The thing about working for the Maldonado Cartel is… you stop pretending you hate the mess. The blood. Gore.
The craving of freedom.
Roo and I don’t pretend. We never have.
Not even a little.
My best friend is at the sink, rinsing off her tools like she’s washing dishes, humming something lazy and off-key. I can’t quite place where I recognize the tune from, but the sound is too sweet for the room we’re in.
The man in the chair is quiet now. The kind of quiet that means the night’s work is over, not that he’s at peace. His feet sit in a pool of his own blood and piss, stinking up the air with the acrid scent of copper and ammonia.
There’s a finality to that last sticky, gasping breath as someone dies before you.
And this fucker is finally dead.
Longest. Job. Ever.
I stay sitting in his lap, facing him, the thick plastic of the tarp between us rubbing my thighs as I finish my work. This part takes a steady hand and a creative mind, but the thread staining red as I pull it through his lips is a satisfying reward.
He’ll never speak again. Even in death.
Roo calls me the calm beforeand afterthe storm. She’s not wrong. We just don’t advertise that I might actually be worse than her…
“You know,” she begins, tilting her head toward me. “You could’ve let me have the honor. You always take the fun tasks.”
“He was mine,” I remind her. “I won. You were rock.”
She snorts.
“I was paper,” I continue, pointing at my chest with bloody fingers. “That means I get to pick which task I want, and I wanted this one.”
“He was ours until you started dating Daniel.”
I huff, the corner of my lip tugging into a snarl as I pull the needle through one last time. “Occupational hazard.”
Roo flicks water from her fingers into the sink, smirking as if she knows exactly what I’m thinking. “Sleeping with the mark’s friend doesn’t make it less of a hazard.”
“Daniel was the access point,” I say, shrugging as I tie the thread into a knot against the dead man’s lips. “We needed the layout, his passwords, his habits. Dan the Man handed me the entire operation without realizing it.”
“And now that it’s done?” she inquires, trailing off like she’s prompting me.
I climb off the man’s lap, using his hair to hold up his head while I survey my threading work. “Now it’s time to clean up.”
Roo comes to stand beside me, drying her hands on a dish towel as she appraises my work with her signature crooked grin. “You’re going to dump him.”
“I’m going to try.”
“Try?” she parrots. “What do you mean by try?”
I meet her eyes. “Daniel is the kind of man who mistakes kindness for permanence. I can’t just disappear overnight. He’ll start poking around and asking questions.”
“Then why didn’t we take care of him, too?”
“You’re impatient.”
“I’m efficient,” Roo informs me, flipping her hair over her shoulder.
I laugh quietly. “You’re bloodthirsty.”
