He didn’t wait for me to respond. Instead, he rolled the car away, not moving quickly, holding up a hand out of the window in a parting goodbye. I breathed a sigh of relief, glancing quickly back up at the office. No Jackal silhouette, no telltale retreat from the window. I’d bought myself some time.

But only a very little bit. MacLeish had been friendly enough, hadn’t threatened me or even Lou. A simple request still. But then, it had only been a few days. It wouldn’t be long before the courtesies were replaced by something brassier. I had to fix it all, pay the bribe money back, before it ever came to that.

There would be no second chances this time. Because this was the second chance.

I’d almost toppled her empire once before.

If Lou’s and my little extracurricular excursion to pay back the Asshole had ended there, the two of us pressed cheek to cheek against the laminate wood of his boss’s door listening to him beg for help that wouldn’t come, my life would have been different. But then again, I might also have been an Ellen—a girl looking for a quick buck, an adventure, simply passing through the Lady’s enterprise on my way back to the straight and narrow. It could have so easily been that, if he hadn’t heard us. If he hadn’t found me.

But we must have been louder than I’d realized. Two days later, he was pounding down the front door of my soon-to-be-former apartment, yelling that if I didn’t let him in right the fuck now, he’d call the police on me and my little friend and whatever grifter game we had running.

“You think I don’t know the sound of your voice? You think I don’t remember the sound of your laughter?” the Asshole said, nearly cross-eyed with anger, slamming his fist into my Formica countertops.

It was, hands down, the most romantic thing he’d ever said to me.