by Ada Scott
“He was cold. He never cared what I did, so I acted out to try and get his attention. I was an asshole teenager for a while. Could have stayed on track to be just another rich brat like him,” I muse with a scoff. “But by the time I was sixteen, I was so fucking sick of that life. Everyone in that world was just drowning themselves in fake pleasures and distractions. Friendships weren’t real. Nothing was real. I wanted out. So like I told you, I had papers forged to get me into the military where something made sense. I knew there wouldn’t be anyone I could trust on Wall Street, so maybe I’d find it on the battlefield. I don’t regret a thing.”
“Was he angry when you did that?” Jane asks, her face completely astonished by everything I’m saying.
“He barely noticed,” I say. “I might as well have bought a jet and fucked off to Brazil, for all he cared. It’s all just silly distractions to those rich fucks. They don’t have problems, they have funny little misadventures. It tore me up, knowing even being in the military couldn’t get me away from that life, so I just dug my heels in more. Then Dad died.”
“Oh my god,” Jane says. “Caleb, I had no idea—”
“That’s by design,” I say with a sad smile. “When he died, I couldn’t have been more surprised that he left me everything he had. The business, the trust fund, the assets... a kingdom of money in a sea of kingdoms. And he left that goddamn letter with it.” I clench my fists, and Jane notices, putting her small hands over them.
“Letter?”
“Turns out, after two tours overseas, he did notice,” I say. “He left me a note saying he wanted me to take the strength I got in the military and use it to run his business. So I did the natural thing anyone in my position would do.” My smile turns wry. “I hired a bunch of experts to handle the business for me, then fucked off to the one place you can burn through a shitload of cash and get treated right as a veteran: Vegas. Haven’t looked back. Haven’t dug into the money Dad left me unless I had to. That shit’s all tainted money, as far as I care.”
I look over to Jane to see her mouth hanging open, her eyes wide. I might as well have told her I’m a werewolf. “But...how…”
“Caught some asshole cheating at the craps tables with me one of my first weeks in Vegas,” I say simply. “Beat the shit out of him right there in the casino. Gorsky’s men had me dragged into the back and offered me a job on the spot.”
“But why the mob?”
“Lot of vets end up in this kind of work,” I say with a frown. “Most of them not by choice, but for me, it gave me the rush I felt on the battlefield, and I felt like I was really earning the cash. I’d rather them pay me than some asshole who’d put the money to really bad use.”
I lock eyes with Jane with a serious expression. “That’s why I do what I do. I was done being some rich brat when I was a teenager. I’d like to see all that money burn, if I could.”
I look back to the laptop, and before Jane can reply, I start to see a pattern on the screen. Two cars are headed out to a spot in the desert I know, taking different roads. It’s an out-of-the-way compound, not unlike the warehouse we went to, but this one’s not quite as publicized.
“Got them,” I say, and I stand up and start getting my clothes and equipment ready as Jane watches me with those damned innocent eyes, like an angel watching me about to descend into hell. And that’s how far apart we are, I realize with a heavy heart. I need to keep her away from this life.
“Jane, you’ve been incredible this week,” I say, looking at her as I slip my jacket on, and I set a roll of cash on the table. “But that week is up, and I don’t know how this fight is going to go. Take this cash and get a cab back to your grandparents’ place where you’ll be safe. The money should be going into your account from escrow soon. As long as—”
“Fuck that,” Jane says, getting up and crossing the room to look me right in the eye. “Caleb, do you want to know why I signed up for this virgin-sale thing in the first place?”
We look at each other for a few moments, both of us very still as light filters in through the window around our silhouettes.
“My grandfather’s sick, Caleb,” she says softly. “He’d be dying very soon if I hadn’t gotten this money. I’m still not sure about this whole Innocence For Sale thing, but I saw a chance and I took it, and I never looked back.” She puts her hands on my jacket and looks up at me, looking more beautiful than the day I first saw her. “Sometimes life is just like that. You can’t control when chances come, but you do what you can. Because of that ‘dirty’ money you used, my grandfather’s going to live.”
Her eyes shine as she reaches up and puts a hand to my face.
“You can’t control what you were born into, but you can use it to make a good thing. And everything we’ve been through this past week…I know a good thing when I see it.” There are tears starting to well up in her eyes as I take her hands, my eyes transfixed on hers. “So don’t you dare think you can carry all that weight on your own.”
Without another word, I wrap my arms around her, and I hear her sniff back a sob into my muscular arm as I close my eyes, breathing in the aura around her soft hair as I feel a bit of wetness in my own eyes.
Damn her, she’s right.
As much as I want to run from my past...so much of it is the hatred I’ve built against myself. I’ve known that for a long time. I had no idea about her grandfather, though. Jane has been the only good thing that’s made me feel alive in so long. If she can feel that way about me, then maybe…
We stand there for what feels like forever before I break the silence.
“If I make it through this, I’ll come back for you,” I say in a husky voice. “I won’t leave you alone. You need to get to safety right now, though.” I feel her nod softly in my hug before she pulls back.
“I love you, Caleb,” she says, her eyes shining.
