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They kept her under full-time by two hours a week so that she couldn't collect benefits.
But we never really got sick.
Until the day when she did.
Very sick.
Stage three lung sick.
The bills piled up fast. We had no idea how much until after she passed. Half a million in medical bills.
We didn't find out until she wasn't around anymore either that she had opted out of further treatment to avoid accruing more debt.
She'd chosen to die. Horribly, I might add. Because she couldn't afford to live. Because her work refused - even when she had begged - to let her get on the health insurance.
They spouted that "pre-existing condition" bullshit at her.
They signed her death certificate.
And we wanted them to pay.
So we did.
Little by little, store by store, year by year. It became all we knew. All we could focus on was the end result. Making them pay for her debt. And then a little more for our future.
We'd gotten there.
We'd been planning on the bug-out plan.
China, Russia.
When a job went a little sideways. Which was how Scotti met Mark, throwing our life in an unexpected direction.
I never thought that Savea could be privy to all that information. I figured it was a hand held close to the vest.
But then again, Savea knew that the Mallicks were loansharks and enforcers. She knew that Peyton's man was an arms-dealing biker.
Of course, she would know what we had all once been.
Yet she still looked at me that way.
But that didn't mean that, in reality, she would be able to accept it. Plenty of women liked things fictionally that they would never tolerate in real life. Like jacked-up, uber alpha assholes. Like BDSM and menage. Like criminal heroes who were fun for a few hours in a book or show or movie, a nice escape from reality, a fun way to experience a bit of danger without actually putting themselves at any kind of risk.
Crime, in fiction, was fun, exciting.
Crime, in reality, was raw, ugly, oftentimes full of paranoia and fear and the ever-present anticipation of something happening, someone finding you out, everything getting ripped away from you.
True, this was my past, not my present.
But my present was full of its own fear and uncertainty. It took a certain kind of inner strength to willingly hitch yourself to someone who knowingly walked into danger every day of their lives. Women - and men - did it, of course, every day. Military partners, cops, firefighters, the list of dangerous jobs was endless.
I'd been lucky so far. I'd had some cracked ribs, some bruises, some stitches, but nothing to send me to anything more than a quick emergency medical office. Or, more often, just having one of my brothers go at me with a sewing kit or some superglue. But I had heard stories of worse. Much worse. Life lost worse. Of course, that usually came with bigger clientele. Which always went to the bigger private security firms.
I would like, someday, to be able to call mine a large operation. Maybe something I could pass on to a future generation. If not my kids, then one of my brother's or Scotti's or even one of the many Mallick kids.
But for now, I was doing well. Well enough that I was considering a house within the next year. Someplace with property for Padfoot. Somewhere to really feel at home.
And maybe I liked the idea of that place being Savea's. Her ancient, crumbling farm in need of serious elbow-grease and someone who actually had the chance to live there from time to time. I could vividly picture us painting color swatches on the walls inside, poring over plans to expand to make room for more animals or - dare I even think it - kids. I could almost hear her yelling up at me from the ground as I tried to fix the leaking roof. I could nearly see all my brothers there sweating in the sun, cursing family obligation without any sincerity as they helped dig holes, place posts, pour concrete, hang a post-and-rail fence to keep in the dogs but allow them to run and get their energy out.
That was, perhaps, a foolish direction to let my head go. Especially after only one kiss. Without knowing if she even wanted to repeat that, let alone commit to more.
Maybe her long-standing crush had been washed away from a kiss. Something that brought fantasy into reality, made it lose its dreamy mystery.
Maybe she was over me now.
"You've been silent for like a full five minutes," Scotti announced, jerking me out of my thoughts. "Are you finally realizing that I'm right?"
"I'm considering it," I allowed. There were simply too many variables going on at the moment to come to any conclusions. I needed to get back, feel out Savea, see if I could work in a 'So, what do you think about us giving it a go' conversation into the night.
