Page 60 of Clean Hack
“There is a lot going on up in here,” she said and touched the side of her head. “I talked to Nadya while you were gone.”
I looked her in the eyes to let her know that I was listening, even if I didn’t have the first clue who Nadya was. I assumed one of her friends. And I had a feeling like she didn’t have many.
“Oh, Nadya is…oh how should I put this. A contract killer. She was there in the warehouse. Tall woman. Thick hair. Standing with the big guy, Tank. I will try to make this as short as possible,” she said then took in a deep breath. “I met her kind of on an accident. Something we don’t really talk about. But there had been a job that she’d taken a few years ago and we sort of crossed paths. Somehow we just ended up sticking with one another and I ended up helping her out sometimes. But that’s not the point. I guess Nadya is the closest thing to a friend that I have now.”
I nodded, remembering the woman from the warehouse very well. She was kind of hard to miss, and not because she was one of only three women in that room. She stood tall amongst the men of the club. I could see that she didn’t give a damn what any of them thought about her being there. Also, I got the sense that she was deadly and had probably taken out her fair share of the bodies I’d seen there that night. Now that Lucy had filled me in on who and what she was, it made a little more sense.
“So, Nadya ended up taking a contract from Savage. I didn’t know it at the time because we tried not to talk about work stuff. Tank ended up being her target. That was when things kind of got…crazy. He thought his little boy was dead but he wasn’t. Oh, this is so involved, I should just tell you everything so you know what’s going on.”
Then she did. Telling me about the person she had hired to go undercover. The one that was still standing wearing The Devil’s Kings cut. Now that part made sense to me.
Man, there was a lot to this. While she’d been like an invisible force right in the middle, I had been skirting around the outside all this time. I knew what was going on and I had ties to these people but wasn’t really in the know with them. Still, I had picked up things here and there over the years. I knew they had a major problem. And that problem had been Savage.
And while I was there, but not really, she was almost the opposite. In the way that she knew what the hell was going on but didn’t know these people at all. She’d never met them. What she did know, she’d learned from afar, behind closed doors, watching it all play out on a computer screen. She had all the angles and the background noise. She knew the little ways that everything connected.
To be honest, it made my head hurt.
So I learned that Burke had somehow saved Tank’s son when the club had thought he died in an explosion that had been set up by Savage. I was glad the little kid wasn’t dead, that was for sure. She moved the story along as fast as possible and by the end. I was able to put all the pieces together.
Only I wasn’t sure if it was better when I was in the dark.
Because there was a lot. Little plays and angles that she’d kept track of over the years. Things she’d put into motion and in place without anyone knowing. It all came full circle in the end and she’d ended up helping to save her friend.
“You’ve been doing a shit-ton the last seven years,” I stated like she didn’t already know it. “I think you deserve a little break. But I can imagine that’s hard to even think about after so long.”
“It is,” she said with a little nod. “It’s like…like I have been so focused for seven years and now I’m…lost.”
“No, sweetness,” I said pulling her stool closer to mine and wrapping my arms around her. “Not lost, I won’t ever let you be lost. Look at it as a new beginning. Now you can think aboutyouand whatyouwant.”
“I don’t think I want to give up everything,” she admitted as she fisted the front of my shirt like she needed to hold onto me for some reason. “I can’t stop thinking about all the people out there like Allison. All the missing and taken kids. I want to help save them.”
“Okay, and you can do that. No one’s telling you that you have to give it all up. But now you can take a little step back. Do things in between. Live for you.”
“What about you?” she asked and raised a brow at me. “Do you ‘live for you’ in between jobs?”
She had me there. In a way I did. I didn’t hate my life though looking back on it, it was kind of a lonely one.
“Maybe not fully, but I think I’m going to start now.”
“Never too old right,” she added with a wink.
“Oh, wow. Now you say I’m old,” I joked back. “What happened to ‘age is just a number?’ Hm?”
“Well, I mean…I’m kidding! I’m kidding!” she said as I tried to move back.
“Maybe we can figure it out together,” I said and held my breath.
“I’d like that.” She smiled up at me and damn if it didn’t melt my heart.
“Me too,” I said and then met her lips in a sweet kiss.
“So…this is a thing, right?” she asked a little hesitantly.
I smiled, the longer she was around me the more of her true personality started to come out. I loved it and hoped it meant that she felt at ease around me.
“It’s a thing,” I said with a nod as I tried to hold back a chuckle. Not because I was laughing at her. It was the way she was so adorable and cute.
“Okay, good,” she said and then bit her lip.
