by Lee,Molly E.
I flinched, readying to tackle the bastard to the floor, but Sadie placed her hand on my stomach, stopping me before I could start.
“Listening,” she said.
“I have a series of cargo ships coming and going all over the island. Supply is up; demand is down. I need the space to store it, safely and discreetly.”
Fucking drugs. I knew it.
“How much?”
“Forty kilos—“
“Not how much you need me to store,” Sadie cut him off. “How much are you offering?”
I swallowed a mouthful of acid. Assholes like these are what kept my brother supplied.
“A grand per kilo.”
A laugh tore through her lips and my mouth dropped. I shifted again, ready to try to wrestle the gun away, get him as far from Sadie as possible, but her damn touch had me holding off. Her eyes begged me to trust her, so I locked my muscles.
“Something funny, girl?”
She swiped at the corners of her eyes, sucking in a long breath. “Yes, actually.” She straightened her spine, taking the final step of distance between them, and the blood froze in my veins.
“Slade is worth a billion easy, and he has you offer a grand per kilo? That’s weak.”
The man flinched as if her words had stung him, and my mouth dropped.
Sadie never lost the man’s gaze as she reached down and took the gun out of his hand as if she’d talked him down off a ledge.
“What gave me away?” the man asked, his tone completely different from moments before.
Sadie unclipped the gun, showing me it was empty, before handing it to me. I took it, the tightness in my chest loosening, but the anger raging for an entirely new reason.
“I remember just about every face I see. It’s kind of this useless gift. Except in your situation.”
“You work for Slade?” I blurted out, my brain finally catching up with my primal fight instinct. Son of a bitch! I’d kept my word by keeping my mouth shut and he still pulled a move like this?
“Sure as hell thought you would’ve pegged me and not this one,” he said, pointing at Sadie.
“How much did he offer you?” she asked.
“Ten grand.”
She whistled. “Not bad. He wanted you . . . to what? Get me on tape saying I’d store your drugs?”
The man had balls enough to look ashamed. He waved his arm toward his boat, and the three other men booked down to it at a run. “Yeah.” He reached into his pocket and handed her a small recorder. “I needed the money.”
“And if my career was jeopardized, my credibility compromised, no big deal?” she snapped. “I knew Slade was an asshole, but this?”
I hurtled a right hook across the man’s jaw, only at half strength—because it was only half his fault—but he still hit the deck.
Sadie knelt down, touching the man’s shoulder. “You know you deserved that,” she said and helped him to his feet. “Tell Slade nice try.”
The man rubbed his jaw, nodded, and hurried back to his boat. Which was probably Slade’s too. We watched as they sped off, the water breaking in their wake.
“You all right?” Sadie asked as her crew came to greet her.
“Damn, boss. I wouldn’t have caught that. Ever,” Nemo said, shaking his head. “Jackasses.”
Liz hugged Sadie. “Thought I’d lost this ship for you.”
Sadie shook her head. “Sorry you had to deal with that alone. I didn’t think he’d stoop this low.” She bit her bottom lip. “This is getting out of hand.”
“Maybe it’s a sign,” Liz said. “Maybe this site isn’t meant to be saved.
The sting of her words hit me in the chest as if I could feel the pain for Sadie.
“I won’t ever believe that,” Sadie said, but from the wary look in her eyes I couldn’t be certain she believed her own words.
And how could she? This place had already had more life-threatening incidents than one normal job would ever have.
“Connell?”
“Yeah?” I took her outstretched hand.
“Thanks for not breaking before I called him out.” She smirked, and I tried not to laugh.
“Almost did.” I drew her closer to me, locking our eyes. “You fucking realize that?”
“What?”
“I nearly charged a gun for you. If you hadn’t stopped me, cooled me down with that look, your touch . . .” I would’ve tackled the guy, taking whatever shot he had. Anything to keep Sadie from getting hurt.
“I know.” She pushed the hair back from my face, and I clenched my eyes shut.