“I love you so much, Jane,” I confess, and it feels like a weight lifting off my heart before I bring her lips to mine, and we share a deep, long kiss.
When it finally breaks, I look at her with more resolution than I’ve felt since I first joined the army.
“Now, I’m going to finish this.”
Caleb
My car hurtles down the highway so fast I start to wonder if I’ll even be able to stop without getting myself killed. Every second counts, and I’m not going to waste a single one.
While I was strapping as many weapons to my body as I could, I expected to leave everything in that room behind. Fantasy over. Jane, the money, the mob, everything. But like she always does, Jane managed to find a way to put something new in me. Something that will make me fight and kill to keep on living.
Love.
It’s the flame that my anger fans as I leave a trail of dust behind me on the Nevada roadways.
The place Gorsky’s being taken might as well be a slaughterhouse. It looks like any old abandoned shack in the desert. Truth is, it’s a small bunker some crazy old coot built in the Cold War. Shit like that is all over this state. There’s a tunnel under a decaying rug that leads down to what was once something like a studio apartment—until the old man died and the mob found it. They turned it into a place to make people disappear.
I take a sharp turn off-road and barrel down the dirt toward the shack. There’s no way they can’t hear me coming. I need to come in with something good now that the element of surprise is gone.
As I come up with an idea, I pet my car’s dashboard to bid it goodbye. I’ll get another, but this one has some good memories.
As I expected, two cars are parked outside the shack by some dead trees off to the side. I also notice that nobody’s posted outside like usual. They’re waiting for me, probably just behind the walls of the shack, waiting for me to come out so they can put me down.
I brace myself.
As I approach the shack, instead of slowing down to get out, I keep going steady. Straight toward the shack. For a moment, I see a white face pop out of a window to see if t
his is really happening.
In the seconds before collision, I take a deep breath.
This one’s for Jane.
When my Jag collides with the shack, the world feels like it’s exploding.
I duck down and press myself against the door of the car as splintered wood and screaming metal flies and twists all around me through the sounds of the shattering building. Glass rains down on me as part of the “living room” crashes through the windshield. A couple of screams get muffled as the guards outside get mowed down under the car and the wreckage.
I’ve leveled the whole shack.
I hear glass move around me as I wrench the car door open, drawing two pistols as I get to cover behind my car and check the rubble.
Nothing.
Carefully, military training kicking in, I move forward while keeping my eyes sharp, going from cover to cover to watch for signs of movement. If any of them are still moving, all it takes is one good shot to ruin this whole thing.
But the men I come across are still, probably dead on impact, and I put a bullet in each just to be sure.
As I approach where I know the hatch to be, I reach in my jacket and pull out a small cylinder. It’s a military-grade stun grenade, also known as a flashbang.
“Boss, you might have some eye damage after this,” I grumble to myself as I kick some broken planks of wood away from the hatch, where I hear commotion from below, “but it’s better than a bullet in the head.”
I open the hatch as I pull the pin from the grenade.
About two ladder rungs from the top is another guard, looking up at me with wide, surprised eyes.
I wink at him as I drop the grenade past him, then kick him in the face and slam the door shut.
First, I hear the thud of his body after it falls all the way down. Then come the shouts.
Then comes the BANG from the flash grenade, and the shouts get louder.
Yanking the door back open, I jump down the hole, bracing myself against the narrow sides of the tunnel with my boots, sliding down so I don’t have to leave myself exposed. When I’m close enough to see the man I kicked squirming on the ground, I aim a shot and fire.
Moments later, I land on the ground, and the scene I’m faced with is like a Renaissance painting.
Six guards are in a room laid out like a slaughterhouse, complete with metal walls and a drain in the floor. Each of the men are in various states of pain as they cover their eyes or ears, one on his knees, one against the wall. Demyan is among them, gun in hand, kneeling behind the back of a chair facing the wall.
Gorsky is in that chair, a blindfold around his fat head that he has bent down from the noise.
All the Russians are swearing, and only a few of them are starting to regain their bearings. I have to move fast.
Three quick shots, and three of them hit the ground. After that, the others realize what’s going on and raise guns to start firing blindly in my general direction.
I’m faster.
I dart for the nearest one and tackle him to the ground, where I snap his neck with a quick twist of my hands. Bullets ricochet on the wall behind me, so I dive to the right, firing a few rounds at the men as they fight off the blindness from the flashbang.
Bullets hit the last two, and they recoil in pain, but they’re still alive. I don’t have time to deal with them—Demyan is shaking the effects off, and he’s trying to aim his gun at me.
I fire, and it hits his hand. He drops the gun in pain a half-second before I reach him, arms going for his throat.
“Kill him you fucking idiots!” he snarls in Russian, but instead of tackling him to the ground, I bring us forward, away from Gorsky, and I spin him around in front of me.
Right between me and the guards.
A hail of bullets comes my way, and the next moment, I watch Demyan’s furious face soften, his eyes rolling up into his head, and a trickle of blood running out of his mouth.
His own men riddled him with bullets.
Their sight is back now, and I have a moment’s pause as they look in horror at what they’ve done. I take that chance to aim my gun over Demyan’s shoulder and fire a round into each of them.
