by Kira Graham
“I don’t want to ruin your life!” she yells back, belting her robe with a curse and several jerky yanks that make her breasts jiggle. “This will change everything, don’t you see? Say we run off together and become other people. What then? You lose your brothers, Zeus. You lose your parents and the hopes and dreams that I know you have. We won’t ever take our kids to barbecues and teach them to avoid Mom’s slop. We won’t have ballet recitals and report cards that we’ll brag about to our siblings. I won’t get to tell Cleo that my kids are smarter than hers, or compare my stretch marks to hers—and you know that mine will be better; that bitch scars easy! It’ll be just you and me, Z. Just us, cut off from the life that we’ve had in our mind’s eye. I want that life, Zeus. I want competition with the sibs, and I want to tell them that their kids all came out ugly, while ours are perfect. I want your mom to knit booties and feed me baklava till I burst. I don’t want to run off and take that away from you. I want to share it with you, you idiot!” she yells, slapping a hand against my chest when I try to embrace her.
“We can have that—”
“How? How do we get that if I run away now and prove to them all that I’m guilty? Guilty people run, Zeus. They run, and they never stop running. Is that what you want? You told Chilli just yesterday that you saved your old baseball mitt for your sons, and that your mom saved your christening gown. But if you run with me? You’ll lose all of that. There won’t be any family christenings, or Pop heckling you while you teach your boys how to catch. It’ll all be wiped out—by me,” she whispers, her voice dropping so low that I have to strain to hear her.
Goddammit. I can’t argue with that, and I can’t fight the truth of what she’s saying. In my head, I’ve been so intent on seeing other avenues that I don’t think that I gave any thought to what would happen afterward. I get it, though. She doesn’t want to lose more than we already have, and, God help me, neither do I. I want those kids and my family and lazy Sundays spent with the crazy cousins. Running now will end all of that before we even have a chance.
But, and this part is important, I hear the rest of what she’s saying, too. I don’t hear her shooting me down and rejecting my proposal. I hear my woman wanting it all, with me. She wants my babies and my ring and all the stuff that I’ve imagined while sitting outside her apartment like an ass. And she wants me to have it all, too, even if it means that she won’t be the woman giving it to me.
If I thought I loved her before, I love her even more now, because, unlike the picture that she presents to the rest of the world, my Rosetta is a soft, warm, and giving person. She loves me enough to want my happiness. Above her own freedom.
“I won’t ever want a life with another woman,” I tell her hoarsely, taking a step forward to cup her cheek and angle her eyes up to mine. “Marriage, children, the whole shebang. It’s you or no one, so arguing that angle with me isn’t going to change how I feel. I want you, Rose. Only you. The rest won’t mean a damn thing to me without you.”
And I mean that wholeheartedly.
Rosetta
Zeus is fast asleep, his face relaxed and slightly dropping to the side, where it’s mashed into the mattress, smooshing his lips in an adorable way that has his lips flapping when he breathes out.
I watch the spectacle I call snoring, and find myself smiling at the image that pops into my head of Zeus two decades from now, slightly older, saltier, and graying at the temples. He’ll be a grumpy waker, and probably growl his disgust at the world for having to give up sleep every morning. As it is, he’s already a moody riser, but then again, that usually involves our getting out of bed more than our actually waking up.
God, I really do love the man, and trust me, I am as surprised as anyone about that revelation. But come on, who can resist being told all the time that they’re the freaking sun, the light in someone’s life? Sure as hell not me. I played Juliet in our high school play, and Desdemona in college because, my theater buff tendencies aside, I freaking rock those kinds of tragic, dramatic roles.
It’s too bad that tragedy couldn’t be confined to the stage, I think, as I slowly rise from the bed, being extra careful not to jostle Zeus, who, though currently dead to the world, is also a light sleeper. Whenever I move, he’s always up and checking on me.
