“In your booth?” she said, looking scandalized.
I nodded. “I crawled right on top of him in the client chair.”
She sniffed and glanced at the ink on her arm. “I didn’t get that kind of treatment when you tattooed me.”
“You’re not even attracted to women.”
“Still,” she said. “I would have liked the opportunity to turn you down.”
I flicked her shoulder. Carefully, because, god, there were so many wires.
“You want to kiss him again, don’t you?” she prodded.
“Absolutely not. Twice was two times too many.”
“Stella. It’sme.”
I heaved a sigh. “I don’t know. Maybe I do, or maybe I just want to kisssomeone. I’ve been alone for...”
“Your entire adult life?” she helpfully supplied.
“Yeah, that,” I groused. “Play-acting like we were all coupley messed with my head. Not like I’ve started to feel anything for him, but it’s made me realize how alone I’ve been, and I think... I want that. Someone to do things with.”
“Aww,” Runa said. “The tin woman longs for a heart.”
I flipped her off.
She sobered. “You should introduce Maddie to Theo. Tell him to gethershit-faced next and drain her entire inheritance.”
“I’d have to see her to do that, and I don’t think I could pull it off without trying to kill her. She told Mom to say hi to me.”
Runa reared back. “No she fucking didn’t.”
“Yuuup.”
“Bring me to the next party. Beating her to death with one of my prosthetic legs would be such poetic justice.”
I choked. Runa’s sense of humor had always tilted toward the darker side of the spectrum, and she was forever saying things that I would probably go to hell for laughing at.
“Seriously, though,” she said. “Are you really going to do this? Help Theo go after your family’s friends?”
“I don’t think I have a choice,” I told her. “I keep trying to think of some way to hold out, but I’m scared of what he might do if I sabotage him.”
Her expression turned contemplative. “What if... you really do tell him to go after Maddie? Or if not her, peoplelikeher. The worst of the worst in your parents’ circle. The ones who have gotten away with horrible shit. People like the Bluhms and Montgomerys and Hatchers. Didn’t Vincent Prout and his son just get away with swindling hundreds of millions of dollars from their investors?”
I frowned, contemplating her words, thinking back to something Theo had said over dinner about how my not liking these people should make my job easier. Maybe there was something to that statement. So far, I’d been floundering, desperately trying to come up with a way to get myself out of this situation, but what if there were another way? What if Runa was onto something?
Previously, all my crimes had been committed while under the influence, and most of them had been accidental. This would be the first time I’d be making an intentional choice, while fully sober, to cause someone else real harm.
God, could I do that? I’d spent so many years in therapy trying to work through all my hatred and resentment toward the people I’d grown up around, and I hadjustreached the point where I was starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. By doing this, immersing myself back into that world with the intention of helping ruin those people, would I be undoing all of my progress? Reverting to the worst version of myself?
My focus returned to Runa, to the tubes attached to her, the steady sound of the heartbeat monitor at her side. Maddie had done this to her. And then she’d gone on to live a happy, unencumbered life . . . if her lavish Instagram feed was anything to go by.
Anger burned in my belly. Runa was far from the only person in this city who’d been wronged by the wealthy and left to fend for herself. There were people walking around who had done horrible, unspeakable things, and they’d gotten away with it for so long that I doubted their crimes would ever catch up to them. Those people? If anyone deserved Theo, they did.
Runa caught sight of my expression and smiled, some color returning to her cheeks. “Take your phone out, and we’ll make Theo a hit list.”
“Careful. Heisa bookie. Putting hits out on people might not be entirely out of the realm of possibility.”
