by Chelle Bliss
Her eyes fill with tears, hanging there and waiting to fall as she backs away. “I won’t give up on us, Nix. We’re far from over.”
“Just go, Kennedy. I don’t want to see you tonight.”
“Fine,” she says and yanks at her shirt, straightening it and showing off her cleavage, but I resist the urge to glance down. “I’ll call when I have the details.”
“Not before,” I tell her, crossing my arms over my chest as she turns around and heads for the door, wiping her face with each step.
My heart is aching, ready to explode in my chest when the door closes behind her. I’ve never been in love with another person, not like I was with Kennedy. I fell fast and hard too. The moment I saw her, I knew she was nothing but trouble, but I couldn’t stop myself from going down that road.
I pull the bottle of Louis XIII off the shelf and pour myself a glass before settling into the leather chair in front of the window cityscape. I sip it slowly, savoring each taste like it may be my last. Having to rat out Hassan could not only put me in danger, but also Coco and Kennedy. We’re all in this now, and our lives are on the line.
Bringing down a terrorist network isn’t easy, even for an insider like myself, but I’ll do whatever it takes to keep those around me safe. I’ll give my own life if it means they’ll be okay. Soon, it will all be over. Coco will be free. Kennedy will have completed her mission. And I’ll be alone.
Just as it was always meant to be. Living a life like mine doesn’t leave room for love. Love is a weakness. Each person who steals a piece of a criminal’s heart is a tiny fracture in their armor that can cause it to shatter, cracking into a million pieces in an instant.
I thought Coco was my only weakness, but I was wrong. Kennedy is my new Kryptonite.
23
Kennedy
Handing some cash to the cab driver, I slide out of his car and stare at the small, nondescript house with greenish siding in front of me. The porch light is on, but all the curtains are drawn and it doesn’t look like anyone’s inside.
Someone is, though. Someone I’m not looking forward to seeing. But then, I don’t really feel like seeing anyone. My fight with Nix earlier left me hollowed out inside. All my feelings bled out of me, and for what? For Nix to dismiss me after telling me he had been falling in love with me?
A lump forms in my throat, and I force it away, squaring my shoulders. This is no time for feeling sorry for myself. I’m working.
I knock on the door of the FBI safe house, sending a text message from my phone at the same time. An agent opens the door, his gaze sweeping over me from head to toe.
“Nice ring,” he says, his eyes fixated on my lip.
“Where is she?” I give him an annoyed glare.
He closes and locks the door, then gestures to a hallway. “Second door on the left. But I need to see photo ID first.”
I take out the black leather case that holds my driver’s license and open it for him. I don’t carry anything that identifies me as a Greenlight agent. Normally, I don’t even carry my own license.
The agent looks at my photo and then at me. “You know Steve Bolding? I heard he was recruited by Greenlight.”
I shake my head and force myself not to roll my eyes. “I’m not sure what you mean. I work as the personal assistant to an executive in the city.”
My deadpan tone makes the agent arch his brows with surprise. “Really? You’re maintaining cover with me?”
“Can we not do this?” I ask, aggravated. “I came here for a reason.”
He shrugs. “You know where to find her.”
I turn toward the hallway and walk to the second door on the left, which is closed. I knock and push it open. Coco is sitting on the bed, her legs crossed. A female FBI agent is staring down at her smartphone.
“You bitch,” Coco says with a snarl. “I fucking knew you’d screw us over.”
She launches herself off the bed toward me, but the click of the agent’s handgun stops her.
“Stay back,” she says in a level tone. “Don’t touch her.”
I turn to the agent. “Can we have a few minutes alone?”
The agent gives me an incredulous look. “You want to be alone with her?”
“Yeah. Nothing I can’t handle.”
She shrugs and gets up, closing the door behind her. Coco lunges toward me, and I grab her shoulders, pushing her back against the bedroom wall.
“You listen to me,” I say sharply. “I’m here to get you, but I could just as easily leave you here a few more days. Don’t piss me off.”
Her eyes narrow. “Don’t piss you off? I’m gonna fucking kill you as soon as I get my hands on you.”
“You’ll never get your hands on me, you freeloading, dumbass wannabe.”
She kicks me in the shin, and it fucking hurts. I give her a knee to the stomach to shove her back against the wall.
“Bitch,” she says in a wheezing tone, still trying to suck air into her lungs.
“Tramp,” I say in her face.
“How the hell would you know? Did Nix say that about me?”
I don’t like her, but her crushed expression gets me all the same.
“No. Quite the opposite. Nix is the reason you’re going free.”
Her eyes light up. “He bailed me out?”
I shake my head. “No, he made a deal.”
The light fades from her eyes. “A deal? With who? The Feds? You’re an FBI agent, aren’t you? You fucked him over.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “No, Coco, you fucked him over. By using the computer he gave you to clean out someone’s bank account, you opened up his network, and now he’s in a world of trouble.”
She cringes, tears shining in her eyes. “No. Shit, no. I’d never…” The tears spill onto her cheeks, and I notice the dark circles under her eyes for the first time.
“It’s already done,” I say.