That’s probably why I haven’t been sleeping all that well lately. I lie awake for hours, staying completely still and pretending to be asleep while my mind races—filled with dread and these wild theories and scenarios in which a miracle happens, and someone comes forward with some sort of evidence. Since that hasn’t happened yet in real life, though, and since it’s not exactly likely to happen with my trial starting this morning, I need to do something.
No way in hell am I missing out on a lifetime of sex with Zeus, a big-ass engagement ring that makes my avaricious little heart thud with glee, or those vagina-ripping babies that he wants to have. No fucking way.
Hence, my little midnight flip.
Sneaking out as quietly as I can, I make it to the hallway and tiptoe to the front door, holding my breath almost all the way, until I unlock the latch and pull the door open. Sin is standing there with a huge-ass joint dangling from her lips, belching out smoke like some cigar-smoking gangster of yore. If not for her steely-eyed expression and the brass knuckles that she’s already sporting, I’d take her to be a weed-smoking junkie with little to no use right now.
However! Huh. I have many howevers, people, and those sneaky little howevers have been helping me search and search and search, until one very unlucky Lucky finally popped up on Sin’s ex-boyfriend’s cousin’s radar. It’s a long story, and one that I don’t have time for right now, so—Cliffs Notes. Sin used to date an organic farmer, who has a cousin named Roach—don’t ask; just trust me on that one—who happens to have once worked for the NSA, where he did things like follow certain public figures through a handy, very useful, and exceptionally scary thing called app permissions!
I bet ya think that I’m a crazy conspiracy theorist with alien theories and an illogical love of science fiction. You’d be partly right. However, in this case, I am even more right, so listen up, people, and beware the evils of something as innocuous as a boring, fourteen-page agreement that you mindlessly agree to while installing certain apps on your phone. The powers that be are watching you.
If you’re worth watching.
Whatever. The thing is, Roach used to be some super-techy spy for the government before they found like two hundred bags of fertilizer in his barn and realized that he was suffering from an unholy amount of stress. And resentment towards certain military officials involved in an operation that rhymes with Renrazi. Roach now lives on that same farm, retired and receiving a pension, thanks to yours truly with the kick-ass law degree and argumentative genius. In his secret basement, which is more like a bunker, he runs enough machines to be classified as a server. If the government ever finds out.
Which they can’t, because violating his plea bargain would mean serious prison time, and even I can’t save a sinking ship like that.
In short, he’s a computer genius with both know-how and knowledge that rivals those of the Pentagon, where he was planning to “plant a lot of daisies.” That’s his story, and, as his legal counsel, I told him to stick to it, no matter what. Honestly, gardening is not a crime, though constructing bombs of the size that Roach was planning to, is.
Anyhow, over the past few weeks, I’ve let Zeus and Chilli run their investigations while I’ve been conducting my own. Sin called Roach, he called me, I gave him a name, and now, finally, at the very last hour, he’s come through.
“You look like shit,” Sin drawls around her massive—ahem—roach, as she steps into the apartment carrying a duffel bag, two bottles of wine, and a pink box that reads “Mindy’s Marvels.”
Yeah, okay. So I had to rethink my attitude about old Min. We’ll all get over it one day, and, far into the future, when I say thank you to her and confess that I like her, I may mean it.
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br /> “You look as high as heck and ready to pull an all-nighter. Come in and stop giving the security team a contact high,” I mutter, smiling and waving at the black suits all facing the door, looking ready to bodily stop me if I try to leave.
Like I could. What, you thought that I was going to sneak out like some super-skeevy loser who’d just drop the mic and leave Zeus on stage, sweating bullets? That ain’t me. Besides, I bought this truly awesome suit in lime green, à la Queen Elizabeth—whom I call Liza in my head, ’cause I bet that if we ever met, we’d be the peeps! I’m wearing that bad boy to court later while I keep my nose in the air and my smile bright. That’s just who I am.
“I am as high as hell; just ask the hydrant that I hit two blocks back, coming back from Roach’s place. Here. That’s everything he got. He says that he’s still digging, but from the quick peek I took”—she gives a long, low whistle—“that Lucky should be renamed Yucky. That’s one bad, bad dude you got there. How’d you get his name, anyway?” she asks, prancing to the couch, where she drops herself down without dislodging her joint, and then shoves her Army-booted feet onto the coffee table with a glass-cracking thunk.
