Page 63 of Passion and Payback

“Would it help if I said I was sorry?”

“Not really. This isn’t you doing anything wrong...well, not by my standards. Truth be told, I can’t say I’d think any differently than you are right now. This world is filled with a lot of bleak shit that ruins lives left and right like they don’t matter. You, Lucas, and those four men are a case in point of how good people suffer unnecessarily, and the evil ones get away with all their misdeeds.”

Hunter scoffed. “Yeah, and if you do try to hold them accountable, their family pressures the cops and everyone else to give you a hard time.”

“I remember you saying you were given a hard time, but you didn’t go into details.”

He sighed. “They threatened all sorts of things. Between the cops agreeing it was harassment since there was no evidence left to support what I said, to the family lawyers sending cease and desist letters, and even the city starting to call into question my business license.”

“Christ, they went after you from every angle they could.”

“And not one bit of it ever touched the news either,” he said bitterly. “It was that last thing that finally made me give up trying to get help. The café was the last thing I had left of Lucas, and they were going to rip it out of my hands because I wanted the system to do its job.”

In all fairness, I should have been trying to dissuade him from his current course. Common sense and decency told me that. When your best friend came up with a revenge scheme that ended in misery and death, you were supposed to step in and talk some sense into them before they went overboard.

The problem was I had always considered myself someone who lived outside the norm for a long time. I only wanted him to back off from this whole scheme to try to save what spark of light was left inside him. Going down the dark path was hard. Eventually, knowing when to stop was even harder, and not getting lost along the way was nearly impossible.

“I have a bad feeling I know what you’re about to say,” Hunter said, his eyes dropping. “You’re going to help me.”

I snorted. “You’re goddamn right I’m going to help you. There’s no way in hell I’ll let you go through with this and not help. There’s a lot of shit you need to do beforehand, and two heads are better than one.”

There was also the nagging feeling that if he tried but failed to perform the coup de grace, it would require me to be there to ensure it happened. Even if I was blatantly opposed to the idea, which I wasn’t because the bastards deserved whatever painful death was coming their way, I would have volunteered to ensureHunter got through it in one piece. And if that meant me having to deliver the final blow so there were no witnesses to hunt down my best friend, then so be it.

“Shit,” he said with a sigh. “I probably shouldn’t have said anything.”

I snorted. “Right...because I would haveneverbeen able to figure out what you were doing.”

“Yeah, I guess I was pretty obvious.”

“You guess?”

“Fine, then I was. Happy?”

Not particularly, but at the very least, I could tell he wasn’t going to argue with me. “But, I do have a few things I need you to look at as requirements.”

“Of course. Shoot.”

“We plan. We plan properly, and we plan well. Do you understand? We need to make sure we plan for every eventuality. It isn’t something we’re going to do in one night.”

“That makes sense, so you won’t hear me arguing.”

“And pulling off crap people don’t normally try to pull off is my expertise. I get to veto any plan that’s destined to get us in trouble, hurt, or killed. Even in the middle of that plan.”

“I...okay, that also makes sense. I’m not happy about it, but it’s hard to argue with the logic.”

“As if I’m going to leave you out of the planning,” I said, feeling my chest tighten. God, I was going to have him participate in an attempt to try to murder three men with planning and thought. If there was a God, then I hope he was the understanding type. “And second to last, if you want to bail out at any point, you tell me, you got it? Even if we put weeks of planning into shit, we’ll drop it and go on with our lives.”

He chewed on his bottom lip. “And the last thing?”

“We sit on this tonight, and if we’re still for it, we start planning tomorrow. But not tonight.”

I’m unsure what he expected, but relief broke over his face, and he nodded. “I think I can agree to all those.”

“Oh wait?—”

“Damn.”

“I also get to add rules in the future.”

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