He wasn’t like Waylon.
He was the smooth Reapers Prez. The one who kept his cool, even in the heat of arguments when the other side was threatening to draw guns. Even when they did draw guns.
Nothing made Hades Fairgood break.
Nothing except the thought of Persy trying to escape again. He’d backed off punishing her, had actually started to trust her to stay put until the end of her sentence. But here she was, playing him for the fool. Again.
Rage flared inside of him, a sudden fire in a dry room.
Fire.
The idea occurred to him, and he didn’t even think before executing it. He put away his phone and headed over to the fireplace they’d updated to a quick start switch when they converted it to gas.
She must have realized what he was about to do because that got a reaction.
“No, Hades, don’t! Please, don’t!” she pleaded, raising both hands in a stopping motion.
But she couldn’t stop him. She wouldn’t stop him.
He snatched the envelope of cash out of the tote she made from her sales. There was maybe fifteen hundred dollars in there. Less than his last pair of custom boots had cost. He thought she’d been keeping herself busy, but obviously this was her escape fund.
“Oh, my God, don’t!” she screamed at him, her voice going shrill and angry. “That’s my money. I earned it!”
“I compromised my revenge for you,” he yelled back, stabbing a finger into the fireplace button.
It blazed to life with a gas-filled whoosh, burning as hot as his rage as he reminded her, “I cut your sentence down, and this is how you repay me. You think I’m going to just sit back while you actively plan your escape before your five years are done?”
“It’s for after my five years!” she answered. “I need that money to…”
She cut off and glanced to both sides with an obvious tell, as she substituted, “To survive after you’re done with me” for whatever she was originally going to say.
She was clearly lying. And Hades had to ask her from between clenched teeth, “You think I’m gon’ believe anything that comes out your mouth? After you tried to use Waylon’s woman to escape?”
“I wasn’t using her. I’m not that stupid. Not anymore,” she insisted with a bitter shake of her head. “I know she’s as trapped as me.”
Hades narrowed his eyes. Okay, that didn’t sound like a lie, and his confusion stayed his hand. Before he burned her money, he needed to know, “Then why did you give her your name on that piece of paper?”
Persy spread her arms out and yelled, “Because she asked for it! For the first time in years, somebody asked me for my name—my real name. Made me feel like a human being who mattered. And I knew it was stupid. But I woke up with her question on my heart. On my soul. And I couldn’t let her leave without telling her. So, I wrote it down on a piece of paper. That’s all. I’m not trying to escape. I’m just trying to get through this. Please, please don’t take the one thing I’ve managed to accumulate in three years.”
She clasped both hands as if he really was a god she was praying to. “I won’t be able to withstand it. It will break me. Do you understand? It will break me for real. I will be useless to you.”
Strangely, he did understand. She was a blood debt, but…
The rage seeped out of him as quickly as it had flared. And all those feelings from the night they were together—those feelings overtook him again, sweeping through his chest like the latest hurricane.
But she was a liar. A betrayer. She would play him for a fool if he let him.
And there was still the matter of the money, and the real reason she was nest egging it. He knew in his gut now that it wasn’t a simple savings fund. It was intended for something specific. Something she wasn’t telling him about.
“I can’t let you keep this money,” he explained to her as he turned the thin envelope of cash over in his hands. His voice was firm but a lot gentler than it was before. “And from now on any money you make, you hand it over to me, and then…”
He looked up to tell her he’d keep it for her someplace safer than the Quarter Stitch tote bag she carried everywhere with her. That she didn’t have to worry about saving up anyway because he’d make sure she was taken care of when they were done. That she had nothing to worry about.
But he stopped talking altogether and his blood iced over when he saw the unzipped overnight bag sitting behind her on the couch….and the object in her hands.
“That’s my money!” she said, angry tears streaming down her face.
She’d found a gun—his gun. Both of her hands were wrapped around the trigger well of his Glock.