The woman I was hired to destroy had turned out to be the one I was willing to die for, and the site she vowed would save thousands of people someday had tried to kill us both in several different ways.
How the hell were we supposed to come out of this unscathed on the other side?
A new wave of sickness hit my stomach, clashing with the anger and fear. It settled like an anvil—truth.
We weren’t.
I kicked Slade’s office door in so hard I heard it crack.
“What the hell, Murphey?”
Ryan rushed in behind me. “Connell, man, it’s not worth it.” He’d been on my heels the second I’d left Sadie’s boat.
“Not now, man.” I glared at him, promising him pain if he got in the middle of this.
He held his hands up and slowly backed out of Slade’s office, shutting the marred door behind him.
“Something on your mind?” Slade asked, sitting up straighter in his chair.
“Drugs? Really?”
Slade’s shoulders dropped. “I knew I should’ve hired outside the vessel.”
“Wow, you don’t even try to deny it.”
“How quick you make him?”
“I didn’t. She did,” I said, unable to hide the pride in my voice.
“Bitch is better than I thought.” He pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Don’t call her that.” I gnashed my teeth together, needing the painful release to stop me from flying across his desk.
“She still has her hooks in you, Murphey?”
I shook my head. “That asshole had a gun, Slade.”
“Which I specifically ordered him not to load.”
“You think orders matter to someone willing to pull that job? For a billionaire, you aren’t that smart.”
“Watch it, Connell. I can rip up our contract at any time.”
Relief pooled in my tight chest. “Do it.”
He arched an eyebrow, his eyes trailing me up and down until something clicked behind them. A grin smoothed out over his once-strained face, and he leaned back in his chair. “So she has gotten to you, hasn’t she?”
“You can keep your money; just stay as far away from her as possible.” I let all the rage that had gathered in the last twenty-four hours sink into the words, illuminating the threat behind them.
He pushed back from his desk and came around to stand in front of me. “Oh I’ll keep my money, but I won’t stay away from her.”
I grabbed his perfectly pressed shirt, fisting the fabric until he jerked backward. He laughed. “Go on,” he said. “Tear me up. Just know those guys today were the first. A soft test. She wants the hard one? One she won’t recover from? She’ll get it.”
I slammed him forward until his back smacked against his desk, knocking some of his decorative crap to the floor. “Keep pushing me, Slade. I’ll make it where you can’t walk off this vessel ever again.”
“It’s all on you, Murphey. You alone have the power to stop this,” he said, negotiating like he had any kind of upper hand. “The hard deal—the one where I simply make her disappear—has already been made; only way I’m calling it off is if you side with me.”
I held him there, my fingers aching to rearrange his face.
“Or keep going, and watch what happens to your new little girlfriend.” The threat in his eyes didn’t waiver, not even with me holding all the power over him. But that wasn’t
the case, never would be. Not with a guy as rich and dirty as Slade. He could have anything, including Sadie’s life if he wanted it.
“You’d go that far? Over a fucking pipeline?”
Slade shook his head, pushing against me until I released him and backed up a few feet. “One hundred and twenty million. I’d do it for one hundred and twenty million.” He readjusted his shirt and sat on his desk.
“You’re a sick fuck. You’ve already got more money than God.”
“I know who I am. I’m a businessman. I make deals. I move things. I create gateways to better futures.”
I scrunched up my face at him.
“And you should know who you are,” he continued. “No one. A decent diver, better welder. One whose always only cared about the money until he got himself sunk into a piece of dirty-blonde tail.”
Adrenaline surged through my veins, and I drew my fist back.
“Just take the deal, Murphey,” he said. “You’ll lose the girl, but you won’t lose the girl.”
I dropped my fist. He meant it. The fucking asshole meant it.
“I’ll even pay you what we agreed on in the first place. Pretend like this little trip down lover’s lane didn’t happen.”
“How do I trust you?”
