Page 45 of Ruin

And I know what you’re thinking: I was taking this whole I might die today thing awfully casually, all told. Acting like it wasn’t going to happen at all, or like it didn’t matter. Blowing it off like I didn’t really believe in it. But I’d faced dangerous situations before—every time Devil had too much to drink—and I’d learned that the only way you got through them, the only way you kept facing them, was to find a way to section off your mind. Keep the alert and moving-forward part in the forefront and push the fearful, terrified part to the back, where it didn’t get to rule over your instincts.

Fake it ‘till you make it, literally.

The optimistic part of your brain was so sure you were going to make it through that it didn’t stop feeding you ways to survive until it was literally beaten to a pulp. And that right there? That kept you alive.

It wasn’t going to do much if I came up against a bullet, but I was willing to give it a chance, for now. It was, at the very least, keeping my spirits up, and that was more important than anything else. After all, I couldn’t turn back now. Knight must be awake, and he must have figured out that I’d left, and then guessed at where I might have gone. He was either thinking I was the stupidest person ever born—possible—or that I’d actually betrayed him.

I doubted either of those was a good option when it came to me going back, saying I was sorry, and asking him to forgive me.

He probably thought I was either an idiot or someone he never should have trusted in the first place.

And really, it didn’t matter. I didn’t plan to see him again. But when all the shit hit the fan, I was hoping he’d realize that I did it for him. And if I was really lucky, he’d also know that I did it because I’d fallen in love with him.

Yeah, yeah, that was a big leap. That didn’t make it any less true.

I finished the pastry and threw the bag in the nearest trash can, then settled down to sip coffee and plan. This was the biggest thing I’d ever done, by a margin, and I wanted to have a good idea what I was getting into.

I mean, I knew what I was getting into. Devil was going to be coming around that corner soon, probably in a car and almost definitely with a bodyguard. He never came to important appointments alone. He wouldn’t let the guy come with him but would leave him outside and on watch. Devil would go in and collect his money, then come back out with a bag full of cash and have his bodyguard drive him home.

And he was getting a lot of cash. All of his contacts put money right into this checking account for services rendered. Drug runs. Protection scams. Gun sales. Above and beyond that were the payments Devil got from the owner of the bank himself. The man had done something at some point—something to do with child trafficking—and Devil somehow knew about it. I’d never asked how he knew or whether he was involved in the trafficking as well, partially because I was a chicken and didn’t want to know. What I did know was that Devil was blackmailing the guy, and every month when Devil came in, he got a huge payment to keep his mouth shut about what he knew.

It was despicable and really, really hateful. The banker should have been in jail, and Devil could have put him there.

But he liked money and power more than ethics, and at the end of the day, that was what this came down to.

And if I did my job, this was the last payment he’d ever collect. The last time he let someone else get away with a crime and collected money for keeping the secret.

At the thought, I slipped my hand into my purse and fingered the gun I’d brought with me. It wasn’t mine, and I already knew it was far too big for my hand, but it had been the best I could lay my hands on last night before I fell asleep. Brock had an entire safe in his house full of guns, and I’d asked to see them at one point. I’d also watched over his shoulder when he put in the combination.

It had been a very easy mission to get into the safe last night while the guys were eating dinner and take my pick of the guns there.

I took the smallest one, but Brock was an enormous guy, and he hadn’t exactly had any miniature pistols sitting around. The gun I had was at least twice as long as my hand and incredibly heavy. I was going to have to support the nose with one hand while pulling the trigger with the other.

While praying that I’d finally learned how to aim correctly.

But if I succeeded, it would mean Devil was done. Dead and gone and finished terrorizing the people of this area. Finished beating up girls who didn’t know how to get away from him.

And he wouldn’t be able to go after Knight again.

That was a deal I was willing to sell my life for. And as my hand wrapped around the gun, learning where the safety was and how the trigger felt, I sent a prayer up into the sky that Knight would somehow know that I’d done this for him rather than myself, and that I’d done it because he’d saved me once.

This was my version of paying him back.

I WATCHED THE CLOCK on my phone tick closer to ten. It was 9:58, now, and the bank would open at any moment. I didn’t know for sure that Devil would be there when the bank opened, but it made sense for him to at least attempt it. The bank would be less crowded right then, and that would mean fewer people there to see him walking in. It would also give him the rest of the day to spend some of the money.

Two minutes, then, until I walked out onto the sidewalk, a gun in my hand and aimed at the man I’d once thought I loved. Two minutes until everything changed for me. Sure, I’d killed people before. Those guys in the clubhouse. But that had been in self-defense, or at least defense of a friend. Those guys were going to hurt Gem, and I wasn’t going to let that happen.

This was premeditated. Something I’d go to jail for if anyone could prove I’d done it.

Of course, that would only happen if I survived Devil himself, and his bodyguard. Somehow, I didn’t think prison was going to be a problem. I just hoped a bullet took me out rather than Devil’s fists.

I pulled the gun out of my pocket and looked at it, entranced by the cold, hard steel of the thing. Black and angry, it looked like something that ended lives. I’d always thought guns looked inherently evil, and this one wasn’t changing my mind. It looked like something that was read to do murder, my hand small and pale at the base of it.

When I looked up, still trying on the weight of the gun and trying to figure out how to hold it gracefully, I realized that that doors of the bank were now open. People were going in and out, chatting among themselves or on their phones.

And there, at the corner of the street, a black car that I recognized was making the turn and cruising slowly toward the parking spaces in front of the bank. I knew the man driving the vehicle. Had talked with him on a number of occasions.

He was a brute who took pleasure in causing other people pain, and he was also Devil’s favorite guard.