23. Michael
Michael
Fucking Donnelly. He should’ve kept his mouth shut. He should’ve passed the inspection on day one, taken the money, and gone back to his nice, quiet life.
Men like Donnelly aren’t supposed to end up at the bottom of lakes.
Scared city inspectors are supposed to cash checks, look the other way, and live long enough to retire somewhere warm.
That’s how this works. Quiet men live. Useful men get rich.
Men who become problems disappear. Donnelly was never supposed to become a problem.
I stare up at the dark ceiling while Katie curls closer against my chest, her fingers absently tracing across my stomach. Her curls brush my jaw every time she shifts against me, warm and comfortable in a way my life never is.
In Katie’s world, men worry about office emails and late shipments.
In mine, city inspectors disappear from their homes and wash up dead three days later because they said the wrong thing to the wrong person.
And fuck, the worst part is that my first thought isn’t about Donnelly floating at the bottom of a lake.
The Harbor Street issue was supposed to be handled quietly.
Donnelly gets paid, the inspection passes, construction moves forward, and everybody keeps breathing.
Instead, someone turns a nervous city inspector into a message.
That means somebody’s pushing. Somebody wants my attention badly enough to start making noise in my city.
“What kind of job has people calling you this late on a Sunday?” Katie asks softly.
“Katie.” I scoot a little closer to her. “There are shipments scheduled to come in tomorrow at the docks. They got delayed. My shipping manager called Marco, and he knew I’d want a heads-up.”
The lie slides out smoothly. It comes so naturally now that I barely even think about it before the words leave my mouth. That should probably concern me more than it does.
“Don’t you have people for that?” she asks.
I almost laugh at the question. I’ve got entire crews for things like this.
Men who move millions through ports before sunrise.
Men who clean up problems before the police even realize there’s a problem to solve.
Men who’d kill for me without hesitation if I gave the order, and somehow the thing making me tense right now is the blue eyed brunette staring at me suspiciously in the dark.
“I do,” I say. “I’m not sure if you’ve picked up on this yet, but I’m a bit of a control freak.”
She fights the smile, but I still catch it. Relief hits me immediately, and the feeling is ugly enough to make my stomach tighten because if she’s smiling, she’s not asking questions. If she’s smiling, she isn’t looking too closely at the parts of my life I keep hidden.
“You want to go to bed now?” I ask. “We both have to be up in five hours.”
She nods, so I lie back and open my arm for her. She watches me for a second before moving closer and settling against my chest again. My arm wraps around her automatically.
“Goodnight, Katie.”
She pushes herself up suddenly, her eyes searching my face in the darkness.
“You okay?” She asks.
A rough laugh almost leaves me. A man’s dead. Somebody dumped his body in a lake inside my territory, and there’s a very good chance the person responsible is sitting somewhere waiting to see how I respond to it. But none of that is what comes out of my mouth.
“Yeah,” I tell her calmly. “I’m fine.”
She studies me for another second before leaning in and pressing a quick kiss to my mouth. Then she settles back against me again, trusting me completely.
I stare up at the ceiling with my jaw tight enough to ache. This isn’t going to last.
Sooner or later she’s going to learn what I actually am. Not the suits, the cars, or the expensive dinners. She’s going to learn about the blood underneath all of it. She’s going to learn that men disappear in my world all the time, and that sometimes I’m the reason they disappear.
She should run when she finds out. Any sane woman would, but if I can keep her here long enough to fall in love with me first, then maybe she won’t be able to walk away when the truth finally catches up to us. That thought is so fucked up it leaves me staring at the ceiling in disgust.