Page 36 of Hold Him Like Gravity

Jake?

Was this asshole Jake’s boss?

If so, why would Jake save me from him only to sic him on me a few weeks later?

He was waiting for me to ask, but when I just stared up at him, trying to make my expression as bored as I could possibly muster, his jaw got tight, irritated that I wasn’t whimpering, crying, begging.

I’d be damned if he got that out of me.

“You are going to get me some money. Actually, you’re going to get me a lot of money.”

“I don’t have money. Have you looked around?” I asked, waving at my apartment as a whole.

“No, you don’t have shit,” he agreed. “But you haveaccessto money. A fuckton of money.”

“No, I—“ I started, but then it hit me what he was saying.

He wanted me to steal from the meat shop.

“There it is. Thought you were supposed to be smart,” he added, again making me wonder who the hell he was getting his information from.

Compared to Jake, yes, I was, objectively, smart. But Jake never would have called me smart. He never wanted to giveanyone their props, thinking it would take away from his own positive attributes. As few and far between as they were.

So who was this guy’s source?

It’s not like I had a lot of close friends. Or, you know,anyfriends. And Jake was the only family I had.

“You are going to take money from your job.”

“Why?” I asked, squinting at him. “You already robbed the place. There’s not that much money there,” I said, thinking of the cash drawer.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” he said. “Your boss has money there. A lot of fucking money there. And you’re gonna get it for me.”

“I don’t have access to the safe,” I said. “I wouldn’t even know how to try to get the code for it.”

I didn’t know a lot about safes. Every job I’d ever worked had them, of course. You always needed access to more cash and coins to fill the register when it got too full of large bills, making it impossible to make change.

But on the off-chance that I was working alone at night when I ran out of the proper change, I would need to call my boss to come in and go into the safe for me. I’d never had direct contact with one before.

I knew where Rico’s was, of course, now that he’d moved it from under the display case and into his office. It was tucked under the desk.

But it was kind of… small.

I mean, those things had thick walls to make them fire safe. So the space inside couldn’t fit more than maybe, I don’t know, fifty grand?

I guess, though, fifty grand was a lot of money.

It would be life-changing money to me for sure.

Who was to say it wasn’t the same for this guy.

He’d been willing to rob a store just for the couple grand he got out of the cash drawer, after all.

“There’s not that much money in there, I don’t think,” I said, feeling like I needed to forewarn him, in case he was thinking this would be some half a million dollar score.

“I’m not talking about the safe,” he said. “This is a long-term plan. Little bits over time.”

“I can’t do it,” I said, stomach twisting at the idea of betraying Rico like that.

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