“But why all the trouble?”
Coop’s question broke through her untimely thoughts. “What do you mean?”
“If Luca already knew how to find you, why go through the trouble of hiring someone to follow us? Why all the pictures and phony blackmail scheme? Wouldn’t it have been a hell of a lot easier to just take you out and claim the estate for himself?”
Mac’s gut tightened. “Not if the blackmail’s legit.”
“You have a cool two million lying around Luca might know about?”
His question was clearly a sarcastic one, which made this next confession that much harder to reveal.
“Actually.” Mac stared back at her partner. “I do.”
* * *
With the exception of learning Mac’s real identity—and all the shit that came with it—her newest bomb ranked pretty high on Coop’s life list ofwhat the fuckmoments.
“Where the hell did you manage to get two million dollars?”
The money they made working for R.I.S.C. was really fucking good. Still, it wasn’tmillionsgood.
When Mac bit her bottom lip, Coop knew he wasn’t going to like the answer.
“I stole it from my uncle’s stash the day I left.”
Sometimes he really hated being right.
“Please tell me you’re kidding.”
“I was pissed, okay? I wanted to get back at him for what he did to that man. For what he did to me.”
“You could’ve gone to the cops.”
“No.” Mac shook her head. “I couldn’t. Tony’s pockets ran wide and deep, and they were filled with all kinds of important people. Including cops.”
“Damn.”
“Some would even come to the house. They’d have drinks and closed-door conversations with my uncle in his office. I had no way of knowing for sure which ones were on his payroll.” Mac hugged herself again.
“So how’d you pull it off?”
“Tony was always ‘working’. As long as I stayed out of the way, he didn’t pay much attention to what I was doing.” She shrugged. “Made it easy to watch from the shadows.”
The picture she was painting broke his fucking heart. Not only had she lost both her parents, she’d been sent to live with a murdering asshole who didn’t give two shits about her.
“It took a couple weeks after my birthday to get my new I.D. and documentation made, so I used that time to plan. I knew I’d need some cash to get me out of the state, plus food and whatever else I’d need until I got to boot camp. I saw Tony getting into a hidden panel in the floor in his office one night when he thought I was sleeping. The first chance I got, I picked my way into his office and looked inside.”
“And you found the cash.”
She nodded.
Coop thought for a moment. “Two million’s a hell of a lot of money for someone about to enlist. So it was what, a giant ‘fuck you’ to your uncle?”
“Pretty much.” Mac’s lips curled into a slight smirk. “After what happened at that car dealership, I felt my only choice was to leave. I assumed the money I found was his emergency stash in casehehad to go on the run, so…”
“Karma’s a bitch?”
“Exactly.” Mac’s smirk grew into a conniving smile. “The morning I left for good, I waited until my uncle and Luca went off to do God knows what. Once I knew the coast was clear, I went into his office, took the money, and locked the door behind me when I left. In total, I took two million, two thousand, fifty dollars. I hid two million and took the rest.”
