Page 70 of Break for Me

I laughed. “What?”

“Not the Rambo-style-survive-on-your-own-in-any-environment-since-you-were-a-child way. Not the devastating way,” he said. “What’d you study at Carnegie while you were there?”

“Why do you know—?” I started to ask but shook my head. “Never mind. I don’t think I even want to know how much you really know.”

“So? What was it?” He asked again.

“Electrical engineering.”

“Oh, fuck me. You are another Memphis.”

I laughed at that too. “I was only there for a semester. I had one whole class that went toward that major. The rest were general education requirements. I don’t think that puts me at Memphis level.”

“Triss—.”

He had all my attention the moment that he hesitated.

“Yeah?” I encouraged.

“For whatever it’s worth,” he said. “I’m sorry about Texas. Whatever he did, that’s not how we’re supposed to do things. We have rules. A very specific list of things we aren’t supposed to do.”

Something about that rubbed me the wrong way.

“Is that why you haven’t killed me?” I asked. “You’re not allowed to?”

He smirked. “Exactly like screaming into a fucking mirror,” he mumbled under his breath.

“What?”

“No, Fancy Face,” he said quickly. “That’s not why.”

fifty

JERSEY

Technically, her contract did specifically state for me to deliver her alive.

If anybody else had slashed all four tires of this car, that person would’ve been dead upon the next sighting; not fucked into an oblivion of pleasure so deep that she couldn’t even speak. No set of rules and no guidelines laid out by any contract would’ve prevented someone else’s death after such an offense.

“It doesn’t really matter anyway,” she said. “Whatever he did. It’s no different than what used to be done to me. It’s no different than the things I had to do to stay alive for the last few years. You choosing to follow the rules and not kill me now doesn’t change the fact that you’re just delivering me for someone else to finish the job.”

Something about her words made me feel sick to my stomach. I couldn’t come up with anything to say back to her. I didn’t have anything to offer that would change the end result. I didn’t know what was supposed to happen to her once I dropped her off, but I never knew what happened next with any of these jobs. It was never any of my business. Do what was instructed, walk away, get paid. That was how Memphis and I made our way to the top of the hierarchy. My heart had been ripped right out of me years ago, and it made me outrageously efficient.

None of that stopped me from spending hours driving in unpleasant silence because I couldn’t get my thoughts under control. I couldn’t understand why she hadn’t begged me for help yet. I couldn’t understand why I’d had to ask her so many personal questions. Why she wouldn’t offer that information willingly if she thought it might save her life by revealing to me that she was the one who’d been victimized was confusing to me. Knowing that I’d seen her manipulation of other people to her own benefit wasn’t helping the situation. There was always the chance that everything she’d told me up to this point was just a story; something fabricated to appeal to the morality that she hoped I possessed. And down yet another avenue in my brain, maybe she hadn’t bothered to beg for my help, hadn’t bothered to try to convince me because even her own mother hadn’t believed her when she was just a child who needed help. She wouldn’t waste her time explaining her past to a stranger, one who’d kidnapped her no less, when the woman who gave birth to her had never done anything to help her after hearing what was being done.

I drove with all my uncomfortable thoughts until it was dark outside, and I only stopped because Seph needed gas.

“You hungry?” I asked before I unlocked the doors.

She only shook her head.

“Yeah. Me either.”

I got out of the car without another word to fill the tank. I leaned against the pump and pulled my phone from my pocket to text Memphis to tell her I’d just stopped for gas. She was calling me not even a full minute later.

“You good?” She asked. “Been quiet most of the day.”

“Only another couple hours,” I said, not bothering to answer her question or even acknowledge what she’d said.

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