Page 27 of Dirty Roxie

“It is sexist. What you think because you’re aman, you should have been able to protect me?”

“Not just that, but also because I’m larger, stronger, a better shot—”

“Wait, wait, you think you’re a better shot?”

“Yes, I do.”

“You know that I kill people for a living, right?”

I say nothing. It’s not that I forgot that, per se. But it was more like as my wife, and I have a vow to protect her. I don’t share that part with her. Instead, I ask if she’d like to make a wager on who is the better shot.

“A wager? What do you have in mind?” she asks.

“I’ll let you pick.”

“You’ll let me pick? Like the stakes? For winner and loser?”

“Sure.”

“Wow, feeling like you failed me sure makes you generous.” She winks when she says it, but it still stings. She must notice something in my expression because she quickly adds, “You stepped in when it counted. If you hadn’t taken that guy out, we’d both be dead.”

I nod, even though I don’t really agree. My mind is already traveling somewhere else. To a night long ago, the very first time I failed a woman. She died as a result—a horrific and torture filled death. The one man slated in this life to protect her, my father, was a coward. And I floundered so spectacularly, I will bear the scar from it for the rest of my life.