Especially when she’d come to me after the shower as I was combing my hair, smelling her lemon shampoo on me, a twinkle in her eye, and said: “How bad do you hate this guy? Really. Bad enough to get even?”

I hadn’t even hesitated. Of course I hadn’t.

Not two weeks later, Lou was meeting him for drinks, having serendipitously met cute at the bar around the corner from the office where I knew he spent his weekday happy hours. I watched them talk as the happy hours stretched to closing, Lou laughing loud and throaty the way I already liked. One drink multiplied into four, and then she was all over him, kissing the corners of his mouth, squeezing him through his thin pants. I’d laughed out loud from my hiding place outside, I’d been so shocked by what I’d seen and how it made me feel, the pulse between my legs mingling with the power of knowing that together, Lou and I were dangerous.

It didn’t take much convincing on her part to get him back up to the office—I could picture her whispering into his ear, sibilant as a snake, I can’t stand it, I can’t wait, fill me up, please, please—and I followed them, taking the next elevator, getting off on the floor below and creeping up through the internal stairwell, waiting in the dark to hear what Lou said to him, did to him.

When she’d finished her work, leaving the Asshole tied up and naked in his boss’s office—the door bolted from the outside; I still remembered where the keys were—we’d leaned against the door stifling our giggles, Lou in her bra and jeans, as we listened to him cry and plead for her to “fucking end this, you sick bitch, not funny anymore, please, somebody, Jesus Christ!”

Laughed ourselves sick.

We’d thought we were so clever. We’d thought we were invincible that night.

Behind Lou in the bar, a mariachi strummed his guitar, serenading a tourist. “I’m sorry,” Lou said, raising her voice above the music. “That wasn’t fair of me. This week’s hell. There’s been a problem with—” Lou stopped herself, her gaze stony again. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled.

“What? What problem?” Oh God, I thought, the Lady knew about the money. And now Lou knew what I’d done, too.

Lou bit her lip, flicked her fingers against her glass, her nails clacking. “Nothing. Nothing to worry you, anyway.” Before I could ask anything else, she rushed on, “But the worst of it is I feel like . . . I guess I feel like . . . lately you’ve been avoiding me. Did I . . . did I do something?”