“You don’t. Trust the money. Your word on my side means I keep my money. Sadie lives. But you can’t tell her or anyone a whisper of this, or I’ll push the hard-deal quicker than you can blink. Same terms as before.”
I’d never contemplated if I could actually murder someone until that moment, and I was on the fucking edge thinking about it. My mind calculated how I could get him underwater, because down there, enough could go wrong to not raise suspicion.
“Do we understand each other?”
We didn’t, but I couldn’t risk he was bluffing, or risk taking him out right this instant. I needed time to think of an out, one where Sadie’s life wasn’t the bargaining chip.
“Do we have a deal, Connell?”
“Yes,” I snapped.
“I need you to say it.”
“I’ll side with you. Her site won’t stand a chance,” I snapped. The words tasted bad in my mouth, but if they bought me some time, enough to figure out how to save her life and her site at the same time, then I would say them over and over again until he believed them.
“And you’ll be rich.”
“Wonderful.” I bit out the word, cracking my knuckles to stop from punching him.
A gasp from behind me had me whirling.
When had the door opened?
And how long had Sadie been standing there?
Sadie
MY BODY BETRAYED me because I’d gasped despite being breathless. Connell and Slade’s words had my head spinning. I couldn’t have heard that right . . . had Connell really just said he’d side with him to have my site destroyed, and for what, money?
“Sadie,” his voice was a twisted tone of hurt, and it stung every cell in my body.
I spun around, stomping down the hallway toward the exit, forgetting my reasoning for being there in the first place—giving Slade a piece of my mind over his fake drug-deal incident seemed so fucking small on the scale of things at the moment.
“Sadie, wait!”
I spun around, my anger overtaking all rational thought. “That’s all I was? A fucking paycheck?” I flew at him, smacking him against the wall of the hallway. He took it, only lifting his hands to slow my thrashing.
The fight in me quickly fizzled out, replaced with the sheer feeling of stupidity.
“Is it true?” I asked again, wanting him to take back his words, explain them away until everything made sense again.
He leaned against the wall, shoving his hands in his pockets. He parted his lips, but he closed them again. He fucking shrugged. “Yeah,” he said, but his eyes glistened.
I shook my head, swiping at the corner of my eyes. “No.” I closed the distance between us, placing my hand on his hard chest. “I call bullshit. What about Conner?”
He flinched, his eyes darting toward the floor.
“The night you told me about him? Why rip the scab off that wound?”
“I needed you close—“
“No. You simply needed me. Needed me to help heal you. And you know the saddest thing, Connell?”
His eyes locked with mine.
“You had me. Body, heart, and soul.” I kissed him, hard and fierce, pouring my anger, the sting of betrayal, into his mouth. I ripped away from him the second his hands reached for my waist. “Something money couldn’t buy. Now you’ve lost it. Good luck finding it again.”
I turned on my heels and slammed the exit door on my way out of Slade’s vessel. Nemo didn’t ask questions when I boarded the boat—God bless him he just took off toward home.
My heart shattered; my brain called me an idiot.
I never should have let him close enough to cut me. Not when he was already mixed up with Slade.
Money. Everything came down to money. If I had enough, I could save every site I wanted, but I’d never been in this job for the glamour. I only wanted to help people. Slade only worried about his bank account or making a name for himself by building the first natural gas pipeline route in the area.
Anyone could do his job; I’m sure there were dozens of VPs underneath him dying to take his place. Maybe they’d do it better, maybe not.
Well, he was a fool for messing with me.
I was one bitch who wouldn’t take a play like he’d pulled lying down.
Connell should’ve known as much, but he’d been blinded by the dollar sign.
Something twisted inside me, arguing how tender he’d been with me, how close we’d grown—how could he have faked that?
“You want to go to the lab or straight to the bar, boss?” Nemo asked over the loud roar of the motor hitting the ocean.
“Bar.” I loved this kid. I didn’t have to say a word for him to know I needed a drink. Or lots of drinks.
