Page 31 of A One Woman Job

“I’m willing to take that chance on you,” drawls my hitman boyfriend. “But not with your daughter. Get out or I’ll throw you out. Everybody else get down.”

Apparently, my father still has a few working braincells because he doesn’t argue with Koen, deducing based on the way he handles his gun like its second nature that he is the more immediate threat. No, Dad might look nervous, but he swings his leg over the window frame, we all duck, and as promised, a bullet comes winging into the bedroom, lodging in the far wall.

Everyone, including me, screams.

Koen doesn’t even blink.

He calmly aims and pulls the trigger. “Target eliminated.”

I reach for my closest sibling, boosting them out the window and into the arms of my father, quickly doing the same threemore times, assisted by Koen and then it’s my turn. “You’ll be right behind me, right?” I scream over the roaring fire.

“Always,” he says, planting a fervent kiss to my mouth. “Always.I’m so sorry I let this happen, baby. Never again. You’ll never be scared again.”

Then he’s picking me up and urging me out into the cool, night air, though I won’t leave the side of the house until he comes out after me, pulling me into his side even as he takes action, searching the night with his gun raised, demanding everyone to get inside his SUV without delay. Within minutes, he’s peeling out of our yard and on the road, his gun disappearing back into his jacket in favor of holding my hand.

“Honey, do you mind telling us who this is now?” This, from my father.

I answer with all the certainty in my heart. “He’s my everything.”

With a hoarse sound, Koen brings our joined hands to his mouth, kissing my knuckles hard, a suspicious dampness in his eyes reflecting the dashboard light. “And she is mine.”

“Where are we going?” asks my sister from the backseat.

“We can’t go back. We can only go forward,” Koen says, looking at me with such an abundance of affection, I must hug myself tight or fly apart. “Together.”

EPILOGUE

Koen

Five Years and One Day Later

I’m a family man now.

With my evening cigar in hand, I walk the back of the property, my gaze traveling over the swimming pool, the orchard to the north. Old habits die hard, so I check the eight-foot-high barrier that surrounds our home for signs of breached entry, taking a puff and blowing out a steady stream of smoke as I go. Sounds of music and laughter come from the house behind me, and I smile, if briefly, knowing the time my wife spends with her siblings and father make her happy. And Meg’s happiness is my number one priority.

We never went back to the house on the cliff. Or the Bat Cave, rather. After eliminating Etta—and Meg’s father’s debt in the process—the danger was not worth the risk. I drove withMeg and her family for a full day before stopping, putting them safely in a hotel while I found us a new home. A place where we wouldn’t be touched by my past, complete with new identities.

A place worthy of my wife.

And most importantly, a place with a separate, detached guest house.

Because while I might be a family man, time alone with Meg remains paramount to my existence. They come over for dinner three times a week. Meg goes to their place to meal prep and help with homework. At first, that seemed exclusively like her gig, not mine, but over the years, I started self-defense training with the young ones. Swimming lessons so they wouldn’t drown in my pool. They appear to like me. Quite a bit, actually. I don’t know why. I’ve done nothing to earn their affection.

Meg tells me I couldn’t possibly domore.

Thinking of my wife is making me anxious to see her. Hold her. Kiss her. Hear her voice go weak with pleasure. God, she looked so beautiful tonight in her red sundress. I actually had no choice but to leave dinner early or carry her upstairs to rip the goddamn thing off with my bare hands.

Doesn’t she know what her suntanned shoulders and tits do to me? Her hair twisted up in a messy bun, eyes sparkling with mirth. I nearly snapped off the edge of the table out of pure yearning. Pure hunger. Obsession that only multiplies by the second.

I draw the cigar from my mouth hastily to check my watch. They’ve stayed a little longer than usual tonight to celebrate Meg’s father reaching five years of sobriety. Some say the fire was the turning point, but Meg and I credit the six-month treatment program we put him in—and his own perseverance, of course. He’s even started working for me at the successful private security company I’ve built over the years.

Meg doesn’t need to work for the rest of her life, but she still makes paper airplanes for the kids in town and charges five dollars apiece. Once a hustler, always a hustler. We’ve attempted to give her a position at the security company on multiple occasions, but she never fails to end up bent over my desk before the morning coffee has finished brewing.

She does our accounting from home now.

The voices behind me grow louder and I mouth the word “hallelujah” at the purple sunset-streaked sky. The family has grown on me, but I like my space. With my wife, who I married the day after the fire, inside a quiet, sunlit courthouse. Who I grow more infatuated with every time I’m in her presence. Who has freed me from my guilt-ridden, blood-stained life. Would I kill for her, again and again, if a single hair on her head was in jeopardy, however? Yes. Meg is my reason for existing and on nights like this, I look around at what I’ve given her and attempt to reassure myself it’s good enough.

“Bye, Koen,” calls Meg’s father, followed by a chorus of goodbyes from the kids, who are becoming teenagers, one by one, God help us all. The girl brought home a boyfriend last week to watch a movie, and I found that oddly unsettling, until I remembered I taught her how to bust someone’s nose with the heel of her hand and drop a man with a single, well-placed chop to the neck.

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