Page 12 of Trig

“Don’t. It doesn’t even matter anymore,” she says.

With a bloody fist, I pull my burner phone out and toss it toward her feet. I then take a paper out of my wallet that contains my private wire account information and throw it on the floor. I pull my flight info from my back pocket and hand it to her.

“What the hell is this?”

She opens the flight information and then looks up at me as if she’s seen a ghost.

“What were you doing in Vegas, Trig?”

She bends down and grabs the phone and paper.

“Everything you want to know is right there.” I pause. “I’m not fucking around on you, aside from some terrible shit that happened last night. I’m doing contracts again.”

“What? Why?”

“Somebody leaked out a video of us fighting off that bank robber with our faces shown clear as day on it, and they found us.” I take a deep breath. “I’ve been flying back and forth to Vegas every other week because Carmen, The Savior’s boss, is punishing me. They have someone here watching us, and Mya. They threatened to do terrible things to you two if I didn’t, so I’ve been killing again to protect you two. Believe me, if there was any other way, I would have chosen it. I would hire an army of men to protect you two if I knew who to trust.”

Nine slides down the wall. I watch as she opens the burner phone and goes through it. When she’s done, she looks up at me.

“Oh my God. You could have just told me.”

“No. I couldn’t. This here is a mistake, but I’m tired of shit spinning out of control.” I squat down in front of her. She refuses to make eye contact, so I lift her chin with my finger.

“You have to pretend like you don’t know. You act normal. You don’t make any unusual movements. I never mentioned anything to you. Do you understand?”

She nods with tears in her eyes. I drop my hand from her face as we both take a moment to let her process things.

“How bad is this?” she asks.

“Not as bad as it’s going to get. Carmen is coming here to the island permanently to set up shop.”

She leans forward and grabs at her stomach.

“I think I’m going to be sick.” She pauses and then anger returns to her face as she must be remembering the girl I fucked. “I wish you would have just told me…last night…”

I look at her and she looks back at me with a strange face.

“Last night what?” I say through my teeth.

“Trig, I was hurt. I thought you were cheating on me. I wanted to hurt you back.”

The image of the empty wine bottle circles around in my head again.

“You really had someone here? I thought you were trying to get a rise out of me. What the fuck did you do?” I yell.

“Don’t yell at me! What about you? You strut in here with lipstick stains on your body, saying you fucked someone else, and yet you’re not fucking around on me aside from last night. What does that even mean? Did you really screw somebody else or was that just a cover-up?” she shouts back.

This verbal tennis match is killing me. We just keep passing this ball of shame back and forth tonight. I remain silent for a second and then I slowly nod. She looks away, obviously hurt.

“And you? Did you sleep with some guy last night?” I ask, trying to remain calm.

I can feel my throat tighten and my mouth run dry as I wait for her response.

She shakes her head at first. “He tried. He kissed me. I stopped him.”

I stand up and start pacing because my nerves are overloaded. I can slit people’s throats or put bullets in their body. I can take being degraded, pushed to the edge and being mentally tortured because I know why I’m doing it, but I’ll be damned if I share one of the few things in this world that is all mine. Her.

“I didn’t do anything with him. Why are you pissed? You slept with someone. Let’s talk about that shit.”

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