Chapter 10 #2
Maybe Max thought his threats would work, make her straighten up, but they wouldn’t. People like Valentina, like my foster mother, they didn’t change because they felt guilty or afraid. They didn’t even change when they lost everything. Hell, sometimes they didn’t change at all.
I shouldn’t have cared either way, but watching her now, trying to hide behind her lies, made my chest burn with quiet anger. Anger at her for being exactly like every other drunk I’d ever met. Anger at myself for being stupid enough to have thought, even for a second, she might be different.
I leaned back in my chair and waited for her to disappoint everyone else the way she’d already disappointed herself.
“It doesn’t matter,” Max said, cutting her off again. “That chip? The one you desperately fought for? It’s progressional.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You get one hundred thousand dollars for each additional thirty days you’re clean,” he explained. “Not every on-and-off month. What’s the point of rewarding you for the bare minimum? And now you’ve messed up, you’re going to have to start over.”
She wasn’t sure how to respond, but with the burn in her stare, it looked like she wanted to throw something particularly heavy at him.
Max continued. “And since you clearly can’t do this on your own, I’ll have someone stay with you to hold you accountable.”
“No.” She didn’t stutter. “You can’t do that.”
“I can,” Max said. “And I will.”
There it was—the unmovable object that was Max.
“What do you expect, Max? What the hell am I supposed to do?” she complained. “Live with some stranger? Someone you picked to babysit me because you think I can’t handle my own life?”
“Yes.”
Finally, she let out a sharp breath and took a step back. “You’re unbelievable,” she muttered. “Both of you.”
I wasn’t sure why she’d included me in that. I hadn’t said a word. Not to her, not to Max. I’d just been sitting there watching the whole thing play out like the passive observer I was supposed to be.
When the glass door shut behind her, Max leaned back in his chair and let out an annoyed sigh, already dismissing her from his mind. I wished I could do the same.
She was a mess. Self-inflicted, careless, stubbornly determined to sabotage herself—buying wine knowing exactly what it would cost her, letting Sebastian Callahan, of all people, walk out of her apartment as if it were nothing. She made bad choices, and she made them loudly. Recklessly.
And yes, I judged her for it. But beneath the judgment sat something else. Something uncomfortable. Something deeper than irritation. Something I didn’t like to look at too closely.
Maybe it was because her recklessness reminded me of truths I’d rather forget.
Valentina made it easy to point fingers; easy to blame.
But if I slowed down for long enough, I’d have to admit that maybe the blame wasn’t entirely hers.
The choices may have been, but something—or someone—always set the wheels in motion.
And sitting here now, watching her stumble toward disaster, I knew that someone might’ve been me.
I wasn’t ready to admit that though. It was simpler to label her as another inevitable catastrophe; to believe I was innocent because I’d done exactly what I’d been ordered to do, no questions, no hesitation.
Still, the feeling settled heavily in my chest. Not pity. Not guilt, exactly. Just quiet acknowledgment that my hands weren’t clean. She could flip me off and blame me all she wanted, and I’d keep my mouth shut, my head down, and pretend I was just an impartial observer.
Max didn’t say anything to me after Valentina left, and I didn’t say anything to him. There was nothing to say. This was business as usual.
But his mind probably didn’t linger like mine did. Max compartmentalized well. Probably too well. He could brush off anger, desperation, and chaos as if they were nothing more than background noise. And maybe to him they were.
But for some reason, Valentina was harder for me to shake off.
She was stubbornly determined to push herself right to the edge, and part of me hoped she’d burn out quickly, before Max could finish pulling whatever strings he had in play.
Because if she didn’t, if she managed to drag this out, I knew exactly who’d get stuck cleaning up the aftermath.
Me.
The Callahans weren’t people I planned on dealing with again. Not after the last job—not after everything I’d buried. Yet here she was, dragging me right back into the mess I’d worked so damn hard to escape.
Her face was burned into my memory. I told myself the reason she got under my skin was because her story was predictable, frustratingly obvious, and it irritated the hell out of me to watch someone run straight into destruction without even bothering to slow down.
But maybe the real irritation was simpler. Maybe it bothered me because I cared more than I had any right to admit.
“Do you think you’re being too hard on her?” I asked.
Max didn’t spare me a glance. “No.”
“Hmm. It just seems like there’s an easier way to handle this.”
“Like what?” he asked, finally glancing in my direction.
“Rehab,” I suggested. “She’s clearly not managing on her own. Put her somewhere with structure. Somewhere she can focus and get her shit together without you breathing down her neck.”
“She’d go crazy in rehab.”
“Maybe she needs to,” I said, not entirely joking.
“She wouldn’t last a week. And even if she did, it wouldn’t solve the problem.”
“What problem?”
“The problem is, Valentina doesn’t want to be fixed. She doesn’t want structure. She wants chaos. She thrives in it, and she’ll drag everyone around her into it if it means she doesn’t have to face herself. And I can’t have that problem. Especially with Sebastian.”
The name “Sebastian” was starting to grate on my nerves.
“So having someone with her twenty-four seven is your answer?”
“Mikhail knows someone who can deal with alcoholics. He’ll be in charge of her. I have better things to take care of.”
Better things.
Of course he did.
I ran a finger along the edge of the file in front of me. “Mikhail’s contact—what exactly does he do?”
“He keeps people in line.”
Friends of Mikhail’s weren’t known for their soft touch. They were the kind of men you called when things needed to be dealt with quietly and permanently. And “keeping people in line” was just a polite way of saying they didn’t leave loose ends.
“Seems a little extreme, don’t you think?”
“She complicates things. Her involvement with the Callahans puts her in their circle, and that puts her in mine. She’s unpredictable, emotional, and desperate. You know what that means.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to. Max was right. But still.
“So you use her sick mother against her?”
Max’s jaw tightened slightly. “I do what I have to do to keep my family safe.”
Family. Of course he’d play that card. And maybe he was right. Hell, I’d made the same kind of choices plenty of times before. Justifications came easy when you believed you were doing things for the right reasons.
But watching Max now, hearing the casual way he justified using Valentina’s weakest spot against her, made something twist uncomfortably in my chest.
“You think this is easy for me? You think I enjoy holding her life together while she tears it apart? She has one job,” Max continued.
“One. To stay sober, keep her head down, and let me fix the mess her husband left behind. But instead, she fights me at every turn. If it were anyone else, I would’ve walked away a long time ago. ”
“Any why haven’t you?”
“Because she’s family in a way.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk. “And she doesn’t have anyone else.”
I nodded slowly. “Good luck with that,” I muttered, more to myself than to him.
Max didn’t respond, and I didn’t press. He had his plan, and I wasn’t in the business of changing his mind.
As I left the office, the thought lingered.
Valentina didn’t have anyone else.
That much was obvious. She burned through people the way she burned through everything else: fast and without thinking about the mess she left behind.
The Callahans, Max, and possibly her own family—she pushed them all to their limits, daring them to stick around long enough to regret it. But maybe that was the point. Maybe she wanted them to leave. Maybe she wanted to prove to herself she really was as alone as she thought.
Some people burned bright, and some people just burned.