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Blue.
Familiar blue eyes that I’d memorized some time ago.
No. It couldn’t be.
Dean.
I turned my head, trying to convince myself that I was just seeing things. I took a big swig of my drink, which made Tim chuckle, and I quickly looked back to that dark corner of the bar.
No one was there.
* * *
One week passed. Then two.
Tim and I were going steady. He took me out to several dinners, picking his favorite steakhouses that reminded him of the down-home cooking back in Montana. He told me stories about the ranch he had in Montana and I told him made-up ones about the life I never had there.
By week three, my fake sister had passed away and Tim was there to catch me through my contrived grief. My Tina persona had no other family and now I was all alone.
Tim couldn’t resist a damsel in distress.
I was heading out to meet him for coffee one morning along the paths of Central Park when I stopped for a bottle of water. As I was handing the merchant money to pay for it, I caught a glance of someone who looked deceptively like Dean again.
It couldn’t be him. I was seeing things I wanted to see.
I thought about him often. Sometimes when I was alone, I would slip my fingers between my thighs and make myself come with him in my fantasies. I would think about that tongue tangling with mine, kissing every inch of my naked skin, making me shiver with desire.
I shook my head.
None of my marks ever came for me after I left. The Father made sure of that. With each one, he held something dark over their heads as blackmail and if he couldn’t find anything powerful enough to keep them quiet, he simply ended them instead. They couldn’t come after me if they were dead.
Dean would be the same. The Father would send someone to threaten him if need be and he would step down like all the rest. He was sweet and gentle. I knew him. He wasn’t a fighter. He would take his lumps and turn the other way. He’d move on and so would I.
I’d never been found, and I never would be.
I turned and rushed down the street, gulping down water to soothe the sudden thirst that made me feel as if I’d been in the Sahara Desert for a week.
The country-style café wasn’t far. Tim had a gift for finding every western-themed place in the city and I told him I liked it. To be honest, it was cute that he just wanted to give me a little taste of home. Too bad he didn’t know that it wasn’t real.
* * *
For weeks, images of Dean plagued me. I thought I saw him in bars, in groups crossing the streets, and even in the hallway of the building where my tiny studio apartment was. Everywhere I looked, I saw those soulful blue eyes. I told myself it wasn’t real, that his beard was too thick and that his hair was longer than it used to be.
His gaze wasn’t soft like it used to be. It was hard. Firm. Expectant.
None of it was real. He was just a figment of my imagination. Maybe I was feeling guilty or nostalgic now that I’d been assigned a new mark. Maybe I missed his kind nature, the way he cared for me and the way he spoiled me just to see me smile for him.
Tim was a pretty good guy. He didn’t deserve what I was going to do to him either, but none of that mattered. My job wasn’t about what I wanted.
It was all about pleasing the Father.
I hadn’t chosen this life. It had been forced on me long ago.
The Father was the leader of a deep underground organization. Once upon a time, they would have been called the mafia, but the changes in laws and police structure had made it difficult for them to operate out in the open like they used to. Now they’d taken to a secret network of interconnected people like me to carry out tasks. They used to launder money, sell drugs and women and all sorts of nefarious things, but with technology came new ways to make money.
It birthed the emergence of women like me who were taught to be anyone they needed to be.
It was the marriage con.
