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“What is a reservation? Can you tell me that?”
“It’s something beyond my scope of control that says I have to honor your presence here and accept you into my crew,” he said.
“What…” If this was a criminal enterprise, knowing anything else could cause me problems. “Look, your offer to let me stay is very generous and all, but I don’t belong here. I need to leave. If you give me your contact information, I’ll let you know if I change my mind. I appreciate your offer of…whatever. But I’m ready to go.”
“Sure,” he said, not so condescending, more placating.
He probably thought I’d want his nefarious kind of life. I’d chosen accounting for stability. Ilikedstability. My childhood had been chaotic enough to last me a lifetime, and this place reeked of upheaval.
I was getting out of here andnever. Coming. Back.
He got up and walked to the door. I didn’t hesitate to follow.
He paused, his hand on the door as I kept a few feet of distance between us.
“It will become very uncomfortable,” he said.
This guy didn’t quit, and I wasn’t going to stand here listening to his threats. He was letting me go because he knew he couldn’t keep me. That would be insane. He could say whatever he wanted about the cops not being able to help me.
“I’ll manage,” I said.
He looked at me and shook his head, like I was some stupid, wayward kid. He walked out the door, me on his tail. We were back in that lounge area where the other three were.
“Dice, have her sign a release and send her back. She thinks she can go back and stay.”
“But…thatneverhappens,” Dice said.
Kaden’s little crew of murderers were staring at him, and then me, with various degrees of gaping disbelief.
Kaden shrugged. “There’s always a first. She wants to try, let her. Perhaps she’s right and we know nothing.”
He walked away without another look in my direction.
Dice rolled his eyes but walked over to a built-in on the other side of the room and grabbed a clipboard and pen out of a drawer.
He shoved it in my direction. “You’ll need to sign this, and then you can leave.”
“Sign for what?”
“For anything you see, hear, or do going forward with this organization, including what you have already seen, heard, or done.”
I looked down at the paper, squinting as best I could, trying to decipher something on the sheet. It was absolutely impossible. There was fine print and then there was this. The type was so small that it didn’t even appear to be letters, just lines and dots.
“I can’t read this.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Dice said.
“But you want me to sign it.” I got so close my nose was practically touching the paper.
“Yes. If you don’t, you void the reservation’s protection and get thrown in the river.”
That got Cookie’s attention. She yelled from the couch, “If she doesn’t sign, I’m still not tossing her. I’m not ruining my nails. I just got them done.”
“I’m not either! She doesn’t sign, you’re still it. Short straw stands,” Connor said.
“Fine. I’ll toss her, but I call next one now. I’m not getting stuck doing all the dirty work around here,” Dice yelled back, before turning and looking at the clipboard in my hand. “You signing or what?”
Dice was staring at me like he didn’t care what I did, as if resigning himself to being the one to drag the garbage pail out to the corner.
