Chapter 15
Fifteen
Adena
This isn't happening. This can't be happening.
But it is.
I want to stab Jagger with my fork for agreeing.
But I can't.
So I sit there, smiling, nodding, playing the part of the delighted girlfriend who just got proposed to in the most unromantic way possible.
“To Jagger and Adena,” Marquez raises his glass.
I lift my champagne to my lips but can’t bring myself to swallow.
Valentina leans forward, eyes bright with satisfaction. “We’ll have to throw you a party when you get back. Celebrate properly.”
“That’s generous,” I hear myself say. The words come from somewhere outside my body, like this is happening to someone else.
Ortega grins. “Vegas weddings. Quick and easy. How I like things.”
I keep my pageant smile on, barely listening as more drinks flow and the conversation swirls around me. Toasts. Laughter. Plans for Vegas that sound more like a prison sentence than a celebration.
Every minute feels like drowning in slow motion.
This goes beyond duty. Beyond anything I could have imagined.
Finally, Marquez signals to the waiter. He doesn't pay—just stands, and the staff moves like he owns the air they breathe. He makes a production of telling Ortega he's in charge of everything tonight. The club. The people in it. All of it.
A reminder of power. Control.
We follow them out into the humid New Orleans night. Marquez's hand rests possessively on Valentina's lower back like a brand of ownership. Ortega stumbles slightly on the curb, drunk, while Valentina's smile is sharp-edged and triumphant.
The valet brings the Audi around, and Jagger opens my door.
"Take me to Tommy's grave," I say.
He stops mid-motion, his hand still on the door frame. He doesn't argue, just says goodnight to everyone, pulls out into the street, and drives.
The silence in the car is suffocating. I stare out the window at the blur of neon signs and wrought-iron balconies, the distant thump of bass from open bar doors, the tourists laughing on street corners. Neither of us looks at the other.
The cemetery gates are locked when we arrive—chain wrapped through iron, padlock heavy and old. But nothing is stopping me now we're here. I might need to yell, and no shower will cover that.
I'm out of the car before he's even cut the engine. I hitch the dress up, find a foothold, and pull myself over. The fabric tears—a long rip up the side—and I feel it give way with savage satisfaction.
Tombstones rise around me in the dark—white marble and crumbling stone, names worn away by time and weather. Spanish moss hangs heavy from the live oaks, swaying in the humid breeze. Thunder rumbles somewhere far off. The city of the dead. Jagger may well join them if I don't get control of myself.
I stop in front of Tommy's grave and try to gather my thoughts into something reasonable.
But there's nothing reasonable about any of this.
"I had no choice," he says behind me.
A rip of laughter erupts from my throat. "No choice? How about saying no? Or 'let me talk to Adena about it'? Or literally anything except 'sure, why not'?"
His jaw works. "We'll work out the legal implications afterward."
My whole body locks up as the realization crashes through me. "Work out what legal implications? The marriage won't be authentic."
His fingers pluck at his collar like it's strangling him. His mouth twists to one side. “They didn’t warn you, did they?”
My stomach drops to the moss beneath me. "Jagger." My voice wavers. "Tell me you're using a fake name."
The silence is answer enough.
"Are you insane?" The words tear out of me, too loud in the quiet cemetery. "You just agreed to marry me—actually marry me—under your legal name?"
"There wasn't another option."
I take a step toward him, close enough now to see the tension carved into every line of his face. "Do you have any idea what you just did?"
"It's just a piece of paper, Adena." His voice is raw. He runs a hand over his face. "We'll get it annulled after—"
"Annulled?" I stare at him like he's lost his mind. Maybe he has. "You think that's how this works? You think God looks at a marriage certificate and says, 'Oh well, they didn't really mean it'?"
"God?" he says. "This isn't about God. This is about staying alive."
"Everything is about God!" My voice breaks. "Marriage is sacred. It's a covenant, not a prop you use!"
