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SEVEN

Jamie

Back at the apartment, I sat in the armchair, my laptop open, scrolling the chaotic mess of transactions, fake accounts, and offshore names Mitchell controlled.

I tried to focus on the trails I was finding, but everything inside me buzzed as though I’d mainlined adrenaline.

Killian had a point—I knew he did. I needed to back off and let other people finesse their way through the minefield of connections.

But my skin felt too tight, every part of me restless and wired.

And that itch, that constant itch, I couldn’t ignore.

I wanted to make Kessler and Lassiter squirm.

One of the bottom feeders for cash both men benefited from, whatever they had going on, was a club called The Bonehook, run by RP, who I soon found out was Ricardo Price, a small-time player who’d been paying Mitchell like clockwork.

The accounts showed steady payments up the ladder toward Lassiter, but there was no apparent connection to Kessler.

So Lassiter was my first target.

Not him, but the world that kept him rich.

The way I saw it, with Mitchell off-grid—aka completely fucking dead—he’d be pissed. Money gone dark tends to make powerful people very nervous. And angry.

The Bonehook and Ricardo were part of a Ponzi scheme with the center snapped—what did that make Ricardo? Desperate. Exposed. Probably scrabbling to pull cash together before someone noticed?

I flicked open my lighter, watched the flame dance, then snapped it shut.

The sharp sound, the flick of metal on metal, the smell of gas—the only rhythm that brought any order to my brain.

Light. Shut. Breathe. I stared into the flame every time it caught, hypnotized by the flicker, the illusion of control.

The flame didn’t ask questions. It didn’t care that everything in my head was chaos and red flags and warning bells.

It burned—steady, obedient, and gone on command.

Rinse and repeat. It helped me sort through the mess .

The front door opened, the sound sharp in the quiet.

Rio stepped inside, unwrapping his hands slowly, methodically. His knuckles were bruised, his face flushed, a cut from his temple to his left eye with butterfly bandages holding it closed. He didn’t say a word as he tossed an envelope thick with cash onto the counter.

I raised a brow. “You fighting at The Pit?”

He snorted, heading for the fridge. “Yep.”

I glanced at the envelope, then at him. “Enzo’s not gonna like you being down there again.”

“Nothing he needs to know about,” he shrugged. “I needed the cash.”

“You needed to make someone bleed,” I corrected him, and he shrugged. He had as many demons riding him as I did. “I can get you cash if you need it.”

“I earn my money.”

“You get beaten up for your money,” I corrected.

He pulled out a carton of eggs and glanced over his shoulder. “You want something to eat?”

Rio was a master of deflection, but I nodded, suddenly aware of how empty my stomach felt. “I could eat.”

He set the carton down and started cracking eggs like any other night. Like none of it—bruised fists, dirty money, our unraveling web of lies—mattered.

Rio slid a pan onto the stove, then nodded toward the laptop still on my knees. “So, what’d you find out?”

I sighed, tapping a few keys. “Names. Places. Shell companies. Clubs with untraceable ownership that somehow loop back to a foundation supposedly set up for inner city kids. Which is cute if it wasn’t so fucking disgusting.

Here—” I tilted the screen so he could see.

“These five accounts? All tied to Mitchell’s laundering scheme.

This one here? Dubai. This one—Macau. Cayman Islands, obviously.

But this?” I tapped the screen, anger rising.

“There are clubs with money moving out of them faster than it’s coming in, which means someone’s panicking. ”

Rio stared at the screen, then at me. “You gonna burn them all down? Should I be worried?”

I snorted, then closed the laptop, tension radiating through my shoulders. “Killian wants us to back off.”

Rio raised a brow and gestured at the laptop. “And this is you backing off?”

“Yep, backing off,” I lied to my best friend.

Rio leaned against the counter, flipping the eggs with exaggerated care. “What was it with you and Killian today?” he asked, his tone too casual to be anything but deliberate.

Of course, he’d noticed. How could he not? The way I’d gotten too close to Killian when we argued. Voices low, sharp, like knives being drawn. We never backed down. That tension—it wasn’t a fight. It was a fuse, lit and burning fast.

Killian was under my skin before I’d even realized it. He saw too much. Read me too well. And he’d never looked away.

Calling me Pretty? That smug little nickname?

It lit me up. Mocking and intimate at the same time, as if he knew how to twist the knife.

He hadn’t flinched when I snapped. Hadn’t blinked.

Just stood there—calm, still, in control.

And I’d fucking hated it, because some part of me wanted to shove him against a wall.

Wipe that calm off his face to feel something that made sense.

Not tension. Not heat. Something real. I’d been hard. Turned on. Furious. Wrecked.

What the hell was wrong with me?

I wasn’t built for this. I didn’t want anyone. Never had. Want made you weak. But he hadn’t backed down when I burned too hot—he’d leaned in. As if he liked it and wanted to see me fall apart.

And I was close.

That calm of his? It undid me. Tugged at something I’d thought long buried. Made me feel things I didn’t have words for. And yeah, it made me want him. Not only his body—everything. And I hated that most of all. I didn’t want to need what I thought Killian could give me. I didn’t want him.

“He’s an asshole,” I muttered, not looking up. “All that frozen, buttoned-up lawyer shit. Every inch of him is just… tight. Restrained. He walks into a room, and the temperature drops ten degrees. Always acting as if he’s got the moral high ground, as if he’s already figured me out.”

I swallowed down the rest, but it stuck in my throat. Killian was fucking sexy. But every time he stood there calm and still while I burned, had only intensified the fire.

“And you hate that,” Rio said.

I grunted. “Yeah. I do.”

