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I pull out the realtor’s key from my pocket, and it slides in with ease.What’s the point of being secure if you’re also going to be lazy, Ed?
He’s a mess and a waste of space. It’s a wonder he’s lasted so long in this life.
I shake my head, but the moment I walk through the doorway, there’s a gun in my face.
“I told you to stop breaking and entering my homes!” Ed screams at me in the darkness of his glossy foyer. The chandelier above our heads nearly touches all four walls, and I realize how tacky the golden thing is every time I’m here.
“Well, the last home was more mine than it was yours, Ed,” I say with a smirk.
His hand shakes against the metal of the weapon. He has never killed a man in his life. Not personally anyway. He can beat little boys for years, but he has no idea how to face a man in a fight. No, his nails are too polished for that. I know for a fact he goes to get mani-pedis once a week. With nails like that, there’s no way he’s committing crimes. Ed is the type to hire or force others to do the dirty work for him. How many has he sent me after?
He won an election six years ago because of me. He still celebrated like he won it himself, but I’m not bitter. You should have seen the disturbing images of young boys I found on his opponent’s hard drive. I couldn’t even control my rage when I found it.
In a way, I was happy to help Ed that time.
“Who else is with you?” Ed demands, shaking the gun at me like it’s a tambourine instead of a weapon.
If he’s not careful, it’ll go off. But unlike him, I’m not afraid of death or of getting shot. Been there, done that many times before. It’s what I was trained for, after all. And that’s something he could never even begin to understand.
“Just me.” I’m bored with his antics and paranoia.
I grip the barrel and twist it from his wrist, his cry of pain soothing something in my soul as I take away just one more thing that’s his.
“Bullshit, they triggered the alarm.”
I don’t allow the drilling thoughts that are scratching through my mind frantically like drowning cats to surface in my features. I remain impassive as I consider his words.
Someone triggered the alarm.
“It was obviously me, you paranoid fuck.” I lift my hands from my sides, but my fingers itch to check my phone.
Wild dark eyes look me up and down where I stand unflinching before him. He knows I’d never be so careless.
And I wasn’t.
But he has to believe I was.
“You wanted to talk. Here I am.”
“I said at seven. Not in the middle of the night when my wife’s sleeping.”
My wife.
It’s like he wants so badly for us not to be related. He’ll call her his wife before he calls her my mother. Trust me, I fucking wish we weren’t related, either, but I’m not irrational about it. He works so hard to draw his life into everything he’s ever wanted. And an eleven-year-old punk kid like me wasn’t in his picturesque plans when he married my mother.
He gets rid of everything that doesn’t fit. But he couldn’t get rid of me. And I won’t let him get rid of Atlas either.
“You said she’d be leaving town. That she wasn’t something I’d have to worry about this election season. I saw that video of you nearly killing that hockey player over her online. People are posting her name all over social media because of you! How could you be so stupid?! Why is she even here? Why did she follow me?”
“She didn’t follow you. You’re being paranoid,” I reiterate. Atlas got a full scholarship to the best criminology and criminalistics graduate programs in America. Not that I’ll be sharing that information with this fucker who thinks everyone’s major life choices are about him.
He needs to trust me when I say he isn’t fucking special.
“I’ve spoken with my confidants.” I try not to roll my eyes. Confidants is just code for a bunch of retired golf buddies who kiss the ass Ed shits from every fucking day “They’ve recommended another route for her. They think you’ve gotten too close to the girl, and we need someone fresh and new to take care of the situation.”
Over my dead fucking body.
The sweat in my palm mixes with the blood that coats my nails as I sink them further into my fists to stop myself from punching my hand through this asshole’s Botox-filled face.
