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“The difference was that I didn’t know about that. He never told me about the drugs. Now as a grown-ass adult, I would never keep heroin stashed in my fucking panty drawer, or whatever you were envisioning.” He said nothing to that, just kept pacing, likely thinking about his friend. “Why me?” I asked, making him turn to look at me. “Why would you do this to me? This town is full of places you could stash the drugs.”
To that, he shrugged. “I was testing your loyalty, I guess. To Czar. Give you a chance of making it through this. I’ve always liked you.”
“So, what now? You get the drugs from me and then deliver me to them to murder me?” I asked, words starting to drip with venom. “I worked side-by-side with you foryears, Chet. Years. I trained you. I stood up for you when you fucked up. I covered shifts for you. And, what? That just means jack-shit to you? You’re just going to let me get killed.”
“It’s not my fault you weren’t loyal.”
“It wasn’t my fucking fault that Czar got locked up!” I snapped. “What was I supposed to do? Be a loyal girlfriend to a guy for a decade while he did time after he lied to me for years?”
“Yes,” he said, shrugging. “That’s what loyal people do.”
“Maybe, Chet. Maybe if I’d had a ring on my finger. If I had a house and kids. Maybe then, yeah. I wasn’t his wife. I wasn’t the mother of his kids. And when he got locked up, I had fuckingnothing. Not even a goddamn home anymore. The fuck was I supposed to be loyal to? A goddamn memory? Get fucking for real.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Chet said, tone hollow. “You’re a liability now. They have to deal with you.”
But not until I gave over the information about the drugs.
Which I couldn’t do. You know, since I’d lost half of them. But also because the second I did, any value I had left was gone. I’d be dead.
I wasn’t stupid, though.
I could easily see that the man I had known for years, that I had considered a sort of friend, was gone.
In his place was the most dangerous thing a woman could ever be near.
A desperate man.
Which meant he wasn’t going to bat a damn eye at the idea of beating the information out of me. Torturing it out of me.
I wasn’t exactly keen on the idea.
And, yeah, a big part of that was purely for vanity’s sake. I was stressed out enough about the scars from the stitches. I really didn’t want a broken nose or busted eye sockets or God-knew-what else to deal with and try to recover from, seeing the face of a stranger in the mirror every day.
I liked my face.
I didn’t want my features rearranged.
The other part of me wasn’t exactly sure how much pain I could tolerate before I gave him what he wanted from me.
Would I be praying for death?
Would I sell out my mom just to get an end to the suffering?
I didn’t know.
None of us did until we were in a situation that showed us.
My stomach twisted, then tensed.
I was just going to need to endure.
And pray that the Murphys figured out my disappearance quickly enough, checked the cameras, saw Chet’s car, put the pieces together, got Slash and the guys, and came to find me somehow.
I knew those men. Each and every one of them would break down every goddamn door in Shady Valley if they needed to.
I just needed to give them time.
Taking a deep breath, I tried to mentally prepare for the inevitable.
