Page 4 of The Wrong Boss

The man looked up. He wore a dingy gray hoodie and a black baseball cap. I couldn’t see much of his features at this distance except for a scraggly beard and hollow cheeks, but he saw me hobble-sprinting in his direction, and I could tell there was a calculation happening behind his eyes.

There was no way I’d win in a fight between the two of us. I was downright scrawny, and he looked street-hardened and mean.

But that wasmycar he was breaking into.Myworldly possessions he was trying to steal.

Hell. No.

His arm reached in through the broken back window.

“Put it back!” I yelled, arms pumping as I ran toward him.My heels clacked against the asphalt, but it didn’t matter that my footwear wasn’t appropriate for a street fight. “Put that back right now!”

He glanced up at me again—and smiled. Hesmiled. Brown, broken teeth cut a jagged line across his mouth, and the first inkling of fear trickled through me. My anger burned it away.

Momentum still propelled me forward, and I was too far gone to stop. Too enraged by the sight of him trying to steal from me. Too tired of people walking all over me when all I wanted was a good, modest life.

I’d never asked for much. All I wanted was a decent relationship, a steady job, and eventually a couple of kids and the quiet sort of happiness that came from a life of simple pleasures. I wanted contentment. I didn’t need money or glamour or fame.

And yet.

And yet at every turn, life drop-kicked me in the ass. I wasover it.

I’d fight him. I’d fight a drug-addicted, desperate person for whatever he’d stolen while I wore a beautiful bridesmaid’s dress, because it waswrong. It might ruin my cousin’s wedding. It might delay the strict start time. It might land me in the hospital.

But I was so fuckingsickof feeling powerless that I couldn’t stop. Good sense fled my mind and was replaced with white-hot rage.

Rage that exploded into something bigger when I saw what the thief held in his fist. My hand-carved teak memory box dangled from his hand. Broken, dirty fingernails clutched the intricate carvings on the lid, and horror swept through me.

Not that box. He couldn’t take it. Anything but that box. Itdidn’t even have anything valuable in it, other than a single earring missing its twin.

But it was valuable to me. It had the ticket stubs from my monthly movie dates with Mom. A card from my thirteenth birthday when she’d written me a note that never failed to make me cry. A photo of her holding me in the hospital, minutes after I’d been born.

That box held everything I cared about. It carried the last remnants of my mother’s relationship with me. It was everything I had left of her.

“Put it back!” I repeated, voice breaking.

The man set his shoulders. His smile widened, and now I was close enough to see the devil in his eyes. He stuffed the box in his hoodie pocket and widened his stance. His beard was greasy, and his cheeks were sunken and pale. Whoever he was, he was deep in the mire of an addiction.

I couldn’t fight him. If I did, I would lose.

But I couldn’tnotfight him. I couldn’t let him get away with the only scraps I had left of my mother.

“It doesn’t even have anything worth taking in it,” I said, slowing to a stop near the hood of my car. The length of the vehicle separated us.

“Pretty box full of pretty things,” he replied.

“Please.”

“Come closer and ask me nicely.” He reached into his pocket and took out the box, waving it back and forth. Taunting me.

Vision blurring with tears, I curled my hands into fists. I was wearing sandals with a four-inch heel and a satin dress, andmy hair and makeup had been perfected by professionals. I didn’t know how to fight—let alone fight someone who looked like they ate desperation for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

But the wooden box waved back and forth, and the addict’s taunting, broken smile pierced me like the tip of a poisoned lance.

The pain of it shook my bones, and I knew what I had to do. That box meant more to me than anything. I’d put myself in the hospital if I had to. I’d get on my knees and beg for forgiveness if I ended up ruining Hailey’s wedding, as long as I got that box back.

I wasn’t going to let this man walk away with it. Not when this was supposed to be my fresh start, when I had nowhere to live after this weekend, no one to lean on, nowhere to go. Not when my past was a graveyard of mistakes, when everyone took great glee in telling me that they’d known my only long-term relationship was terrible right from the start.

I didn’t care about anything in that car. Not really. Nothing except that hand-carved teak box containing scraps of paper and a single little earring.

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