“No. Tell him no. I don’t want him to make a deal for me. I’ll take the consequences, whatever they are.”
I feel her slouching, and I relax my hold on her.
“What were you thinking?” I ask softly.
“I’m not explaining shit to you. I want my phone so I can call Nix. I get a phone call, don’t I?”
“No, because you’re not under arrest. You’re in protective custody.”
She wipes the tears from her cheeks. “You’re a real cunt, Eva. Or whatever your name is. You think you’re saving the world or something?”
“Hardly. I work to keep illegal guns and drugs off the streets. White-collar crime isn’t usually my bag, but when it’s funding drugs and guns, we cut off the cash supply.”
She laughs lightly and rolls her eyes. “Drugs and guns? You think that’s what you’re fighting here? You’re not just a cunt, you’re a dumb cunt.”
I take two fistfuls of her shirt and slam her against the wall again. “Watch it, Caroline.”
“Don’t fucking call me that.”
“You don’t make the rules here. I do. Your stupid little stunt ruined everything between Nix and me.”
“Ruined what? We were just an undercover assignment to you, clearly.”
I’m about to boil over as I lean closer to her. “Don’t give yourself that kind of credit, dipshit. He was an assignment, but my feelings for him were real. I would have protected him.”
Coco scowls with disgust. “Like you really have that sort of power?”
“I would have done everything possible.”
“So you’re the FBI agent who was double-crossing him, but this is all my fault?”
“Nix’s current situation is all your fault, yes.”
Her eyes gleam. “Does he see it that way?”
“No. For whatever reason, he wants to save your miserable ass. He cares about you very much.”
“Bet you’d like to know what that feels like.”
I’ve never wanted to lash out at someone so much in my life. I want to punch Coco square in the jaw and then drop her to
the floor. The urge is so powerful I have to take a couple steps back to stop myself.
“Yeah, I’m hurt,” I say, my voice shaking. “I’m sure you think I deserve it.”
“You deserve so much more.” Her tone is icy. “You have no fucking clue what you’re doing.”
“We don’t operate on suspicion, Coco. Nix has stolen a lot of money. You may not know that side of him—”
“Oh, I know it. I know him better than anyone. I wanted to do what he does, but…” She clears her throat, her voice thick with emotion. “But I was stupid, and I blew it.”
“You wanted to become a thief? Live a life funded entirely by stolen money?”
She shakes her head. “He doesn’t spend a dime of that money on himself. He makes a very nice living for himself with legitimate jobs.”
I just stare at her for a second, knowing somehow that she’s telling the truth. I’m not sure this woman could lie if she wanted to. There’s a raw honesty to her that would be hard to hide.
“I thought you smart FBI fucks knew it all,” she says bitterly. “But you don’t know shit. You say you don’t operate on suspicion, but I guarantee you’ve got nothing concrete on him.”
“He stole the money!” I say, louder than I intended.
Nix is a bad guy. A very bad guy. He has to be, because good people don’t see the inside of the Loft basement.
“Yeah, he did,” Coco concedes. She walks away from the wall and sits back down on the bed. “But then what?” She glares at me. “What’s your real fucking name, anyway?”
I sigh softly. “I’m not supposed to tell you that.”
“Well, if Nix knows it—”
“It’s Kennedy. And what do you mean by then what?”
She crosses her legs, running her fingers over the end of a lock of her dark hair. “Nix started out lifting money that no one ever noticed was missing. He wrote a computer program that added bank charges to rich people’s accounts. Ten bucks here, fifty bucks there—times a lot of rich pricks, and the money adds up quick.”
I sit down on the end of the bed, my anger fading away. Coco really does know Nix, and she idolizes him. I can’t help but acknowledge we have something in common.
“So he started as a black hat,” she continues, using the terminology for a hacker who uses his abilities for destruction or personal gain. “And then, after he’d banked a shitload of cash off that scam, he went to the banks and told them he’d found vulnerabilities in their programs, and he got paid another shitload of cash by them to fix the hole he’d used to bag the money.”
“Look,” I say, meeting her gaze across the bed, “I get that that doesn’t make him a bad guy, but—”
“Let me finish, would you?”
I sigh heavily. “Go ahead.”
“So working for the good guys—the banks—he became a white hat. And after that, he had job offers from all over the place. Lots of money. He took some of them, but he wasn’t happy. He wanted to go back to where he started. So he did, and he got…bolder. Started swiping big money from the filthy rich and routing it through so many bank accounts that no one could figure out what happened to it.”
I nod, knowing that Nix can probably do most anything he puts his mind to. He’s smart, but also savvy. Together, it’s a powerful combination. He could do so much good working for the government.
“So why doesn’t he have a fucking yacht or something?” Coco studies me as she speaks. “Because God knows I’d be living on that thing if he did. Why would a guy with hundreds of millions stay in the game and risk getting caught?”
I shrug. “Criminals stay active when they don’t have to for the thrill of it all the time, Coco. The possibility of getting caught is an adrenaline rush for some people.”
“Not Nix.”
I exhale deeply and arch my brows at her. “If you have a point, can you get to it, please?”
She scoffs. “Okay, why don’t we just go, then? I don’t have to tell you any of this. Nix will probably be pissed at me for it anyway.”
