Page 11 of Jagger's Remorse
This isn't a debt collection. This is a chess move.
And I'm just now realizing I've been playing on her board all along.
My room is at the back of the compound, separated from the others.
VP privileges—privacy for the wet work confessions and the screams that follow me home.
I shove her inside, lock the door behind us.
She surveys the space like a general studying a battlefield.
Takes in the weapons mounted on the walls.
The reinforced door. The barred windows. The bed with its metal frame, perfect for restraints.
"Cozy," she murmurs. "Very serial killer chic."
"Sit." She perches on the edge of my bed like she owns it.
Like she's not a prisoner who was just bartered for a debt.
Like she's exactly where she planned to be.
"So," she says conversationally, "how do you want to do this? Should I beg prettily for my life? Cry about my dead daddy? Or should we skip to the part where you chain me up and pretend you're not hard thinking about it?"
I backhand her.
Not hard enough to knock her off the bed, but enough to split her lip fresh.
She touches the blood with her tongue and smiles.
"There he is. There's the monster who kills fathers in front of their daughters."
"You havenoidea what kind of monster I am."
"Don't I?" She spreads her legs slightly, a challenge in every line of her body. "Jackson Reid. Former Marine, Force Recon. Two tours in Afghanistan. Got your St. Michael pendant from your mother before your first deployment. She died while you were overseas—cancer—and you couldn't make it back for the funeral. You've been trying to make up for it ever since."
My hand is around her throat before I realize I've moved. "How?—"
"I knoweverythingabout you."
Her pulse flutters under my palm like a trapped bird. "Every job you've done. Every man you've killed. Every Sunday, you sit in the back of St. Augustine's trying to find the words to confess but never speaking. Every nightmare that wakes you at night."
"You've been watching me."
"For five years." She leans into my grip, cutting off her own air. "Every day since you murdered my father, I've studied you. Learned you. Prepared for you."
I release her, stepping back. "Then you know what I'm capable of."
"I'm counting on it." She rubs her throat, my handprint already blooming purple. "Question is, do you know what I'm capable of?"
"You're a college girl trying to play with revenge."
She laughs again, that broken glass sound. "Oh, Jagger. You beautiful, stupid man."
She stands, moving into my space. "I graduated, actually. Top of my class. Could have gone to any law school in the country. Instead, I went home to Culiacán. Do you know whatthey do to girls who want to learn the family business down there?"
"I don't?—"
