I straighten, my voice lowering. “This isn’t just another job. This isthejob. If you can’t do this one, you may not find another one, if you get the gist.”
He stares at me, realization slowly settling in.
“You pass this,” I say as if I’m suggesting a challenge, “and you move up. Not just in pay, but in trust. You’ll have more access than before and you’ll become someone the boss can rely on when things go to hell.”
“And if I don’t?” he retorts.
I don’t hesitate. “Then this is the sky’s limit. Best case, you stay muscle forever. Worst case..” I shrug once. “You become a liability.”
Silence stretches between us.
I hold his gaze. “I understand going through tough shit. I understand more than anyone. But if you want to keep working with us, if you want to survive in this world, you don’t let it bleed into your decisions.”
I tilt my head towards Leigh. “This is your final test, Finnic. How you handle her determines exactly how high you climb.”
Then I step back, giving him space to sit with it.
“Choose carefully,” I add. “Because from here on out, every choice you make is being watched.”
I turn and walk out of her temporary prison.
Not seconds later and footsteps trail behind me.
For now, he seems to be making the right choice. He’s choosing to distance himself from his emotions, to do the job he was given.
But soon enough, we’ll find out just how tightly he can keep them contained.
Chapter Seven
Finnic
After our conversation,Dante says that he’d go on watch so that I can get some sleep. He mentions that it will be a long two days ahead of us if she makes it difficult.
I hope that she doesn’t.
In the furthest portion of my head, I have faith that she will just give him one piece of information to let her go. Anything.
But Dante is probably right. She most likely knows more than she is letting on but is ultimately deciding to keep it to herself. I’m not sure what she thinks will come from keeping important information about her fathercooped up. Because without that information, she has nothing to bargain with.
After a few steps, I plop down on a cot against the wall that’s positioned just outside the hallway. I lounge back as comfortably as I can get against the rigid surface.
There are nights my mind goes quiet enough for the past to crawl back in.
Tonight isn’t quiet, but she still finds me somehow.
Her scent finds its way into my nostrils. She always smelled like warm espresso and honey. She tasted like the latter.
Now my head is filled with thoughts that make me feel like shit, like a decay that is soaked so deep into me it can never be scrubbed clean.
I hadn’t always known how to hurt people.
Once, I’d known how to love. I was normal.
I grew up in a small town in an even smaller household in South Carolina. My mom raised me when my father didn’t and I had no siblings. But I never wanted for anything. Mom always worked her ass off to take care of me. Sent me off to college at eighteen with a full ride because of how hard she worked, how much she did.
Baruch College was where I attended. It was where I met her.
She’d had a laugh that was obnoxious to others when something made her happy, but it was beautiful to me. Shebelieved the world was mostly decent, that bad things happened because people were careless, not actually cruel.