"I didn't have a choice—"
"You did have a choice!"
I’m shaking now. I can’t stop. Fury and fear are tangled tight inside me, twisted up with something that feels like grief until I can’t tell them apart. It crowds my chest, raw and suffocating, like I’m already losing something while I’m still standing right here watching it happen.
“You could have said no. You could have bought time. You could have—"
"We're out of time!" The words explode out of him. "I'm barely holding on as it is!"
I step back, stunned into silence. Stunned that he finally said it out loud.
He drags both hands over his face, curses—sharp and vicious. His hands are shaking when he drops them. "Forget it. I'm fine. It'll be fine. I'll find a way out of this. I always do."
But his voice cracks on the last word, a thin, pathetic sound that makes my chest ache. He’s spiraling, and I’m watching the descent in high definition.
The way he says it—I always do—is a prayer, not a fact. It’s the hollow chant of a man trying to convince himself he can still swim while the millstone is already around his neck.
And if he can’t find the surface, we’re both going to sink.
Jagger
We drive back through the Quarter in silence. Rain slicks the streets, turning the lights into streaks of gold and red that bleed and shimmer across the windshield like watercolor bleeding into water.
My hands grip the wheel tighter than necessary because if I loosen my hold I'm afraid of what else might slip.
Adena’s staring out the window, quiet, her profile softened by the glow of passing streetlights. I don't know what she's thinking. Don't know if she's replaying the cemetery—my confession that I'm coming apart—or the club, where I just agreed to marry her in front of a room full of killers.
Maybe both.
By the time we reach my apartment, she's yawning, ready for sleep that won’t come for me.
Inside, she doesn't speak other than to tell me she’s taking a shower, just sets down her bag with careful precision, slips off her heels—one, then the other—and disappears into the bathroom.
The lock doesn’t click this time. Any other time, any other woman, I’d take that as an invitation.
Tonight, I drop onto the couch and stare at the floor until the world narrows to the sound of water and the dull ache behind my ribs. The adrenaline's gone. What's left is shame, thick in my throat, that I confessed something I don't want to face down right now.
I'm losing pieces of myself.
Losing the part of me that used to know where the line was, the part that knew the difference between right and wrong, could walk away from violence and still sleep at night.
I've walked too close to the fire too many times, and now I'm starting to like the feel of the heat.
The chaos. The way my pulse spikes when things go sideways. The rush.
The ability to get what I want.
I rub both hands over my face, trying to push the thought down. It doesn't move.
Doesn't even budge.
The Bible sits on the coffee table. I pick it up just to have something in my hands other than a weapon. I hold onto it and close my eyes, listening to the rain, the shower, and a neighbor downstairs hollering.
The sounds blur together—rain against glass, water through pipes, someone's muffled anger blending through the floorboards. Normal sounds. The kind that used to ground me.
Now they just remind me how far I've drifted.
When Adena comes out, her face is washed free of makeup, her hair is wet, and she's dressed in nothing but her shirt and silk robe.
She eyes me, the Bible, almost walks past me, then surprises me by sitting. Close.
Close enough that when she moves, her bare knee brushes mine.
She leans in and flips the old Bible open to 2 Kings, trails a finger down the thin page, and stops halfway down. Her fingertip taps once, and then she looks at me like she wants me to read it.
After what I did, I don’t hesitate to oblige.
Don't be afraid—those who are with us are more than those who are with them.
She's doing it again, showing me kindness I don’t deserve.
Offering hope I have no right to.
When her fingers slide between mine, I lock onto her. Not just to her goodness—but to the only thing in my life that doesn’t feel like a lie.
Adena
The room is dim, early light filtering through the blinds. Sometime in the night, Jagger wound up holding me in his arms.
I lie there, watching the light catch the scars on his knuckles, feeling the slow, heavy rise and fall of his chest against my back.
I’m supposed to be his partner in a job, not his sanctuary. I’m not supposed to be acting as his shield while the rest of the world waits for him to wake up and be a monster again.
