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“Sothat’smy crime, is it? That I didn’t stay? For what, Mack?” Her voice grew in strength with each word she spoke until she was screaming at me. But I was right there, my own fury suddenly surging to the surface at her implication.
“Forme.” I screamed right back. “You were supposed to stayfor me-for us!”
“Why? So we could play house? I amin debtto The Warden! My life isforfeit!Don’t you get that?”
My heart beat at an erratic pace in my chest, and I stared at her, trying to make sense of the jumble of words she had just spoken. But even as I repeated them to myself, they didn’t make sense.
“What the fuck does that even mean?” I fought the urge to pace - to slam my fist through a goddamn wall.
“It doesn’t matter, Mack,” and suddenly she wasn’t screaming any more, she merely sounded defeated, and I would be fucking damned if she retreated once more - if she gave up. I held her shoulders, forcing her to stay, and as her gaze met mine, I saw the same heartbreak I felt each time I thought about her reflected in her gaze. My hellcat was hurting.
“It matters.Thismatters. Tell me. Just tell me,” I wasn’t above begging. “Please. If the situation is honestly fucked, then at least I’ll know.” I watched her throat bob, watched her swallow as her gaze darted away from mine, but I didn’t care - I wasn’t moving - I wasn’t going anywhere.
“Can I get a drink first?” Her reply came out on a croak, and while I was certainly not qualified at a number of things, getting my girl a drink was one of the things I had actually been raised to do. I grinned down at her, guiding her to one of the bar stools as I tipped three fingers of Jack into a glass.
She slung it back like the trooper she was and began talking, filling me in on the entirety that was Marissa Williams.
Her mother. Chantal. Her aunt. How The Warden had hired her along with a few other teenagers to sneak into some club and lift information for him. She was the most successful and simply kept working her way up the food chain until he trusted her enough - needed her enough, that she could strike a deal - she wanted to get into The Society. Somewhere along the way, her search for truth morphed into a quest for vengeance. I couldn’t imagine living through something like that - if it had been Patrick, I would have set the entire world on fire. And yet here she was. Benson SinClaire was her cousin's father, and she told me that she was so nervous that first day she was at orientation because she was terrified that he would recognize her. But the deeper she got into The Society, the more The Warden requested of her until it became more and more apparent that she would never be free of him. And, inadvertently, she had agreed - because the thing that fueled her was the justice she sought for Chantal.
“But how do you know that your life is forfeit? He’s telling everyone that you’re his prodigy.”
“Exactly,” she nodded in agreement as she grabbed the bottle from me, pouring her own shot, and I was too engrossed in the conversation to actually enjoy the fact that she and I were drinking at my family’s bar, sharing stories. “He is building up my importance for a trade.”
“What kind of trade?” She shrugged, her gaze trained on the countertop below.
“What kind of trade,Marissa?”I pushed again.
“He’s either going to marry me off or sell me. He’s mentioned it a couple of times - how to use my perceived value to benefit his plans, and the only thing I have going for me is that he won’t act until I’ve finished with The Society, and my time is almost up. But I refuse to be bartered and traded, and so I’ve already accepted that I’m going to go down in my final act at The Society.”
I stared at her, taking in everything she had just told me - the enormity of her life, how she would barter and trade and scrape for those she cared about because she knew her life was forfeit in some way or another.
“You could run.” It was a futile offer and I knew it because if it was me, I wouldn’t run - I would want to take out as many of the fuckers as I could when I went down.
Systematically, she refilled her glass, turning her unflinching gaze upon me as she spoke.
“You already know that I won’t run.” I nodded. Ididknow that.
“We could kill him.”
She huffed in laughter, “The Warden takes a kind of surety deposit when you sign up to work with him. He has a series of damning evidence and information on everyone who works for him, and if he were to die, all of that would be released, and so we all work very hard to keep him alive and protected.”
The thought of her being blackmailed by him made me murderous.
“What does he have on you?”
“Next question.” She smiled up at me, and I chose to concede,for now.
She refilled her glass, turning towards me as she said, “Your turn.”
I refilled my glass right alongside her. “What do you want to know?”
“How did your family get involved with The Society?”
I wasn’t even marginally surprised that she pulled zero punches, asking the hardest hitting question first. I exhaled loudly and answered as honestly as I could. “Because my grandfather got greedy.”
I found myself explaining that gramps thought it was a good deal - that he believed he was uplifting us in some way or another, but the truth was our family had been flush when he entered into that agreement - when he forced his own son into their system. And once Da had settled down and married Ma, they killed gramps. Of course, there was no evidence, but we all knew the truth. His death made us a target for our enemies round about the same time that the media began publishing outlandish tales about how my family was actually a gang - how we were wholly responsible for the gang wars in Boston, and how Da had settled down with a pretty Society girl for her money. None of it was true, but it didn’t matter, the media was having a field day casting us as the Villains of Society. My mother’s family wrote her off entirely after that article appeared, despite them approving of the marriage because it was Society sanctioned. When Patrick was born, Da decided to change our surname for protective purposes - he didn’t want his sons to be at risk every time we left the house - he wanted to give us a normal childhood. And over the years, people forgot about us
“So what was your plan while we were in Austin?”
