Page 90 of Wicked Devotion
“Maybe ten, fifteen years in the future, but right now? No way.”
“Me neither,” I say, and Logan turns to look at me with a raised eyebrow. “I’m fine being the cool uncle with unrestricted access to explosives, but anything more than that—it’s not optimal. Our line of work… I mean, you see how it is.”
“No one asked me; thanks for that, by the way,” Logan says, and Lily mutters an apology, but I know he’s just messing with her.
“I’m sure you two would be great dads, though,” she says to lighten the mood, and I tense up. “If you find a way to keep work and private life separate, obviously. Like all the superheroes do.”
Upon seeing the look on Logan’s face, I pull Lily up with me. She trips over her own feet as we rush to the water. To prevent any accidents and to get away as quickly as possible, I lift her up.
“Max?” Lily shivers as the cold water reaches up to her stomach, looking at me completely confused.
“You know the moment in a movie when someone defuses a bomb, and everything gets super quiet? Right before they cut through one of the cables? That’s exactly what we are going to do right now: Be really fucking quiet and pray he doesn’t detonate.”
32
LOGAN
Itook my first life on the day I was born, and somehow, I haven’t stopped since. Death followed me from day one, sealing my fate before I had a chance to fight it.
My mom—I never got to know her name—probably fell for my father's blue eyes and the lies that always left his mouth. A man people would warn you about, allergic to honesty and integrity. Despite that, girlfriends came and went. I have more half-siblings than I could count, but I was the only child he kept by his side.
“A natural born killer,” he’d call me. Proud, high on whatever was available. His slaps on my shoulder were always too hard, interpreted as fatherly love by a child who didn’t know any better.
I’ll never forget the present he got me for my twelfth birthday, when he deemed me old enough to help with family business.
“You’re a big boy now. C’mon, be a fucking man. I’ve dragged you with me like dead weight for long enough now.”
I wanted to prove myself so badly. Show that I was worthy, but my hands were so shaky, and the way my fatheryelled at me to stop being a little bitch and pull the trigger wasn’t helping. I shot and didn’t hit where I should have.
It was messy and so damn loud. Since that day, my father’s disappointed expression goes through my head every time I point my rifle.
It was the first and last time I missed a shot.
I had been wearing my favorite shirt, not that I had many, to begin with. It was dark blue, the cheap print already fading. It’s the only piece of my past I kept through all those years. To remind myself that there are no superheroes, that no one will ever come to save you.
Over time, I got better at it. I no longer hesitated to end a life. Instead, I listened to my father’s rambles about how we only kill bad people. I learned that nightmares don’t haunt you if you don’t sleep and how the bagged-up goods from my father’s stash helped to numb everything.
Sometimes, he went away for weeks. Left me in some shady motel, telling the guy at the reception desk to check on me every now and then.
I had long stopped celebrating my birthday, but I must have been a few days short of seventeen when he told me to pack my bag instead of slamming a stack of dollar bills onto the bed.
The years and the drugs had taken their toll on him. I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen my father sober, and maybe that was the reason he brought me to Mexico with him, worried about being unable to do the job himself.
But when I found myself standing in front of a crying mother and her little boy, hell would have needed to open up before I would have pulled the trigger. I distracted my father for long enough they could run, deciding I would live or die with the consequences.
The last time I saw my father, he slammed the handle of his gun against my temple, and everything went black. I prayed toGod to just let me die, but woke up in a back alley in Guerrero instead.
Lying next to mountains of trash, as a nobody with nothing to his name. So, I did what I had always done. End lives, so mine could go on for another day.
With every passing year, I felt myself turning more and more into the man I despised so much. I said the same things and made the same sleazy jokes when sitting at a table with potential clients.
Clients who offered drugs or money so I’d do the dirty work for them, but unlike my father, I had one rule: No kids, no women.
A lot of people disrespect rules, even if it’s just a single, very simple one.
Whenever someone tried to negotiate what wasn’t negotiable or suggested they’d find another person to do the job, I adapted my schedule. And I took my sweet time with it.
If I hadn’t crossed paths with Red—or rather took out a fifth of his men back then—I wouldn’t have made it past my 25th birthday.
