Page 51 of Bullet

I sink down into my desk chair, while Bullet remains standing. The soft music acts like a discordant backdrop for the images stampeding through my brain. What would it be like to fuck to classical?

“Tell me something about Ancient Rome,” I blurt.

If he’s going to be in this office, I need a distraction from the distraction in my brain.

My laptop is open from earlier. I’d started to make some notes while Bullet cleaned up the breakfast he made. Which was fabulous. Doesn’t food always taste better when you don’t have to make it yourself?

I was jotting down notes for Bullet’s upcoming court date, but unlike every other case I’ve worked, my thoughts refused to align themselves into anything orderly. I couldn’t untangle them anymore than I could sort out the complicated sensations tearing my body apart.

“Wait!” My cry causes Bullet to startle in his chair.

He leaps up, yanking a gun from beneath his t-shirt.

“Oh my god! No! I—sorry. Please! Sit down!” I make a lowering motion with my hands. “Concealed carry is illegal here, need I remind you?”

“That gun Tyrant gave you is shit. You should have something small you can strap on your thigh, under your skirt, or a holster under your blazer.”

“Uh, that’s a hard pass.” I breathe slowly through my nose. “No one’s attacking the house. I didn’t mean to jump scare you. I realize how dangerous that is now.”

He tucks the gun back into his waistband. “Not dangerous to you or Willa. Ever. I know my way around a gun, and I hadn’t even taken the safety off. I’ve never shot someone by mistake before.”

Before.

I don’t want to think about that. What I do want to try to focus on is the jumbled-up information edging to the front of my brain, staying frustratingly out of reach.

“Give me some good Julius Caesar lines.”

“I’m more familiar with Mark Antony, actually.” He seems to shift uncomfortably when he says it. I don’t know what he’sthinking about, but I want to. Probably more than I should. “How about Antony from Shakespeare? I’m not good with quotes off the top of my head. I’d have to look it up.”

“Okay.”

He gets out his phone and a few seconds later, he reads one to me. “Cowards die many times before their deaths, the valiant never taste of death but once.”

“Hmm. I like that. Read me another?”

“O mighty Caesar! Dost thou lie so low? Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils, shrunk to this little measure? Fare thee well.”

I know what I just said about startling him, but my open palm smacks the desk loudly. At least this time, his hand just jerks and his phone dips. “Yes! Yes, that’s it!”

Bullet’s mystified. He has no idea that the elusive ordering in my head is starting to line up together, like stacking shipping containers with loud metallic bangs in a yard.

“Describe Donny to me. From what I’ve heard he’s spoiled, impetuous, entitled… he has the world’s most massive ego.”

“That’s about right.” There’s an edge to his voice, the planets aligning for him the same way they are for me.

“So, if you had this huge ego, would you go crying to your daddy that you got your face busted in? Would you allow yourself to be humiliated so easily in the end?”

“Keep going. I’ve read enough true crime to know where this is heading, but I want to hear your thoughts.”

“Has Harold ever asked you to babysit his kid before?”

Bullet frowns. “I can’t say that he has, but we don’t go on rides to Seattle very often. It’s usually somewhere else.”

“What if all of this was planned ahead and staged to give Harold a good reason to take down the club?”

Bullet’s skepticism shows, but he doesn’t tell me that the idea is farfetched and ridiculous. He thinks about it instead. “Why would he want to do that? We were paying him extremely well. He was living a good life. The kind of life that affords vacation properties overseas, fancy cars in storage, and a virtual mansion in Hart.”

“But what’s the one thing that men crave more than riches?”

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