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JESSE
THAT WINTER - 2019 - SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA
I closed my eyes while gripping the steering wheel. I couldn’t breathe and my heart was trying to pound its way from my chest. But being behind the wheel of a Porsche 911 on the windy roads of the California coast wasn’t the best place to lose my shit. Fuck. I opened my eyes just before I went off the road.
I’d been at a black-tie event fifteen minutes prior. Followed my mark down a hall, then used my tie to strangle him. Finished him off with my bare hands . . . I can’t keep doing this.
Sighing, I rested my skull against the headrest and continued to drive recklessly down the road. How the fuck did I get here? How’d I become a man I couldn’t stand to see in the mirror anymore?
Groaning, I took my foot off the accelerator, slowing the car slightly as I came to a bend in the road. I was so fucked in the head tonight. More than normal.
Typically, I was behind a long gun when taking out a target. Or rigging a car to explode. Or making someone’s death look like an accident. They all deserved to die. Every fucking one. But tonight . . . I watched the life drain from my target’s eyes; his body went limp as my hands squeezed tightly around his throat. Fucking hell, what would Ella think of me? A.J.?
A.J. served his country in an honorable way, and I was pretty sure he was still doing something honorable. Even if he hadn’t fully opened up about his job with Scott and Scott Securities. And some time ago, I, too, served our country honorably, but what I was doing now felt far from it. And Ella, well . . . she was everything good in this world and didn’t deserve to be tainted with my darkness.
I pulled over a moment later. I was going to cause a wreck if I kept going. And hurting someone else wasn’t something I could live with. I got out of the car and walked over to the edge of the road, the murder weapon—my tie—hung loose around my neck over my white dress shirt.
Setting my hands on the metal guardrail, I bowed my head, needing to find the energy to keep moving forward. To find a way to make things right in my life. Make them better. Because at this rate, I wasn’t going to last much longer.
A few minutes later, I started back for the car and halted when my phone pinged with an incoming text from my sister.
Rory: I’m taking Ella to NYC next weekend for a girls’ trip.
Rory: Thought you may want to know . . .
Ella in New York? In the big city? With assholes like the one I killed tonight? Rory was used to big cities. Her life was . . . well, wild. But Ella? Fuck, she’d be . . .
Of course I wanted to know about the trip. More than that, I needed to be there. To watch over them. Protect them.
Jesse: Thank you for letting me know.
That’s all I said. All that needed to be said.
Because I’d be there no matter what. And Rory knew it . . . as evident by her “stomach bug” the following weekend.
CHAPTER TEN
ELLA
ONE WEEK LATER - NEW YORK CITY
“Well, um. How about we go search out that ‘New York at Christmas’ feeling I was craving?” I tipped my chin in the direction of Rockefeller Center.
“That sounds much better.” Jesse offered me one of my favorite smiles. Innocent. A little boyish. Like he no longer had the weight of the world on his shoulders.
My other favorite smile, though? A dash of broody with a hint of bad-boy cocky. That smile always did me in.
After watching Jesse “handle” a guy for being an asshole, we’d left the nightclub and were currently walking the streets of Manhattan like we were in some type of fairy tale.
And when Jesse set his hand on the small of my back, I went momentarily still. I wasn’t used to him touching me. Not even like this. And damn if it didn’t feel . . . perfect.
I supposed this night made up for the fact he’d missed my birthday. Maybe. Kind of. The night’s young.
I did my best to school my features and started forward.
Golden angels with trumpets pointed toward the heavens lined our path as we neared the massive Christmas tree. “Rory planned this, didn’t she?” I asked a little bit later, stopping in front of the classic holiday display. His hand slipped away from my back, and I instantly missed the warmth. “Her birthday was recently, so I thought she meant this to be a Christmas-slash-birthday celebration weekend, but the stomach bug is fake, isn’t it?”
“I’m thinking so.”
