AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It’s not an easy search.
A lot of the jobs we’ve done for Olivia were crimes against white collar businesses or up and comers in the Detroit business world. And although some of those people might be pissed as hell to find out that Olivia Stanton sabotaged them, they’re not exactly the types who’d be most likely to want to help people like us—or tobemuch help, even if they wanted to.
We need to find someone more like us.
Someone familiar with violence, who’s lived and breathed it and has it in their bones.
We’re looking for a needle in a haystack here, and there’s plenty to sift through.
It takes more than a few days of constant work to go through our previous correspondences with X and cross reference them with my notes and recon for each job we did. Ransom and Malice work to reinforce security on the condo, and we keep Willow close the whole time, refusing to let her leave our little hideout. Just to be safe.
She bears it well enough for the first couple of days, but by the time we’re closing in on day five, I can tell she’s starting to get antsy.
She feels trapped, I’m sure, and I get that. But there’s no way around it. We can’t let anything happen to her. Because none of us can live without her, and it’s obvious that the gloves are completely off with Olivia now.
I’ve set up my command center in the room I’ve taken over as my office. It’s barely furnished except for a desk and a nice office chair, along with the multiple computers and screens that I use to get shit done.
I’ve been in here almost all day every day since we made the decision to try to eliminate Olivia. The last time I spent this much uninterrupted time at my computers was when we were trying to find Willow after Troy stole her from us, and pulling long hours now brings back uncomfortable memories of that time. My side has healed up well, but the scar from the bullet wound twinges sometimes as I work, as if my entire body is being transported back to those awful, soul-crushing days of searching for the woman we love.
After closing the most recent file I’ve been studying, I lean back in my chair and roll my neck. I blink a few times, feeling the strain in my eyes, then rest my hand on the mouse again. As I open another file, Willow wanders into the room.
The door is off to one side, so I barely pick up the movement in my periphery, but I’m instantly aware of her presence. It seems to fill the room, and I look over at her.
“What’s up?”
“Nothing,” she says, shaking her head. “I just miss you. You’ve been in here so much lately.”
I smile, feeling the curl of pleasure in my stomach. I like that she missed me. I like that she’s been thinking of me.
And she’s right. I have been spending almost every waking hour in here, so I turn in my chair, putting the monitors at my back. I can take a small break to give her all my focus.
Seeing that makes her brighten, a little bit of color returning to her pale cheeks. She’s been strung-out and on edge, small circles growing under her eyes, and it makes me worry about her.
“How are you holding up?” I ask. “I know this can’t be easy for you.”
She sighs, scrunching up her nose. “Is it that obvious?”
“If you know how to look for it, yes.”
“And you know how to look for everything,” she murmurs, but she doesn’t sound put out about it. “You read me so well. You see everything.”
“I still want to hear it from you,” I tell her.
She seems to think about it for a moment, and then sighs again. “I don’t know. I just… I was just starting to feel like I was in control, you know? Like I was getting my strength back and feeling more like myself after… everything.”
I nod, not needing her to elaborate on what she means by that. None of us are likely to forget anytime soon. “And now this is a setback.”
“Yeah. The steady footing I had, it feels like it’s slipping away. Like I’m losing control of my own life, and I hate it. I was supposed to be getting better, but this is like three steps back. I’m always looking over my shoulder, jittery all the time, worried about what might happen.”
I nod, understanding where she’s coming from. After all, maintaining tight, unbending control of my life and my emotions is something I worked on really fucking hard over the years. So I get what it feels like to feel that slip away. Even though I’ve let go of some of that when it comes to Willow, there are other parts that I’ll probably always need, just to keep myself from falling back into the darkness that tries to claim me sometimes.
“You haven’t lost that progress,” I promise her. “Recovery isn’t a switch you can flip. It’s an ongoing process. Even when you were feeling better, you still had nightmares, right?”
“Yeah,” she murmurs.
“But you still felt like you were getting somewhere. You were making progress despite the setbacks.”
She nods.
