Page 1 of Wicked Proposal

1

MIA

Brooklyn in July is a war crime on my nostrils.

Hot asphalt, rotting garbage, and the tang of days-old sweat radiating all the way from the dude currently eye-fucking me from across the street.

I keep my gaze locked straight ahead, fingers tightening around the strap of my duffel bag.

My scrubs stick to my back like a second skin. They’re damp from twelve hours of running codes, stitching gashes, and swallowing every catcall of“Hey, sweet thing”that various drunk assholes keep hurling my way as I try to hurry home for Eli’s bedtime.

Sweet thing.The words slither down my spine, oily and familiar.

Brad used to call me that.

Brad, with his whiskey breath and knuckles like sandpaper.

Brad, who’d whisper,“C’mere, sweet thing”right before?—

Nope. Not today, Satan.

I blink hard, shove that unwanted memory back into its coffin, and pick up my pace.

My sneakers slap against cracked concrete, dodging potholes and piles of dog shit. The dollar store on the corner blares reggaeton. Overhead, a dying neon sign whines like a wasp.

A group of teens loitering outside the bodega whistle as I pass. One of them yells, “Damn, ma, you workin’ out or youworkin’?”

I do manage to keep my middle finger holstered, but it’s a very close call.

One of these days, I really might let it fly. Tonight, though, I don’t have time to pick fights with teenagers juiced up on vape pens and testosterone.

I’m almost there.

Almosthome.

It’s four blocks to my apartment, which means four blocks to Eli. Four blocks to the brief seconds of peace I’ll get burying my face in his sweet, perfect curls.

Then I have to change out of these stained scrubs, bolt back out, and hustle my way to my second job at a bougie med spa in Tribeca, where rich ladies pay eight hundred bucks a pop to get their labia steamed.

No judgment from me, though. I’m glad for the rich ladies.

Mama’s got bills to pay.

I round the corner onto my street—and grit my teeth.

Because there’s a car parked behind mine, blocking me in.

Not just any car. A black Maybach, polished to a liquid shine, prowling in front of my building like a panther in a junkyard. My beat-to-shit sedan—Rhonda the Honda—sits trapped behind it.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” I mutter.

I scan the block in search of suspects. At first, I come up empty.

But then—there. Across the street.

A man in a gleaming black suit that looks utterly out of place in this decrepit armpit of the city is pacing the sidewalk, phone pressed to his ear. His shoes gleam like obsidian under the streetlight.

The rest of him is just as easy on the eyes. Stormy gray gaze. GQ stubble. Abs that look like you could grate a whole Parmesan cheese wheel on ‘em.