Page 5 of The Fixer

And then I turned fifteen.

There was only one thing that had ever caused my devotion to Paulo to waver. One thing that made me wonder if I’d been living the life that was meant for me. I’d been embroiled in emotions, battered by hormones that fought for control, coerced into believing there was something better than what I’d always wanted.

Then my father came in and took that away.

My gaze dragged across the room, flicking over the faces of the mourners, sliding over the thick drapes parted around the large windows, to the head bobbing down the sidewalk in the hot afternoon sun.

The home’s make-up artist, Courtney, did what I’d done as a teen, after it all went down. She left the funeral home without a backward glance.

I wished I could do it again.

“Are you doing okay?”

My father’s right-hand man, Jacob Riser, had stopped beside me. Wringing hands. Fake smile on his lips. Like it pained him to speak to me. Like the grief the mourners wore like shields had covered me, too.

I supposed it did, for more reasons than he’d ever know.

But he knew one of them. He’d been there when my father walked into that room, when he saw what had been going on for years, before putting a stop to it.

“Fine,” I told him through a constricted throat. I tugged at my collar. “What can I do to help?”

That smile faltered, then fell. Thin bottom lip pulled tight between his teeth. His eyes darted from mine, across the room to where my father stood, to the casket, over the mourners who mingled in their grief. When he returned his attention to me, the expression blanketing his face told me what his answer was before he even spoke.

“I’m sorry, Junior. There is nothing right—”

“It’s Jet,” I snapped, the words sharp and bitter and filled with a lifetime full of disappointment and dissatisfaction and regret.

“Yes, sir.” Wide eyes grew wider. Those hands wrung harder. There was fear in the line of sweat beading upon his forehead and the ashen shade of his skin. “I’m sorry, sir.”

I lifted my chin before glancing around the room. Fought the urge to fidget, or to reach for my gun or my knife where they lay hidden beneath my clothes. “Don’t do it again.”

“Of course not, sir.” He took a backward step. Stopped, then swayed in his place. I didn’t need to watch him to see the uncertainty dancing in his eyes.

It was there, clear as day.

Clear as the sweat trickling down the edge of his cheek like a tear falling from the corner of his eye.

“Go.”

He nodded vigorously. “Yes, sir. Of course, sir.” The man fled, his fear lingering in the stagnant air that stifled my breath.

And I breathed it in, let it fill my lungs and cleanse my soul. Let it wash away those years of pain and coercion even as those old desires rose like a viper deep inside me.

I needed a distraction.

I needed a release.

Turning on my heel, I stepped toward the kitchen, everything inside of me intent on walking out the back exit and hopping in my car.

To hell with my job.

To hell with this new life that felt like nothing but prolonged death.

To hell with everything.

I crashed into something, a green and red blur. I stumbled forward, hands outstretched, reaching for a gun, a wall, anything to protect me and stop my fall.

What I grabbed was a body. Smooth skin wrapped in silk. The weight of it, of my guilt and grief and my worries for my life, dragged me down, sucking me into a swirling vortex I wasn’t sure would ever stop.