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“This new venture is something bad. For the city, for the people you swore to protect—” I gulp. “For me, personally. Please, Tough Guy. I need you.”
“If I’m going to stop him, then you’re not going to be involved beyond whatever information you give me.” Devan steps back abruptly. “Talk to me and then go, Aria. Get out before shit goes down.”
I blink at him. Wait a hot second. He’s seriously telling me to skip town? “Why?”
“Because you’re going to get hurt, and I refuse to let another death lay heavy on my conscience,” he answers without hesitation.
“In other words, what you’re telling me is that you want me to give you every piece of dirt I can on Broderick and then step back like a good little lamb and let you kill yourself? No.” I shake my head. “We work together or no deal.”
He’s worried about me?
Flip the script because I’m worried about him. I know the risk going into this. I’ve already considered every angle. He has no clue.
“Trust me, Aria, this is not a battle you want to wage. You’re cozy right now in the organization, but when it goes down, and it’s going down, then you’ll be collateral. You’re the one whose neck is going to be on the chopping block because you’re the whistleblower.”
I gulp in a deep breath. “That’s my problem, not yours. I need you to help. Your partner was murdered by them, and you won’t help me?”
He winces.
I know all about his partner. The first thing I did when I looked into Devan’s background was scope out the records from his session with the psychologist. The guilt he carries around for letting Sinclair die weighed heavily on him when he first went to the sessions two years ago. He’s carrying the burden now, too, and letting it affect everything he does.
“You know there are moles. In my department and in yours,” he’s saying. “What happens when someone figures you out?”
Internally, I applaud him for thinking on his feet and, more specifically, thinking about me.
“There are always going to be moles, which is why you need me,” I reason out loud. “To sniff them out for you and eliminate the threats before they become too big.” I didn’t want to play this card, but really. “Do you know who I am? What I do?”
Devan isn’t paying attention anymore. Not one hundred percent. He’s lost somewhere in his head, his gaze distant. He isn’t even too shocked that I know about his partner. “Is it so wrong for me to want you to be safe?” he asks. “I have no idea why, but for some reason, the thought of you in trouble makes me itchy. If you get hurt, I’ll never forgive myself.”
My breath catches. He’s standing there, gorgeous and masculine, and all I want to do is reach out for him and hold him. Let myself be held in return.
“Great, thanks, I got it,” I reply almost peevishly. “But my innocent guys don’t deserve to die. And unless you help me take down Broderick, then they are going to keep dying, along with a lot of other people.” I work my hands and fingers together, pulling until my knuckles stretch and crack. Unable to stand still.
It’s just the two of us this far out in the parking lot, but I still feel eyes on every part of me. Except for Devan’s, which are trained on his feet.
“They’re hardly innocent,” he says. “They’re criminals.”
“They’re just hacking and helping me. Half of the time, some of them don’t even know what they’re doing. And it’s all on my word. If you want to be pissed at someone, then be pissed at me.”
“You think I’m not?” His brows furrow. “You’re fucking out of your mind.”
“Hey, now, you came into my chat and talked to me. It’s not like you had a gun to your head or anything. Now, I happen to believe that everything happens for a reason, and we were meant to meet each other.”
Devan is shaking his head. “No. It’s bullshit, Aria. Nothing happens for a reason because if it does, then the only reason is the sick joy a distant creator gets from our suffering.”
We’ve both been hurt, and I know it.
Asking him to meet me here today isn’t a rash decision, though. My resolve built its case over years of turning the other way, pointedly not looking too closely at anything in the Black Market Syndicate outside of my control. Outside of Broderick.
I’d even gone so far as to jot down the pros and cons of bringing Devan on board. I burned the evidence almost as soon as I’d finished writing, but still.
“I’m not here to talk about God with you. You have no idea what I’ve been through, and I’m not going to tell you, not right now.” I wrap my arms around my torso, the happy face I’d plastered on immediately falling away. “But Broderick is about to do something unforgivable, and I refuse to let any other girl or boy on the streets suffer the way I did. Absolutely not.”
Devan plucks my hand from my elbow, and I hadn’t realized I’d dug my fingernails deep enough to cause a hangnail to bleed.
Every part of me was freezing, and I just wanted to get this over with, to have the big explosion I knew would come and be on the other side of it. The side where Devan agrees to help me, and we take down the human trafficking portion of the empire without any casualties.
A part of me knows that’s a lie, though.
