"Now you do," he finished for me.
"Yes," I said on a soft exhale. "Now I do. You, Cass, Archer and Jules, you've given me something to hope for. A future. I didn't think I had that before. I thought sooner or later all of this would catch up with me and I'd end up boiled alive. Or trapped in my own box. Or stabbed. Or… You get the idea."
"You thought this life would kill you before you killed it," he said. "Me too. But we've killed it. And we're still standing. Now we have one more big job and we can get out of this mafia lifestyle." He put on a funny voice, sounding like a mobster movie character.
"Just one more job," I agreed. "The boss fight."
"I've always liked a good boss fight," he said. "You spend all that time playing, developing your skills. Leveling up. Running through gems and coins. And then you nail that one last big bad at the end."
"Or he nails you first and you end up having to start all over," I said.
If only life was a computer game. We could keep attacking Zeus until he disappeared into a puff of pixels on the screen.
This wasn't a computer game. This was real life. There were no second chances. No save points.
Also no gems and coins to run through. Or fruit to throw around. Just as well, I guess. I didn't want to be knocked down by a gorilla carrying a big drum.
Why was his name Donkey Kong anyway? The Kong bit I got, but the donkey part? Archer would know the answer to that, but I didn't. I made a mental note to ask him later.
"If there's one thing in life I know, it's that I'm not going to allow myself to be nailed by Forrest Cross," Boner said. "And I'm not going to let him nail you either. I wish I knew who he was at dinner. I glanced at him a couple of times, but he was in conversation with the person next to him, making them laugh. And Hypnos too." He almost seemed offended at the fact that Forrest dared to be funny. That was, after all, his gig.
I'd almost forgotten Boner sat with the rest of the guests. "I don't suppose you heard anything he said?" I asked.
He thought for a moment then shook his head. "No, but I wasn't really listening. I'll take a wild guess he wasn't saying anything sketchy. Like, 'Hey, did you know the owner of this place is trying to kill me?' Or, 'Hey, that asshole over there, he calls himself Hypnos, he's about to attack these awesome people. But don't worry, he's going end up nice and dead.'"
I snorted softly. From what I'd seen of him, he was much more subtle than that. I frowned and thought back.
"We're guessing Yvette knew who he was. But what about Gina? She was working with Solomon Danforth. She might have been working with Forrest as well."
"Unless you have a Ouija board. We can only guess," Boner said. "I have to say, I don't think so. Solomon Danforth seemed determined to keep what he was doing from being noticed by Hypnos and Zeus. He wouldn't have wanted Gina reporting back to them.
I didn't suppose it mattered now. Like he said, Gina was dead. She couldn't tell us anything, nor could she report back to Zeus if she was working with him.
"Hypnos said he wanted to replace Zeus," I said slowly, thinking back to that conversation. "It's possible Yvette wasn't working with him at all. If she was, Hypnos might have killed her himself."
"I have to give it to these blokes. They have egos," Boner said, not sounding at all impressed. "I wouldn't have trusted them to know what I did behind closed doors. If we hadn't stabbed them, they would have done it to each other. In the back."
I screwed my eyes shut. "Is it possible everything I've done was for nothing? I could have sat back and let them all implode?"
"You wouldn't have sat back," he reminded me. "You couldn't have known what would have happened. Hypnos might have been bullshitting you. Who was he anyway? Just a businessman? He didn't have anywhere near the power and influence Forrest does. If he went after him, Forrest would have destroyed him and not even blinked."
"Delusions of grandeur," I said. I supposed that was understandable, given the things they got away with. They must have assumed they'd continue to get away with things and be powerful.
"And now they're all rotting in hell," Boner said cheerfully. "Which proves one very important thing."
"What's that?" I asked.
"It proves you're more powerful than all of them put together," he said, squeezing my shoulders.
"I don't feel very powerful," I admitted. "I'm just a person doing what had to be done."
"You're a woman who did what most people wouldn't do," Boner said.
"You would have," I reminded him.
"I would have gotten to them eventually," he agreed, "but you got there first. They weren't even on my radar before I met you. Mine were more…small-time assholes. But you? You were taking down the bosses right from the start. At this point you're in the seventh game of this particular franchise."
"Can I unplug it and forget it exists?" I asked wearily.
