Page 91 of The Heiress

Or would that make me into the person Hazel accused me of becoming?

Fuck.

Jace grew very still. Calm. His voice was even, rich, and deep. The vibration somehow soothing. “I joined and you left. I felt like I had nothing. No reason to care about anything. I went through my days doing whatever they asked of me. I couldn’t imagine a way forward because there was no path I could conceive of that would eventually lead me back to you. To being a person you’d want to be around.” He took a breath. He squeezed my hand. Let that breath out slowly as he looked me straight in the eyes. “That’s when I got an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.”

Epilogue

Jace

Earlier that night…

Istepped into the bar, surprised it was somehow darker than the twilight outside. At least the smells of the street were now blocked out by the scent of beer and fried foods. I walked right past the bar to the backroom where a dozen square tables were stuffed into a space that anywhere else in the country would have contained six. Tops. Then into an awkward darkened hallway that wasn’t the same level as the other rooms. Everyone else would have turned right to the restrooms.

I turned left and stood still in front of the wall.

Thirty seconds later I heard the lock click. I pushed the wall and the secret door swung open into a concrete and metal room the size of a small closet. Once the door behind me was secured, I keyed in my personal code. The red lights flashed; the panel beeped.

I opened the door.

A woman with thick dark hair smiled up at me from her desk. “Long time no see, Special Agent Malone. Welcome to New York.”

“It’s been what? Five years, Ava?” I glanced around the concrete, remembering the first time I stepped into the field office with Special Agent Steel. It felt like a lifetime ago.

“Six, but who’s counting? Steel is in the conference room.” She waved me back.

The conference room wasn’t a big room with a long table and twenty chairs. It was more like an interrogation room with a table the size of a desk and two chairs. It was a place for agents to meet and nothing more. Steel had boxes and a laptop out, treating it like a temporary office.

“You’ve got to stop yanking me in. Sam’s not stupid. She’s noticing and she’s getting freaked out.” I closed the door and sat down across from Giancarlo Steel. His shiny bald head never seemed to match his shitty suit.

“Things keep changing, Malone. The situation is fluid.” He didn’t look away from the computer screen.

Steel was smart enough to recruit me, a sullen, angry teenager, but he was greedy enough that he was about to make some seriously huge mistakes. The kind that would cost him everything.

I just had to keep him from making me the one who paid the price.

Devil’s Wrath was already on the FBI’s radar when Todd forced me to become a prospect. Steel saw the opportunity. I was smart, I was mad, and I was young. While Todd thought he was bringing me to heel, Steel put me through college. He got me the training I needed to become an agent. Both men thought they owned me.

Both men were wrong.

Very, very wrong.

They each thought they were creating their own personal monster. A tool to use and abuse to create the chaos they needed to achieve their goals. Todd and Steel weren’t all that different in the end. Todd put on black leather and Steel wore a shitty suit, but at the end of the day they were blind and selfish. The only goal that mattered was their own.

They never—not once—stopped to think what might happen if their monster got loose.

How far are you willing to go, Jace?All the way, baby.

“I know what I’m doing,” I said. “I don’t need you following me around like a goddamned puppy dog. Let me do my fucking job.” I knew he wouldn’t. Ever since the Feyereisen’s Dragons raided the house in Key West he’d been up my ass.

“I know you do. You’re one of the best agents I’ve ever trained. But we have an unparalleled opportunity here and the director wants blood.”

God damned greedy fuckers. Every single one of them. “You got the director involved?”

Steel finally looked up, then leaned back in his creaky desk chair. “Once the Roarks became involved? I couldn’t keep it back. We have a chance to bring down Devil’s Wrath, the Feyereisens,andRoark Corp? Malone, you’re in the middle of what will be the FBI’s biggest case in history.”

I was really fucking afraid he was about to say that. “If the Feyereisens are the problem, why go after Roark, too?”Because they can. The answer is always the same: because they can.

Steel stared at me. “Is your personal relationship with the target going to be a problem?”

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