“Then why bother? Why risk making him mad just to tell me something?”
She gives me the unfriendliest smile I’ve ever seen. “Because I want to see the look on your face when you find out the truth.”
“What truth?” I lean forward, my tone begging her to just say it already. “What is it, Coco?”
“If you dumb pricks could find the money Nix took, you wouldn’t find it in his bank account.”
“Where, then? Did he bury it somewhere?” I throw my hands up in the air.
“It’s with all the people who had no insurance when their house burned down. With people who couldn’t afford organ transplants. Places in Third World countries that didn’t have clean water.”
I’ve stopped breathing. I’m just staring at Coco, shock not even close to describing how I feel.
“He…gives it away?”
“To people who need it. It kills him that some people don’t have food and other people have a bunch of vacation homes and fucking helicopters and shit they don’t even need.”
“He gives it away.” It’s not a question this time, and a tear slides down my cheek as it sinks in.
Coco nods. “He was reading the news online one day, and some rich suit was saying inner-city kids will always be behind private school kids. And the next week, several big public school districts got anonymous gifts to buy computers and supplies for every single kid in their schools. All of ’em.”
“And that was…?”
She shrugs and looks at the wall. “This place is probably bugged, so I’ll let you connect the dots.”
“Shit,” I say softly.
“Yeah. He’s a gray hat. Maybe some of the stuff he does isn’t right, but…I’m proud of him.”
“I can understand why.” I lock eyes with her. “Listen, I promise you I’ll do right by him. As much as I possibly can. I hate what’s happening.”
I can’t hold back the tears anymore, and I furiously wipe them away from my cheeks as they fall.
“I never liked you,” Coco says.
“I never liked you either.”
“And even now…I still don’t like you.”
I sniffle. “Same.”
“But I liked how happy he was with you. I’ve never seen him like that.”
I close my eyes. “I was happy, too.”
“He’s probably done with both of us.” She draws her knees up to her chest and rests her chin on them.
“Not you,” I say softly. “Just me. You mean more to him than anyone.”
“He probably just saved me ’cause I’m a screw-up and saving me is what he does.”
“No. Let me take you over to his place. I know he wants to see you.”
Her expression brightens. “You think so?”
I nod. “Yeah. You’re gonna be okay, Coco.”
“Is he?”
“I think so. He doesn’t have to go to jail or anything.”
She lets out a deep breath and gets up from the bed.
“The only one who won’t be okay is me,” I say softly.
“Maybe you’ll get a medal or some shit like that,” she says snidely.
I glare at her and put a hand on the handgun holstered on my waist. “Let’s go. And if you could not talk during the ride there, that would be great.”
24
Phoenix
“Nix!”
I head toward the foyer as soon as I hear Coco’s voice, but I’m stopped in my tracks as soon as my eyes lock with Kennedy’s. The love I felt for her is gone. It’s been replaced by something stronger and darker, but there’s no softness anymore. Betrayal has a way of changing things. The fact that she had me under her thumb legally didn’t shift my feelings; it’s that she used Coco to get to me.
“Hey,” Coco says and walks toward me, stepping into my line of sight, cutting off my view of Kennedy.
“It’s nice to have you home,” I tell her and wrap her in my arms, but I keep my glare pinned on Kenned
y.
She’s watching us, her gaze focused and intense. “We need to talk,” Kennedy says before I have a chance to let go of Coco.
“There’s nothing to talk about.” My tone is icy but even.
Coco pulls away and stares up at me with the saddest eyes. “I’m sorry I fucked everything up.” Her arm is still hooked around my back as tears begin to cascade down her cheeks. “I’m entirely to blame for this, Nix.”
“Shh, Coco.” I wipe away her fallen tears with the backs of my fingers and speak softly. “You’re the last person I blame for what happened.”
First, I blame myself for being the dumbest fuck in the world. I’ve known Coco long enough to know when it’s right to tell her no, but I caved to her whim. I figured she’d get bored after a couple weeks and the topic would be dropped forever. Second, I blame Kennedy. Even though she was only doing her job. There’s no explanation needed when it comes to all the ways she’s done me wrong. If she loved me, truly loved me like she said…she could’ve come clean. I would’ve forgiven her for the deceit. I would’ve found a way to be with her.
But the lies…they undid us.
“Are you hungry?” I ask Coco because I’m sure they didn’t care for her while she was detained.
She shakes her head and steps back into my embrace, resting her head on my chest. “I just need some sleep.” My arm tightens around her. I’ve spent so many years trying to protect Coco from my world, and now it’s come crashing down on her. “Are you going to be okay if I leave you with her?”
I kiss the top of her head and glance at Kennedy. She’s standing with feet planted wide, arms crossed in front of her chest, and one shoulder dropped with her head cocked. Clearly, she’s pissed off, but it’s not my issue anymore.
“I’ll be fine, love. She’s not staying.”
Kennedy glares at me, but she keeps her mouth shut.
“Okay,” Coco says, yawning as she untangles herself from me. “Can I stay in my room tonight?”
“Always. You know you’re always welcome here. This is our home.”
