Page 78 of Kept

“Lots of people started doing drugs, to get them through. But I… I never wanted that.”

But it meant I remembered. Every little, horrible part of it.

“How did you get out?”

Blowing out a breath, I pull myself back into the room. “Maverick. He was on a job with his father, and I gave him some information that he needed. We just… clicked. And the next thing I knew, he’d spoken to Antonio and… he bought me out.”

My stomach flips over. Zella gapes.

“He bought you?” she asks in horror. “Like a possession?”

I shake my head. “No. Not like that. He had to pay them to get me out of there. It’s never been like that between us.”

Even if it still feels like an invisible noose around my neck.

“So I came to work for him and his dad,” I say with a smile to cover up the aching in my chest. “Then Enzo joined us a few years later, and here we are, the merry band of reprobates you see today.”

“What about Maverick’s dad?” Zella asks curiously.

“He died.” Sorrow builds in my chest. “Robert was a good man. Better than all of us, really.”

“I don’t believe that,” she says softly. “Thank you for telling me.”

We’re facing each other, and I poke her gently, over her heart. “A piece for a piece.”

Her lashes cast feathery shadows on her cheeks as she tries to smile. “A piece of my heart for a piece of yours?”

“Yep,” I murmur. “Seems fair.”

“Does that mean…,” she stops, and chews on her lip. “Are you choosing?”

“I’m not sure you were ever a choice, little thief,” I say quietly. “I think you were always going to be inevitable.”

I think I knew it the second I locked eyes with her in that apartment and she knocked me out with a damn wok.

“Does it feel like this for everyone?” she asks me, and I give her a questioning look. She presses her fingers against my heart, and then against hers. “So… consuming?”

I shake my head. “No. Not for everyone.”

“Then I feel very lucky,” she murmurs. “That it was you and Enzo that found me.”

Lifting her hand, I twist her wrist lightly, baring the soft skin and pressing my lips against it.

“I think we were the lucky ones, Zella.”

She gives me a soft, sweet smile, and then she rolls over. “Come here,” she says, looking over her shoulder. “Please?”

I shift closer, wrapping my arms around her and pulling her back against me. She shifts, settling into the crook of my arms like she’s always belonged there.

Maybe she has.

“In an hour,” she mumbles after a few minutes. “I’m getting up.”

I smile into her hair. “Sounds like a plan to me. I do have a promise to keep.”

And a whole world to show her.

Maybe I’m not a good man. But maybe I could be a better one.

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