Page 50 of Last Man Standing

“The law only matters to the folks who actually follow it.” I peek across and get caught up in her teary stare. “Those dudes were gonna take something from you, Princess. Something you did not want to give. I promise you, they weren’t gonna stick around to gossip with the cops afterwards.”

Linc’s name flashes on my screen with an incoming text.

Then another.

Another.

“Are you okay?” I peel my gaze from my phone and put it back on the woman I can’t seem to dislike nearly as much as I did a week ago. Or even a few days ago. “They didn’t get you. But they tried. They scared the shit out of you.” I study her splotchy face. Her wet cheeks. Her chattering teeth. “You want me to go back and slit their throats?”

She coughs out a sobbing giggle and shakes her head. “No. Don’t go back.” Sniffling and using the sleeve of her sweater to wipe her nose, she exhales a shuddering breath. “How does that guy you talked to have access to someone else’s security cameras?”

“Magic,” I tease. “And a tech genius we keep on speed dial. She’s expensive, though.”

“E-expensive?”

“Mmm…” I ignore Lincoln’s constant texts. Where are you? Is my sister okay? What’s your mom’s address? “It’s still kinda early in the morning, and that was what she’d consider a rush job, since he was bothering her while it was happening. Scaling their firewalls, accessing their cameras, deleting their footage, inside and out… and he wanted it done instantly…” I tap my steering wheel to the soft beat of whatever is on the radio. “Would’ve been a fifteen-thousand-dollar phone call, easily.”

“Fif—” She slams her fist to her chest and chokes. “Are you serious?”

“Would’ve been more if the gas station’s tech wasn’t last updated in the nineties.”

“Fifteen thousand,” she wheezes. “Dollars?”

“Not pesos.”

“And you just…” Watching her squeak and wheeze is far more entertaining than watching her destroy her fingernails. “You pay it?”

“Well, Mav paid. I’ll get him back when we arrive.”

“Where the hell do you get that kind of money? It takes me months to earn that much! Lots of months. How could you—” Horrified, she shakes her head. “I can’t pay you back for that, Sebastion.”

“I didn’t ask you to.” I lean back in my seat, burrow into the shape until I’m comfortable, then I open my legs and settle in for a whole day on the road… going in circles. “That was my purchase. In fact, it was my crime. That makes us square.”

“You’re rich?” Her shaky stare warms the side of my face. “Or in debt?”

“I’m rich as fuck,” I chuckle. “I’m good for the next few lifetimes, so don’t sweat it.”

“But—”

“My grandfather was Richard Aster, and that motherfucker was loaded. When guys like him die, the government tends to step in, freeze assets, and raid properties.” I flash a wide, taunting grin. “Knowing that’s how they work, I decided to collect my inheritance before they arrived. My mom took hers thirty years ago. Now draw something. Your nerves are making me nervous.”

Stunned, she glances down at the pen I’m not sure she recalls me putting there.

“I see you got your soda and chips, Princess. But I can’t help but notice a lack of Starburst.” Smirking, I bring my focus back to the road. “You did that on purpose to get back at me, didn’t you?”

Aerosmith belts out a love ballad on the radio, my phone vibrates against the dash, my body works through the adrenaline still zinging through my veins, not because I had to teach a lesson to a couple of pricks with small dicks, but because I got a front-row seat to Scarlett’s terror. To her nightmares. To her powerlessness. And in spite of it all, I’m forced to admit I’m way too emotionally stunted to bring this hurting woman a little peace.

I can hurt those guys, and I can physically save her from anything. But emotionally, the best I’ve got are jokes about candy.

Or that’s what I was counting on, anyway.

But she takes that from me, too, when she drops a packet of Starburst candies into my lap.

“I tucked them into my sweater.” She clicks her pen cap on. Off. On. Off. “I was having trouble carrying everything, and I needed to free my hands when those guys… when they…” Gulping, she brings glittering eyes across. “I was gonna pay for them, I swear. But then everything happened and⁠—”

“You little thief!” I tear the packet open with my teeth and take out a pink candy, since those are my favorite. Peeling the paper open, I toss the sugary treat onto my tongue. I fist the rest and extend my hand. “Want one? They’re delicious.”

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