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I should’ve thanked him, for showing me I didn’t need anyone else. Should’ve sent him flowers and Christmas fucking cards and birthday gifts for helping to make me the man I am today. Instead, I followed him here like the sad, pathetic fuck I am.

All this time of being on my own, playing the big bad lone wolf, even after years of being my own self-made man, I still get drawn back into the petty games of those who hurt me.

“What do you think, Jax?” Nick murmurs, leaning in ever so slightly. “Had enough yet?”

What do I think? I think people are a fucking weakness. If my life has shown me nothing else, it’s that. People will hurt you, use you, abuse you, leave you out to dry. And here I am, at the mercy of a person, a person I knew better than to get involved with again. A person who let me make this little heist, well, you know. Personal.

Personal and heisting don’t go hand in hand.

My eyes flutter closed, and I focus on the faded, shallow breath rasping around the knife on my throat. I focus on the whisper of Nick’s own breathing against my cheek. He smells like sweat and some kind of weird piney deodorant.

Gross. Pathetic. I refuse to be his plaything.

I’m Jax Winter. Born Jax Summer in a city filled with dark magic, dark witches, and dark potential. Brutality. Fear. A future I wouldn’t escape. So, I rewrote my future. Took my fate in my own hands and ran like hell with only the clothes on my back and the belief that I was meant for more.

I’ve always believed I had a greater destiny—it’s what carried me through the dark times, growing up in the West. Living under James’s thumb, running shitty cons with him and Mickey.

That idea of destiny . . . it’s what made me realize I couldn’t follow in his footsteps. Turn to dark magic and gang life. I have a destiny, my stupid head said, and my heart agreed. I was born for more.

So I packed up and I left my shadowy, nowhere road behind.

I came out here with fucking nothing. And it was me who fucking made me, me who crafted this bold destiny out of dust and dirt and broken promises. Me who said fuck the slums, I’m gonna be something more.

And I still have more to take, more to give, more to grow. So much more. I’ve a bigger purpose than this—even Mags knew that, didn’t she? Knew I was more than this scared, battered boy pinned to the wall against a desperate man’s knife. In a goddamn luxury guest bathroom. Fuck that. Fuck all of this.

“Don’t drift off on me now, Jax,” Nick murmurs against my cheek.

Fuck Nick.

My lashes flutter back open to study the cruel slash of white teeth carved into Nick’s face. The dark gleam of his blue eyes beneath the curly tousle of red hair. My fingers tighten around the cool sapphire gems tucked into my pocket. And I do the boldest, stupidest thing a man can possibly do with a knife to his neck.

I lean forward, tracking the hard, cold kiss of that blade, and I set my lips against his. My hand against his hip, like an intimate caress. Fingertips pressing into bone.

Nick jerks backward in shock, but not before my quick-as-fuck thief’s fingers find their way into and out of his pocket. In. Out. Done, in an instant.

“How fucking dare you.” His fist flies.

His knuckles crack my cheek—holy fucking hell—flipping my head sideways, and his hand’s on my shoulder again, shoving me backward. That knife presses in hard. Hard enough to draw blood? I’m not sure, but I don’t like it. “After all these years? You think you can pull that cute, flirty shit?”

I’m back to being afraid of swallowing. Shit, this is not my idea of a party, like, I’d take the cringey soft jazz and fake smiles downstairs over this any day.

“Haven’t you learned anything?” Nick snarls, his grin far from sight now. “Why the fuck are you here, Jax?”

I don’t know, Nicky boy. I really, truly don’t. I heard your name, lost my logic. I’d say I was intrigued by your mysterious plight, but I wasn’t. I wasn’t, I wasn’t, I wasn’t. I’m not here for my head; I’m here for my heart.

I’m here because you’re a person and I’m a person and this is fucking personal.

But I don’t say any of those things, because at the end of the day, my head will always be a turbulent, roiling mess, a tangled snarl I’ll never sort out. Fear and emotion and logic and terror all twisted irrevocably together.

But my hands?

My hands don’t fucking shake.

And neither do my words. “Learned? Nah, I’ve learned nothing. It’s an accident I’m the most famous fucking criminal on the Eastern seaboard. An accident nobody has the slightest clue who I am. It’s an accident that I’ve never been caught, but I’m standing here under your knife.”

His jaw flexes with tension. Good, I’m getting under his skin. It’s personal for me—but it’s personal for him too.

Good, good, good.