The world is full of my kind. Check your top CEOs and entrepreneurs. Chances are, they’re a psychopath. They’re at the top because they have little empathy for others to hold them back.

I shove the annoying thought away and focus on my task at hand. Collecting a nice-sized bounty from Rochelle. I require it for the next stage. Time to find a figurative magnifying glass, one with a blistering beam that I can aim right at the bully Ericson.

Target

Blakely

“You’re far too pretty to be so sullen all the time.” Rochelle sighs and shakes her head. Silky gray-white layers shimmer in the florescent lighting as she passes me on her way to a bank of laptops.

“That’s sexist,” I say. “Besides, this is a sullen kind of career. I doubt you’d want a smiley, bubbly blonde with rainbows and happy faces all over her business card to exact retribution for you.”

Hunched over a laptop screen, she pauses her task to look up. Her skin is like wax. Any wrinkles her fifty-five years may have produced have been ironed away with repeated face lifts. “Good point, killer.” With a wink, she returns her focus to the screen.

“I’m not a killer.” This job comes with a list of rules—rules I made up, of course—but ones I felt needed to be established for my clients’ sake to make things perfectly clear. No killing is rule number one. I’m not a hitman, or hitperson, whatever the politically correct term may be.

While Rochelle is jacked into her work, I glance around the room, taking in the upgrades. All new sheetrock and stainless steel. White Mac computers line a workstation central to the room like a kitchen island. As cold as Rochelle herself. She’s the Martha of the fashion world.

She owns this renovated, three-story building on a prime real-estate corner of the city. It’s sleek and industrial. She’s only been in the business for three years, yet she’s climbed the ranks to be one of the top labels in the industry—Dirty Laundry—a new trend that didn’t go out of style.

And she did so with her ex-husband’s money and a work ethic that rivals my own. Oh, and also smiting anyone who dares to compete against her. She might also have a slight god complex.

Rochelle waves me over. “Come here, honey. Come look at this little bitch.” She points to a young, trendy woman on the screen. “How does she think she’ll get away with this?”

I raise an eyebrow. “Am I supposed to notice something?”

She clucks her tongue. “Really, Blakely. After all these years together, you’ve learned nothing from me. Such a disappointment to your own gender.”

“Rochelle…”