But I am.
Temporarily at least.
His phone explodes on the nightstand, making me jump.
With a curse, he jerks awake, rolling away to grab it before the second ring. "Yeah."
Relieved to escape, I use the moment to slip out, grab my robe, use the bathroom, and head for the kitchen.
By the time the coffee's made, I'm sitting at the table trying not to think about how his arm felt around me—how natural it felt to wake up like that.
He appears in the doorway—jeans, no shirt, bare feet, hair mussed, jaw shadowed with stubble.
He takes the coffee I poured. "Marquez has work for you. Elena's restaurant—she needs the books cleaned before the health inspector shows."
"When?"
"Paco picks you up in twenty."
I take a sip. "I need food."
"Elena's got the best gumbo in the Quarter. She'll feed you." He leans against the counter, cup halfway to his mouth. "You'll be fine."
"And you?"
His jaw tightens. "Ortega. Full tourist experience." The way he says it makes it clear there's nothing tourist about it. "Bourbon Street. Couple clubs. Larry Flynt's."
I set my cup down. "Strip club before lunch. Classy."
"He requested me specifically." His voice is flat.
"I bet he did." The words come out sharper than I intend. "How long?"
"However long it takes to keep him happy." He drains half his coffee. "Could be all day."
Something twists in my chest. I know it's the job. Know he doesn't have a choice. But the thought of him spending twelve hours in clubs where women—
"Sounds like a great time," I say, unable to keep the edge out of my voice.
He looks at me over the rim of his cup. "You jealous?"
"Should I be?"
"It's work, Adena."
"I know." And I do know, but that doesn't stop the feeling sitting heavy in my stomach. "Doesn't mean I like it."
Something shifts in his expression. "I don't either. I’d rather be eating gumbo with you."
The honesty catches me off guard, especially when everything we’re saying is being dissected.
We stare at each other across the kitchen. The silence stretches—loaded with everything we're not saying about last night. The air feels thick, electrified, like the static before a lightning strike.
Finally, he breaks the tension. "I'll pick you up when I'm done with Ortega. We can take the bikes out."
It's an olive branch, a peace offering, an acknowledgment that we both need an hour or two where we're not performing for anyone.
He holds my gaze for a beat, then disappears back into the bedroom.
I drain the rest of my coffee and stand. Twenty minutes until Paco shows up means I need to move.
The bathroom is tiny—barely room for one person, let alone two trying to get ready at the same time. I grab my toothbrush and the Bible I left on the counter last night, flip it open to Psalms while I brush.
The Lord is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear?
The words blur slightly as I read, brush moving mechanically.
The Lord is the stronghold of my life—of whom shall I be afraid?
I hear Jagger moving around in the bedroom. Drawers opening. The closet door. He’s putting on the armor of the man I hate.
When the wicked advance against me to devour me, it is my enemies and my foes who will stumble and fall.
The bathroom door opens, and he walks in—shirt half-buttoned, looking for something.
I step sideways to give him room, but he moves the same direction.
We collide, and for a second we're too close, the Bible pressed between us the only thing separating my heart from his.
"Your bathroom isn’t much bigger," he mutters.
I step back, eyes back on the Bible. He reaches past me for his razor, and I catch the scent of soap and coffee and the subtle aftershave he wears.
Though an army besiege me, my heart will not fear; though war break out against me, even then I will be confident.
I rinse my toothbrush and turn the page.
For in the day of trouble he will keep me safe in his dwelling; he will hide me in the shelter of his sacred tent and set me high upon a rock.
His eyes linger on me then shift to the Bible before he moves past me, shoulder brushing mine in the narrow doorway.
I stand there for a second, heart thumping against my ribcage, nerves already gathering in my middle, and silently pray words I wish I could scream from the rooftops.
Please let there be a way out of this that doesn't end with us saying vows we can't take back.