My job isn’t to fuck up his life. My job is to find out whose life needs to be fucked up.

Which is exactly why I’m here.

“He’s in the stockroom,” the husband says. He keeps a stern expression while he stands next to his wife. I appreciate his tenacity.

Giving them both a head nod, I walk toward the back of the store. As promised, Mateo is there, unboxing a case of ceramic mugs and putting little price labels on the bottom. He doesn’t hear me come in because his bluetooth headphones are so loud, I can hear Machine Gun Kelly shouting in his ear.

I tap him on the shoulder, and he nearly jumps out of his skin when he turns and sees me standing there.

Putting my hands up, I give him a small grin before pulling those earbuds out of his ears. “You know, if your aunt was up there getting robbed, you wouldn’t be much help.”

He spins and looks toward the front, then back at me. “I’m sorry.”

I laugh. “Calm down, kid. You’re not in trouble. How are you holding up?”

He shrugs. Mateo is the kind of kid who tries to look tougher than he is, not because he wants to but because he has to. It’s a constant defense mechanism put in place to keep people a little afraid of how bad you could crack under pressure. Deep down, he’s a decent kid, put in a shitty situation, with little to no options.

I get it because I was this exact kid. Cornered, terrified, and desperate.

Everything is out of your control, so you control what you can. That’s what Mateo is doing now. He’s only sixteen, and I’ve seen his record. He’s got almost straight As at his school, and when I called around, his teachers raved about him. He doesn’t deal drugs on the street because he’s a criminal. He did it because it was his only choice.

And I’d rather spend every day of my job figuring out who put him in that spot before I arrest him again.

“I’m not going to ask you any more questions,” I say, then glance up at him. “Unless you have anything you want to say.”

He shakes his head.

“Fine. I’m stopping in to remind you that if you want to say something, I can keep you and your family safe. I’ve taken down other dealers in Wicked and I kept the girl who spoke up safe.”

Mateo nods at me, I try to relax, sitting on a box next to him. “You came all the way down here to tell me that?” he says.

“Yeah, that and I’m just really bored at work.”

He laughs. I pick up a mug from the shelf he’s loading them on, and I laugh.

Let’s get Wicked. One of the less gimmicky styles, it’s printed in black typeface on a white mug. I like it, and even I see the irony in that.