“You got it.” He turned the boat toward the main docks, and I tossed my thoughts in the ocean behind us. I could battle with myself for weeks over whether or not what Connell and I had was real, or I could suck it up and drown my sorrows in rum like a woman.
And tomorrow I’d wake up—likely hungover—but armed and ready to take Slade, and whoever stood in my way, down.
“Want to talk about it?” Nemo asked, bringing me my third rum and OJ.
“Nope.” I took the glass, gulping half the contents down before smacking it hard against the wooden bar. Now this was working wonders. The sweet heat helped untie all the knots my muscles had twisted into, and my brain was good and fuzzy.
“Okay,” Nemo said, dragging the word out. “At least tell me who we’re silently plotting against.”
I smiled at the kid. Loyal, dependable. He was the kind of worker I wanted to keep forever. I hoped he’d want to stay on my crew no matter where the jobs took us.
“Slade.”
“That one I figured,” he said. “But what about—“
“Don’t say his name. He’s not worth it.”
“Ouch.” Nemo hissed. “I kind of feel bad for the guy.”
“Excuse me?” I glared at him.
He quickly set his beer down, raising one hand at me. “Don’t toss me to the sharks, boss. I have no idea what he did, but I saw the way he looked at you. The man loves you. To have that and lose it? Fuck, I wouldn’t want to experience that.”
The air left my lungs in a hurry. There was no way he’d loved me. Not with what he’d agreed to do. Not with how he’d betrayed me.
Something whispered in the back of my clouded brain, repeating words he’d said to me, showing me kisses we’d shared. I shook my head to rid myself of the sappy loop.
“I think you read him wrong. He wasn’t that easy to read in the first place.” Unless you’d been me, or so I’d thought. God, I couldn’t have been more off the mark with him, and I’d given him . . . everything. A flush raked across my skin, t
hinking of how much of myself I’d given him, how quickly I’d laid myself bare.
“I’m not wrong, boss. Not on this.” Nemo’s voice cut through my thoughts, and I sighed.
Even now, where I tried to feel shame for letting Connell take me as many times as we did, I couldn’t. I didn’t regret it. The pain, the betrayal, I regretted that for sure. But for a little while, he’d let me in, whether he wanted to admit that or not. That was worth it.
Knowing that I could love someone, have someone who was my match, only to have him turn out to be the biggest liar ever? That was the worst, and it turned my stomach sour now.
Or it could be all the rum.
But the rum was helping more than he had.
“Can I buy the rest of the bottle?” I asked the bartender, and she laughed, shaking her head. “Fine, one more then,” I said and graciously took the full glass from her. I handed Nemo some cash, despite his protests. “I need some air. I’ll be back in a little while.”
“You think you should go alone?” he asked, standing from the barstool.
“I’m fine,” I lied. Well, I was fine enough to walk to the beach and watch the waves. My heart . . . it was broken. I turned around too quickly and ran straight into Ryan.
“Sadie, you all right?”
I slit my eyes at him. He had to have known the dirty deal Slade had struck with Connell. I shook his hands off my shoulders where he’d steadied me. “No, I’m absolutely not.”
“But you just said—“
“I know what I said, Nemo.” I cut him off.
Ryan tilted his head. “Does this have something to do with Connell nearly taking Slade’s head off today?”
“What?” Nemo and I said at the same time.
“Yeah, just before you two showed up. I assumed it was over the fake drug deal earlier.” He looked me up and down. “Guessing there is more to it?”
“Like you don’t know,” I snapped.
He took the empty bar stool I’d just left, not confirming or denying anything. “I can see you’re up in arms about something. Can I help?”
His face was genuine, showing a level of concern I’m not sure my attitude had earned. Still, he worked for Slade, too, which I meant I couldn’t trust him. “No. Unless you can tell me who I can go to that is above Slade.” I doubted it, so I turned to walk out of the bar, needing the salty air on my skin.
