Page 3 of Marked By Ink

I get embarrassed. Fine. Okay.

If that happens, it happens. I think of Julie, and suddenly I feel like an idiot for even letting my nerves get this bad.

I stride through the door, looking around the bar area.

The music pumps from a room at the back, a dance floor with flashing lights cutting here and there.

But this main room is quiet, letting people converse with their voices raised only a little bit.

It’s a low-ceilinged room, a long mirror behind the bar making the room look larger with groups of people talking here and there.

“You made it,” Lexi calls, walking over.

I smile widely now, not having to fake it or think about nerves or obsess about them.

Lexi has two sleeves filled with colorful tattoos, with some creeping up her neck. Her hair is dyed pink, and I spot more pieces of art through the holes in her jeans.

She pauses, grinning up at me – she’s short at five-two – and then she makes the gesture, her finger going in circles.

I grin, flipping my hand so she can look at my wrist, at her handiwork.

She admires the butterfly. “Even if I do say so myself, that is a lovely piece.”

I nod. “I’d have to agree there.”

“You’ll make something even more beautiful one day…and one daysoontoo. You’ll see.”

I beam at the thought, glowing within, hoping it’s true.

CHAPTERTWO

Felix

“A butterfly on the wrist,” I repeat down the phone. “That’s it?”

“This is your last job,” Mr. Red says.

I grit my teeth, close my eyes and shift my head from side to side, stretching my neck out. I’m sitting across the street from the bar, trying to keep my calm, but this is just ridiculous.

“I already know that,” I snap, thinking of Yasmin, of Felicia.

I think of Felicia, my little niece with her gap-toothed smile and her blonde hair darkening in the Californian sun.

“What I don’t know,” I go on, “is why you think this is acceptable. We haven’t had a briefing. You haven’t given me their name. Nothing except that they’ve got a tattoo of a butterfly on the wrist.”

“A blue butterfly,” Mr. Red says in his calm British accent. “That is correct.”

I let out a laugh of frustration, with no humor in the sound at all, just the need to stop and end this.

And I can, tonight. But something about this job feels off.

There’s a reason Mr. Red is being so vague.

“Having their names helps me,” I tell him. “Knowing who they are, what they’ve done, it’s the only way this isn’t completelyfucked.”

I’ve done three jobs for Mr. Red – or, more accurately, for the people who hired him – and each time, I’ve been able to look myself in the mirror the next day when I remember their crimes.

The worst kind.

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