Page 24 of The Prettiest Outlaw

“My life was different from yours, lil bit. Gianni was handing everything to you, serving it to you on a silver platter.”

“Clock it,” I joked with a giggle.

He eyed me. “Yeah, little spoiled ass brat.”

I waved him off and went back to my dough.

“Anyway, while you were having the good life hand delivered to you, I was busy getting 90 percent of everything I had out of the mud. You’re familiar with Coe. You know he don’t really give a shit about anything but himself. He didn’t take good care of my branch of the family tree. His money wasn’t our money. For all intents and purposes, my mother was a single mom. If I wanted money in my pocket, I needed to make that happen. So, I did.”

“How?”

He sighed. “I got connected to Kenny Garfield.”

Realization swept through me. “Ohh. Okay. So, that’s how you knew the weird dude from the date that tried to abduct me. And that’s how you were able to ‘make some calls’ and get my truck back.”

“I worked for him for six years.” He paused, causing me to look over at him. “It was actually your father who helped me get my shit together. The last year of…let’s call it ‘moving merchandise.’ The last year that I ‘moved merchandise’ for Kenny, I kept getting popped. It was like I had a tracker on me or something. Every time I got a car, the police would pull up on me. I was an adult. There was no more juvie. I was looking at serving time. KG was letting me sit there in the county and rot. Coe probably would’ve looked out…maybe. But his ass was indicted and thought he was about to be sitting in the jail cell next to me, so he was of absolutely no help. It was Gianni who came through. I think Coe asked him to do it…either Coe or my mother.”

“So, my daddy got you sprung? Saved you from a life of spending your days getting swoll, lifting weights in the yard?” I giggled.

He snickered. “Whatever. Yeah. Your daddy got me out of the county. Got KG off my back. Shit, Gianni basically walked me through every step of the process of getting my place up and running.”

I nodded my head.

“My dad was like that.” I swiped at my eyes, which were flooding with water. “Plus, he had a special place in his heart for the Hill boys, the sons he never had.”

“Anyway, I knew I had to do whatever I had to do to make my business successful and lucrative. It was the only way I was gonna get money because going back to a life of criminal behavior wasn’t where it was at. Either I was gonna exercise discipline over my own self, or the prison guards were gonna exercise discipline over me. And fuck that!”

“External motivation,” I commented.

The two of us worked in silence. I whipped up and rolled out dough. Nico cut the dough into identical disks, and we popped them in the ovens.

“Now, we wait.” I went to one of the shopping bags I’d brought in with me.

My cell phone chimed, indicating an incoming text. I pulled the phone from my pocket, read the text then slid the phone back into my pocket. Pulling Tupperware containers from a shopping bag, I glanced over at Nico.

“You hungry?”

It was around 4:00 p.m., and we had arrived a little over two hours earlier.

“I brought food because we’re gonna be here for a while.” I gave him a sheepish look.

“A while? How long is a while, lil bit?”

“Well, the email the pastor sent this morning said that forty-seven kids signed up for cookie decorating. Each child gets two cookies to decorate. That’s roughly eight dozen cookies. I was thinking that I would make additional cookies to be on the safe side. But he just sent a text with updated numbers.” My sigh was soft. “Thirty-nine more kids signed up today.”

“Damn. So, we’re looking at what? A total of eighty-six kids now? How many dozen is that? Eighty-six times two plus extras.”

“Eighty-six kids, two cookies each, is roughly fifteen dozen.”

“And how many extra cookies?”

“Well, I was going to do two dozen backups in case of breakage or one of the adults wanting to decorate a cookie or somebody having a younger sibling or something. But with the extra kids, I’m wondering if I should do three dozen for backups.”

“Do the three dozen.” He decided for me.

“I just don’t want to come home with extra cookies.”

“You won’t. Those extra cookies won’t make it out of the building. Trust me.”

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