I really entertaining the idea of leaving everything behind?

I let out a small chuckle just as the balcony door opened. Theo came to stand next to me, a glass of bourbon in each hand.

“What’s so funny?” he asked, giving me one of the glasses.

“Just thinking about retirement,” I said, taking a small sip.

I could feel his eyes on me. “Really?” he asked.

“You don’t sound sad in the least,” I said instead of answering him.

“Maybe I’m tired of constantly moving around and watching our backs.”

“No one can tie us to any of the killings,” I said. “We were careful. Always careful. Even getting rid of the bodies. There were no traces left behind for anyone to find.”

“That doesn’t mean anything. Don’t you know even the greatest secrets in the world could be exposed?”

I shrugged. “I’m not worried, so you shouldn’t be either.”

“Then what’s got you thinking about an early retirement?”

I didn’t answer him. Just took another sip of my drink.

“Ah,” he said, looking out to the city. “The girl. You want to build a happily ever after with her, don’t you?”

“Happily ever after, huh? Sounds sappy.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

I made a small, noncommittal sound just as the phone vibrated in my pocket. Not my phone. The fucker’s phone who had been following my girl around for weeks.

I pulled it out and saw the text from Leo asking for an update.

I pulled up the cameras I had installed in Lia’s apartment, watching as she went about getting ready for bed. Fuck, but how I wished I was right there with her now.

I texted Briggs back, telling him Lia was safely at home.

It didn’t take him long to respond.

Briggs: Good. Make sure nothing happens to the girl.

The text could be sweet if he had put men on her simply to protect her. But I knew better. This wasn’t protection. This was possessiveness.

The thought of another man encroaching on my territory just got my hackles rising, and it took all the self-control I had not to drive over to the fucker’s house and kill him in his sleep.

I would have done it if the fucker’s house wasn’t like a fortress. Getting in and out to kill him wouldn’t be easy. Not impossible, but that didn’t tell me why he was so obsessed with Lia to begin with, or why he wanted her father dead. He knew she had made the police report because I had told him about it. Briggs seemed happy about the fact that there might be a public record of Lia having a stalker, and I didn’t know why. It didn’t matter that there weren’t any public records of Lia’s report. I killed that plan when I guessed she would be calling the cops to report me after seeing me in her bathroom. Not that she knew that. Not that Leo knew that.

I didn’t know what his game plan was, but I planned on finding out.

It also wouldn’t tell me where the fuck Briggs was running his business.

It wasn’t like me to care, and perhaps it made me sound callous, but I didn’t care about the human trafficking ring he ran. Sure, innocent human lives were at stake, and there was a small part of me, a small, inconsequential part of me, that pitied those people in such a hopeless situation. But in the grand scheme of things, they didn’t matter.

Just as I didn’t matter, just as no one mattered on this godforsaken earth, but I was sure Lia cared, and a part of me cared that she did.

And Theo fucking cared. Him and his bleeding heart.

And in my world, as of now, only Lia and Theo mattered.

And that was all there was to it.