Rio smirked. “So that’s it, huh? Ice to your fire. Makes you wanna punch him and kiss him at the same time?”

“I don’t want to fucking kiss him! Jesus! Shut your fucking mouth,” I snapped, but my voice lacked heat.

He was grinning as if he’d won a prize.

“You want to burn him then?” he asked smugly.

“Fuck off.” I turned back to the laptop, though I wasn’t seeing the screen. I hated that Rio saw things in me I hadn’t figured out yet. That he could look at me and know . And yeah, maybe what I hated most was that he was always right.

“You go anywhere, do anything, take me with you,” he said.

I frowned. “What?”

“You so much as burn a sheet of paper—I’m there.”

My jaw locked. “I don’t need a fucking babysitter.”

He didn’t answer while he stared at the eggs. That silence? Infuriating because he’d already decided I was going to screw up.

Ever since Stockton, he’d tracked every flicker of heat in me, stepped in before I could light the fuse. He didn’t need words—he instinctively knew when I needed to burn. And that pissed me off. Because it meant I wasn’t hiding it as well as I thought.

We shared our shitty apartment for a reason.

He kept me steady when the world tilted.

He talked me down without trying to fix me.

Gave me space to fall apart without judging the wreckage.

I owed him more than I ever said out loud.

But I never asked to be managed . Some days, I wanted to set a fire.

Let it take everything. And Rio? He never let me plan it alone.

Always watching. Always stepping in. Like, I couldn’t be trusted with my own match.

He was probably right.

But it didn’t stop the anger rising whenever he caught me before I fell.

“What do you know about The Bonehook?”

Rio leaned against the counter, stirring the eggs, and said, “The Bonehook? Cheap joint. Not pulling in big money, but always open. Always shady. Out in El Sereno, near the bail bonds office.”

“You know someone in the club?”

“I know the bonds guys next door, but nah, no one in the club.” He didn’t even look up as he went on. “Drugs mostly. Light stuff, moving just under the radar. And the other stuff—girls, maybe boys, not the kind of scene anyone wants to admit exists.”

“Ricardo Price?”

He frowned. “Doesn’t ring a bell. What about him?”

“He was sending money up the chain to Mitchell, who was supposed to pass it to Lassiter and Kessler. Runs the club.”

Rio dished up the fluffy eggs and thick slices of buttered toast, and I let him do that before pushing him to answer—Rio liked his thinking time .

He swallowed his food and paused. “That’s your target?”

“No. Yes. Fuck knows.”

“Talk me through it, J. Step One…”

“Fuck off Rio, I’m not doing this shit again.”

He reached over and tilted my chin up, his other hand brushing over the scars on the back of my left hand—the ones from the time I’d come too close to getting caught. He’d pulled me back that day in Stockton. He tried to keep me steady and rein me in, as if he were in control.

“Don’t mess with me, J,” he growled. “What’s step one?”

“Intel to determine target.”

He nodded in approval. “Two?”

“Fuck! Observation, exits, routines.”

“And three?” he prompted.

“Ritual, location, and execution.” Balancing the need for vengeance with the beast inside and keeping innocents off the table by minimizing risks.

“And then?” Rio prompted.

“We don’t need to do this,” I whined.

Rio squeezed my chin, reminding me of why he was doing this, the only person allowed to touch me, and I stared right into his dark eyes. “What’s next, J? ”

“Aftermath,” I said. Watching it burn. I needed to see the burn, feel the justice, the cleansing. “Peace.”

He finally released me, and I swear, I whimpered as soon as he looked away. “Observe, report, fix a date, I’m going with you when you do it.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“But, Killian told us?—”

“I don’t care about Killian; I’m looking at you. You do this so it doesn’t connect to what Killian is doing. You’ll be safe. I’ll be there.”

After Rio headed to bed, I was still buzzing, still wired from everything we’d uncovered.

I needed to move, to do something, anything.

I paced the living room in tight circles, flicking my lighter open and shut, the flame a pulse steadying the chaos in my head.

The Bonehook. Killian. Lassiter. Everything felt tangled, and the need to pull at the threads itched like fire under my skin.

Eventually, I dropped into the chair by the window, opened the laptop, and stared at the glow of the screen. I opened a fresh document and started making notes.

Step One: Observation.

Target: The Bonehook.

Owner: Ricardo Price.

Connection: Money to Mitchell ? Lassiter ? ???

Possible heat: Desperation? Fracture in the pipeline?

I added notes faster. I needed to build the plan piece by piece so I wouldn’t slip.

And then, I hesitated.

Killian McKendrick.

What did any of us really know about him? Not much. Not enough. So I pulled up a new tab and typed his name. I added parameters: Killian McKendrick + legal + court record + education + associates + prior employment.

Then further: Killian McKendrick + known associates + law firm + Redcars + McKendrick family.

And finally: Killian McKendrick + criminal defense + Vegas.

The browser started to populate. Slowly at first, as if the system was thinking. I let the searches load and opened another tab, pulling up real estate records. Maybe he owned something. Perhaps he didn’t. Maybe there was nothing there at all. But I had to try.

I stared at the screen as the browser began pinging back hits.

Court documents, old law firm bios, social media tags with his name blurred into sports articles from fifteen years ago.

Early school years, no family, in care, then Redcars.

Then Harvard Law. And a blank space between.

At Harvard, a prestigious internship. The missing years. The silence. I bookmarked everything.

When my eyes blurred with exhaustion, I set the laptop aside and stretched. My mind was still a battlefield, but the lists helped. The act of compiling, of noting, of watching… it grounded me.

Tomorrow, I’d start observing The Bonehook. Start watching Killian the way he’d watched me.

Because this time, I wanted to be the one who saw everything first.