Within less than a minute, the room is cleared of hostiles. When the ringing in my ears stops, I hear nothing but Gorsky’s heavy breathing.
“Demyan?” he asks cautiously, his blindfolded face turning as if to look and see who survived the firefight. “Whoever you are, you’ve won. If you’re going to kill me, at least let me look you in the eye.”
I smirk. “Fair enough.”
I spin the chair around and rip the blindfold off him in a fluid motion. The look on his face is worth a hundred grand.
“So, you want me to kill you before or after we get back to Vegas and break open that whisky on your shelf I’ve been eyeing?”
Minutes later, I help my boss out of the hole in the ground I just emerged from. We squint at the wreckage around us as our eyes adjust to the sun.
“Mother of god,” Gorsky mutters, looking around at all the destruction, “all this was just you?”
“I get a job done when I want it done,” I say simply, dusting myself off.
“No shit,” he muses, then looks at me with a thousand-mile stare. “Caleb, I have to admit, I’ve underestimated you.”
“Don’t worry,” I say as I pick through the rubble to find the dead guards and take the car keys from them. “That’s by design. I never play my hand too early.”
Gorsky chuckles darkly. “If only my son had been half as sharp as you, maybe he wouldn’t have gotten all these stupid ideas in his head that got him killed.”
I look up at Gorsky and arch an eyebrow. “About that... I killed your son today, boss, no way around that. If there’s bad blood between us, I want to know about it now.”
Gorsky takes a deep breath, looking back at the hole in the ground where the firefight happened. “What happened was...unfortunate. I loved Demyan dearly, and I’ll remember the best of him at his funeral.” He frowns for a moment, thoughtful, then looks at me, and I see a thin ring of tears in his eyes. “But this is business, Caleb. We know the risks when we step into this life. Our loved ones get hurt sometimes. It’s just the way of things.”
We look at each other for a few long moments, and as I give a single nod, it’s in that moment that it hits me... my time in the mafia has to end.
Not for my sake. For the sake of the one I love.
For Jane.
I toss Gorsky a set of keys, taking the other in my hand. “I didn’t smash up the cars,” I say casually, turning and walking toward them. “Hope they’ve got enough gas to get us back to Vegas.”
“Where are you headed?” Gorsky calls after me.
“Somewhere that has cell service,” I wave back to him without looking back. “I need to make a phone call.”
The first person I want to talk to is Jane.
Jane
“Janie, sweetheart!” coos my grandmother from the doorway.
I can see her elated expression in the mirror as she walks up behind me, her hands shaking as she covers her mouth. Her eyes are shining and I know she’s about one second away from bursting into tears and ruining the makeup my friend put on for her. I swivel around, my white dress flouncing as I pull Granny into a big hug.
“Don’t cry!” I tell her, pulling back to look into her face. One happy tear is already sliding down her cheek, and she’s beaming at me the same way she did at my university graduation a few months back. Like she’s so proud of me she can’t even bear it.
“Oh, Jane. You look so beautiful. Your mother and father would have been so proud to see you wearing this old dress,” she says tearfully.
“Hey, now, it’s more than just an old dress,” I say, laughing gently. “It’s the dress you wore. The one my mom wore. It’s got a history. This thing is older than I am. Do you like the alterations, though? It’s not too much, is it?”
Granny shakes her head. “No, no, dear. It’s perfect.
I couldn’t expect you to walk down the aisle with those shoulder pads, anyway. Not in this decade.”
We both giggle and turn back to look at ourselves in the mirror. Both of us look like we’re glowing, for many of the same reasons. The love of her life is healthy and happy again, undoubtedly mingling with the wedding guests right now, waiting to walk me down the aisle. And the love of my life will be waiting for me at the altar. Butterflies flutter around in my stomach. I can’t believe this is happening.
My bridesmaids, one of whom doubled as our makeup artist this morning, have filed out to get ready to walk down the aisle before me. The noise level outside this bridal suite, which was pretty high earlier, has whittled down to a dull murmur. People are waiting.
For me.
Granny kisses me on the cheek. “No need to feel nervous, dear. You know in your heart that this is the right man for you. You’re in love. That’s what matters.”
“What if I trip and fall down the aisle?” I ask, only half-joking.
She laughs. “Then your handsome husband-to-be will carry you the rest of the way. Or your grandfather might. He’s all about showing off his strength these days. I think he’s making up for all the times he felt weak.”
“He was never weak,” I comment. “Even before the surgery, he was one of the strongest men I’ve ever known.”
“And so is Caleb,” Granny adds, nudging my shoulder. “Look at us, both so happy.”
I can’t help but grin. She’s right. This is absolutely the best choice I’ve ever made. It’s strange that such a beautiful thing could arise from such a terrible start. But then again, if it all led me to this moment, was it really such an awful choice to sign up with Innocence For Sale to begin with? Not that anyone needs to know that’s how Caleb and I met. As far as Granny and Grandpa know, the hospital bills were just paid for. No details, no nothing. Caleb used some of his massive inheritance to pay them off, no problem. But he doesn’t want them to ask questions or thank him profusely or anything. He just wanted to quietly pay it off and make things good again.
