Cruel Paradise

26

Except he told me to call him by a different name than the one everyone else calls him, and he’s done the opposite of everything I’ve expected him to do up to this point, so I really have no idea who he is at all. Or what he is, except a notorious gangster.

“I didn’t say who, lass. I said what.”

Whatever the hell he meant by that is just one more question to add to the growing pile.

Max says, “So when are you seeing him again?”

I reach into my pocket and run my finger along the edge of his little white card. “Hopefully, never. Change of subject: you ditched your burner phones, right?”

“Yes, we got rid of the burner phones.”

“Good. And you’re at your alternate safe spots? You weren’t followed? No one knows where to find you?”

Max answers with exaggerated patience. “That is correct,

Sister Neurosis of the Immaculate Order of High Anxiety.” “You act like I’m being unreasonable.”

After a weighted pause, Max says, “Did it ever occur to you that all this stuff we do to try to make amends for being who we are is a total waste of time? That if we really wanted to make a difference in the world, all it would take would be for each of us to put a bullet in our fathers’ brains?”

I blink in surprise. “Wow. The conversation has taken a dark turn.”

Her voice grows hard. “We could save countless lives by doing that, Jules. We could end so much suffering. But instead, we’re playing at being these underdog heroes who do the wrong thing for the right reasons. Or the right thing for the wrong reasons, I don’t f*****g know.”

“Max—”

“My dad is one of the worst drug traffickers in the northern hemisphere. Fin’s dad sells weapons to whichever global anarchist or authoritarian hungry for power who’ll pay the most. Yours makes Michael Corleone look like a crybaby.”

I listen to her breathe hard for a moment before saying, “What’s your point?”

“When the three of us met at school when we were thirteen, that was fate. It was fate that we made a pact to help people instead of turning into what our genes and our childhoods had in store for us. It was fate that out of all the people in the entire world, you chose Liam Black to target for a job.”

“Or maybe it was sheer stupidity.”

She ignores me. “And it was fate that he let you go not once, but twice.”

I crinkle my brow in confusion. “I’m not sure I follow.”

“You influenced him.”

She lets it sink in for a moment before continuing. “He didn’t hurt you. He wasn’t even angry about what you’d done. He followed you, and made smoldery bedroom eyes at you, and gave you his word you’d be safe with him, and kept his word by not using you in one of the million different ways a man like him could use a woman.”

This time her pause is longer. “Imagine if our mothers could’ve had any influence over our fathers. Imagine how much different so many people’s lives might have been.”

“Question: what have you been smoking?”

“Nothing.”

“Really? Because it sounds like you’re suggesting I should attempt to have some kind of influence over Killian Black’s evil empire.”

“I am. Wait—who’s Killian?”

I pinch the bridge of my nose between my fingers and close my eyes. “Smoldery isn’t a word.”

Max’s voice drips sarcasm. “Oh, look, another random change of subject. Could it be because you don’t want to explain to the smarter of your two best friends that you’re hiding something about the hot criminal you keep pretending not to like?”

“I don’t like him,” I say between clenched teeth.

“Sure. And I’m Brad Pitt.”

“Nice to meet you, Brad. You’re so much more irritating in person.”

“I’m going to say something now. You’re not gonna like it.”

“Keeping in line with the general theme of the conversation.”

“If you can influence him to stop him from doing something bad, even one thing, you have an obligation to do it.”

I open my eyes and stare at the wall. “You’re right. I didn’t like it.”

We sit in tense silence for a while, unbroken only by the distant sounds of traffic drifting up from the street below. Then, trying to sound reasonable, Max says, “I’m not suggesting you should sleep with him.”

“Good, because my v****a is all out of the magic pixie dust that makes bad men do good things.”

“You don’t give yourself enough credit.”

“Oh, for god’s sake. Moving on. Have you seen anything on the news about the gunfight? I’ve been passed out since this morning.”

“Gunfight? What gunfight?”

“The one I was in after I left you guys at the Poison Pen.” Silence.

“The one where like ten dead bodies were littering Birchland Avenue?”

“I’ve read two papers front to back today, I’ve watched the news, and I’ve been on the internet. There’s been nothing about a gunfight.”

Is he that powerful that he can keep a m******e off the news? I don’t think my father could even manage that.

“Hello? Anybody home?”

“Still here. Just thinking.”

“I know. I can smell the struggle. So this gunfight you were in. Spill.”

“Um. Some guys tried to kill us. Me. Well, I’m not exactly sure which one of us they were after, but Ki—Liam said he thought it was me. He said they were enemies of my father, which I didn’t think to clarify what exactly he meant by that because at the time he was carrying me. Which. You know. Is disorienting.”