Wesley
What?
My phone buzzes, but I ignore it.
“She’ll come around.”
I close my eyes and drop my head into my hands, refusing to look at the open doorway and see the sympathy and pity on Mac’s face that I can hear in his voice.
“You heard that?” I ask, mostly for confirmation.
“I think the entire house did,” he observes with a quiet chuckle. “I’ll tell ya, man—she’s little, but she can really holler.”
I sigh as he enters the room and drags the red chair next to my desk, like he always does for our meetings. He kicks out his legs, crossing them at the ankle, laces his hands behind his head, and fixes me with a look. “Wanna talk about it?”
Yes.
No.
I sigh again. “She’s got a right to be mad,” I offer lamely. “I love that she wants to help, and I know that shecan—that she’s capable—but…”
“You want to keep her out of it because it’s safer for her,” Mac finishes for me, nodding. “Been there.”
“You haven’t beenhere, exactly. Eleanor didn’t fight you tooth and nail to be involved,” I point out wryly.
His grin is easy. “Nope,” he says, popping the p. “And, if you’ll recall, when she wanted to help, Ilether. Obviously, I was the better boyfriend.”
“You mean that time when she helped and ended up carjacked and nearly shot by the man we were after?” I return evenly, wiping the self-satisfied smirk right off his face.
“Well, that’s what happens when we go with your plans. People tend to get shot.” He shrugs after a second. “Especially Dimitri.”
Both our phones buzz—his making a sound that I know to be the notification from the gate when someone leaves—and Mac grabs his from his pocket. He swipes through, eyes flicking across the message. “It’s Eleanor leaving. She said something about grocery shopping earlier.”
“Can it be that simple?” I wonder. At Mac’s raised brow, I nod at his phone, indicating Eleanor’s departure and Mac’s ease. “She leaves the house and you’re just… all right with it?”
“Oh, I seem all right with it?” Mac asks, brows shooting up. “Nice. My poker face is getting better.”
As intended, I crack a smile.
“The only way I maintain any chill whatsoever about her leaving is that she wears a tracker in her watch, she’s got one in her purse, and there’s one in that cute little Mini Cooper she wanted so bad. If I could get her to swallow one every morning, I’d do that, too.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to offer to make a subdermal tracker that wouldn’t hurt too badly and would last years before the battery needed to be replaced, but it’s not really in the spirit of the current conversation. “But it works for you?”
He shrugs. “For now. I’m not stubborn enough to think it can be like this forever. I guess…” he rubs the back of his neck. “I guess that’s why I’m not too torn up about this. You know—taking down the General and everything. The end of it all.”
The end. I suppose that’s what this is—what it will be. I’ve been too focused to really think about it, but without the General, what’s keeping us together?
“It’s my out,” Mac continues. “It’s my chance.Ourchance.”
I’m taken aback, but his words ring a bell. It’s been a while since he brought it up, but Felix got Mac thinking about his exit strategy at the restaurant all those months ago.
I wonder if Dimitri sees it the same way—that this is his chance to get out and start his life with Nicole properly, or if the threat of the remaining Bratva members who want him dead casts too long of a shadow over that possibility.
Then I wonder why Ihaven’tseen it that way. Has my single-mindedness, thinking only of my goal, eclipsed the potential for life after I’ve achieved it?
“This life has been great in a lot of ways. I… I got a family out of it. I got my girl out of it,” he adds, tone dropping with seriousness. “But I’m not justmeanymore. I’ve got Eleanor to think about, and she doesn’t want to be jailed here because some fucker out there wants to hurt me. We worked it out as best we could, compromising until we were both happy enough, but I… fuck, man. I don’t want to compromise on this anymore. I’d rather just know she was safe and not go insane with worry every time she leaves the house.” He heaves a breath. “If the choice isthis lifeor her, it’s not a choice. It’s her every time.”
“Yeah,” I say softly, feeling it in my bones.
