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Chapter One
Katrina
I was visibly shaking.There was no helping it.
After all I’d been through over the last four years, you would think that I’d be used to situations like this. Men like Carlos. But no. Each time my body shook, my hands turned to ice blocks and my bladder threatened to embarrass me.
“You said the last job was the last job,” I force myself to speak up. Carlos stops walking at my interruption, his body tensing. My spine straightens; I don’t want to back down but I am wary of his next move.
Swallowing the lump of dread in my throat, I don’t break eye contact when he turns to me.
“Are you calling me a liar?”
My head is shaking before I get the words out. “No. No, not at all. I’m just saying—”
“Have I not been patient and understanding all these years? Given you a safe way out of the trouble your father got you in?”
I had to bite my tongue at his version of safe. At no time over these last few years did I ever feel safe. Not around Carlos and definitely not with the tasks he gave me. If anything, I’d lived my life on the thin edge between death and danger.
“Yes, you have.” I bow my head, not wanting him to read anything on my face that may contradict my words.
“You’re so close,” Carlos says, coming closer and placing two fingers under my chin. I lift my head, and our eyes lock. My haunted violets meeting his sinister browns. “Do this last task and your father’s debts will be paid. Our fun times together will be over.”
He says this like I have a choice. Like I’ve ever had a choice in this fucked-up situation. When that’s the furthest thing from the truth.
Carlos came into my life days after I’d waved off the love of my life as he disappeared into a military base. Six months without him as he served, potentially his last term, and then we would be reunited. Back together and planning the future we’d only whispered to each other, tangled in bed.
Back then, six months had felt like a lifetime.
It was nothing compared to four years.
I’d waved so long to the man I loved at the gates, even after he’d fade into the distance, that I had been asked to leave. But I had been so happy then. And hopeful. Feeling blessed to have found a man like him in the small town I had been living in and falling in love so rapidly. Our love may have ignited in seconds, but I knew in my gut that it would always burn bright.
How wrong I was.
I’d only taken the drive back to my tiny, rented apartment before everything came crumbling down around me.
I tried not to think ofhim. Tried not to imagine his expression when he arrived back on American soil to find me missing in the crowd. His anger at me when he’d finally put it all together and realized I’d left. Disappeared.
I couldn’t think his name let alone say it out loud because of the power it had over me. The memories would flood my mind and leave me broken.
Banishing the direction my thoughts had taken, I angle my head so that Carlos’s fingers slip from my chin and give him a nod. I would do this final task for him and then that would be it. I couldn’t keep being his thief.
I may be small and quick, nimble when the occasion called for it, but I hated this life. My father and I had never really gotten along, but he’d taught me the tricks of his criminal trade. When I was young, it all seemed harmless. A bit of fun and a couple extra dollars of spending money.
It wasn’t until I was in my teens that I learned how destructive the innocent cons my father set me up to perform really where.
I’d walked away from it all. That life, my father, everything. And I never looked back.
I thought that life would be forever behind me, a bright future ahead.
God, how wrong I’d been. So naive. I knew better than to believe in happily ever afters.
Giving me a sneer that makes me feel queasy, Carlos steps away and rounds his desk. With a wave of his hand he dismisses me. “All the information will be sent to you. I need the item retrieved within forty-eight hours. By any means necessary. You know the drill.”
Pushing up from the uncomfortable chair, I confirm that I do and leave.
As I make my way down the dark hallway and toward the exit, passing dozens of Carlos’s goons, I mentally chant to myself that this is the last time, the last job.
Then I’ll be free.
Yet, no matter how many times I repeat that to myself it feels like a lie.
I’ll never be free.
