Page 11 of Undertow

“You want to change your answer?” the boss asks.

I lift my gaze to his. “No. I swear I had no idea about the gambling and all that stuff. None of it. I was just a bartender.”

A fresh burst of fear trickles through me when his expression goes frigid again. I bury it with the truth behind my script of lies.

“No? So how did you know to steal from that particular safe?”

“I…”

“How, Roman?”

I shake my head, angry tears burning the crevice behind my eyes. They might even be real this time. I don’t know how to tell anymore.

“Who helped you?”

The weight of a barrel.

The click of a safety.

“Who helped you?!”

I close my eyes for relief. The soothing oblivion of darkness. I melt into the nothingness.

They say your life flashes before your eyes in the moment of death. Like breathing underwater, that’s also a myth. It’s not history you see. It’s the present, vivid and stark against the backdrop of a future that won’t happen. It’s a plea to a God you didn’t acknowledge until now. I imagine the echo of the pop that will be the last sound I experience. What will it feel like? Will I smell the gunpowder and blood before my consciousness fades?

Except…

The gun doesn’t fire.

Nothing disrupts the darkness.

After several seconds, I open my eyes to see the man staring at me with a pensive look.

“Not a talker. Good,” he says. “In that case, I have a counteroffer to a bullet.”

I can’t speak as I stare at him. My body is still holding steady, rigid with adrenaline that’s kept the terror at bay. The terror will come later.

That’swhen your life flashes before your eyes—the moment you realize youdidn’tdie.

The man nods to the guy behind me, and the grip on my hair releases with a painful jolt. I will myself to remain upright.

“How about you work for me?” he says, eyeing me with greedy expectation. There’s a ruthless delight to his offer thattwists my stomach, the triumphant glint of a decision already made.

“Idowork for you,” I say. My voice wavers with defeat.

By his smile he sees right through my frail defense. “You know what I mean. Therealbusiness. Come work for me and enjoy every luxury this world has to offer. Money, sex, expensive toys, you name it. It could all be yours. Hell, I’ll even throw in all the substances you want as long as you keep yourself valuable to me. How much would it take to give you the life you want?”

I look away, my heart pounding as my head spirals. I’ve labored over that question for months. Years, if we go back to include every setback and lost opportunity I’ve experienced in the glow of a weak, old man who loved me but couldn’t save me. An existence branded by deprivation.

That’s the thing with money, isn’t it? It owns you with its absence. A month ago, I decided to sell my soul to finally break free.

I just didn’t know it would be to Montgomery McArthur.

“Bullet or paradise? Which will it be, Roman?”

2

PREDATORS

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