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I’d killed men I respected for their power and abilities, but I didn’t give a fuck about them personally. With Joe… He wasn’t like anyone else. He confused my priorities. I didn’t know if I wanted to win or win by losing. He compromised me in every way. I should have sent someone else tonight, but it was too late for that, and I wasn’t someone who believed in regrets.
The house remained silent as I looked through the closet. I found a fireproof lockbox sitting on the floor in a corner. I defeated the lock easily and popped it open. Right on top was Angelo’s ring in an evidence bag. I shoved it into my pocket, then opened the file underneath it. I expected it to be Joe’s notes on the fire at Sergio’s house. It wasn’t. It was a folder full of notes about me. It included every run in I’d had with the police going back to high school, a list of things Joe suspected I was involved in for which I’d never been charged, a list of people he thought were my associates, and finally things he wanted to know, like my real name.
I smiled as I flipped through the pages. I should probably be disturbed that he’d spent this much time analyzing me, but I wasn’t. I was thrilled. He was just as obsessed with me as I was with him. I bet he hadn’t gone a day without thinking of me. Did he jerk off to memories of the times we’d fucked like I did?
“Find anything interesting?”
I froze. I’d been so caught up in finding out what Joe had written about me that I’d forgotten to listen for him moving around. I wondered if subconsciously I’d wanted to get caught. I wanted Joe again. I had no doubt about that, but this was madness.
I shouldn’t be in his house. I should be confessing to Lucien and Angelo about what I’d done to get us into this mess and working with them to put it right, not trying to do all this on my own, but I was too fucking stubborn and too ashamed. But not about the bargain I’d made with Joe. We did dirty work for other people all the time, and we had contacts at the police department. Joe wasn’t one of them, though. He was, at least in his mind, a good cop, a man who believed in the rule of law, a man who believed I was a dirty criminal who deserved to be punished for all I’d done. He was the enemy, and I couldn’t stand the thought of how Lucien would look at me if I told him the whole truth, that I was absolutely captivated by Joe, that I was probably falling for him. That was what made me feel sick to my stomach.
“Stand up, turn around, and put your hands on the door frame,” Joe demanded.
My pulse pounded in my ears as I calculated the risks of charging Joe or pulling out my gun. Did he hate me enough to actually shoot me?
I turned and did as he said, positioning myself with my hip cocked, leaning against the door frame while bracing myself on the opposite side. “Fancy meeting you here.”
He pressed his lips together, and I could tell he was fighting a smile. “Are you ever serious?”
I shrugged. “Why bother when it’s so much more fun to be the way I am?”
“You shot a man and set fire to the house he was in. Now I can add breaking and entering and stealing evidence to the list of charges.”
“You don’t have anything to tie me to a murder or a fire.”
“I have the ring.”
“I left it with a jeweler. It must’ve been stolen.”
Joe shook his head. “No, you didn’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you told me you never tell the truth.”
“I’ll tell you the truth about one thing.”
He glared at me refusing to take the bait, but I knew seducing him was my best chance.
“I would get down on my knees for you right now. I’d let you do anything to me.”
“Anything but arrest you.”
“You don’t have what you need to charge me.”
He took a step closer, gun still pointed at me. “Maybe I’ll force a confession from you.”
“Are you going to fuck it out of me? Are you trying to entrap me, detective?”
“How many men have you tortured? How many have you killed besides the boy your family erased from existence?”
Hot anger boiled inside me. “You have no idea what happened that day.”
His eyes widened. “I know a teenaged boy died after you stabbed him. And I know you arranged Murphy’s death whether or not you killed him yourself.”
“But you can’t use that against me, can you? Because if someone digs deep enough, they’ll find out you had a hand in it.”