I shrug, taking in her pink tutu, her black and white striped leggings, and the death metal t-shirt that’s knotted at her waist. Tonight, she looks like a grunge rocker fairy, with her hair piled into a thick bun, plus natural makeup to completely confuse the look.
“Chilli’s guys kept looking at footage, finally made some sense of the face that they caught on the camera from the grocery store, and then narrowed it down. Lucky Parker fit the bill. Or so they thought,” I say, frowning when I open the envelope.
“Yeah, well, according to Roach and those redacted files that he snapped off the servers, he’s fitting a lot of categories. Like serial killer. Madman. Bogeyman. Lucky Parker—or rather, Barnes Hilan—is not someone that you want to go looking for. No wonder Chilli hit a dead end with this guy. He’s a freaking spook, Rosetta, and to make it that much scarier, even the government took a step back from the guy. Highly decorated, and served four tours in Iraq that they know of. He went dark after that, which Roach says means he was a bona fide spook, like the monster that scares other monsters. And then he surfaced again here, in our little neck of the woods, under the name Lucky Parker, a contractor working out of his house,” she muses, handing me a donut when I sit and start to read the file.
What I see makes my skin go numb with chills. As Sin just said, this guy is a one-hundred-percent spook. What little we have here isn’t just redacted; it’s crossed out with the kind of permanent marker that makes his missions not just a no-go zone, but so unknown that they may as well have never happened or been recorded. What I read of his military career isn’t much. The guy did his job, advanced fast, and then disappeared before he made it to the top. He has no family and no known friends, and doesn’t participate in any kind of social media that we know of. What I do see, though, is a particular penchant for gutting, the very same way that Perez was murdered, and then there’s the note that one of his commanding officers made about him. The man is highly organized and very skilled, and could have pulled off a murder like this with ease. The question now isn’t who, not with this face staring back at me, but why.
Why would Lucky Parker, or Barnes Hilan, frame me for murder? Is he the one following Cleo? From what I’ve read, I highly doubt that because, with his skills, he’d have taken her already. No, this is a personal thing, a vendetta against me, and Lucky Parker is someone for hire. Paid muscle.
“Someone hired this animal,” I say, closing the file and almost jumping out of my skin when it’s ripped from my hands by Zeus.
He doesn’t say anything, just reads the file and then grabs a donut, kisses Sin on the cheek, and lowers his shorts-covered ass onto my corner of the couch while wrestling me into his lap.
“Call Jack, and have him come over here with that contact of his. If we have a real name, we should be able to get more,” he tells Sin, already dialing Adonis’s number. “Yo. Hey—no, of course not. What do you think? This is Rose we’re talking about, asshole. Yeah, she got it. Call Brent. I want everyone on this. And turn off your feed, you pervert,” he mutters into the phone before ending the call.
Now, see—here’s what I just got from that conversation, since I am highly intelligent and extremely savvy, two different things that nevertheless both mean that I’m super smart. I think that I just heard Zeus say that this place has cameras, and that Adonis and Zeus have been watching me.
“Don’t start yelling. Of course I had the place under surveillance. I need sleep, woman, and anticipating your sneaky ass creeping out of here is exhausting. Addy and I take shifts watching you. Now, this is a fucking lead,” he crows, rereading the file with a muttered curse. “This is the guy—I’d bet a nut on it. The only question now is—”
“Who hired him,” I smirk, loving his disgruntlement when I steal his thunder.
“Oooor, why and how much you hate your nuts,” Sin chimes in, her cackles joining my own chortles when Z curses and throws us a dirty look.
“You two are laughing? Right now? The morning of the trial that could still send you to prison?” he mutters, his lips pinching into a grimace.
“We watched a whole bunch of videos that this guy posted on YouTube. Showed us how to make a shiv outta newspaper, bubble gum, and boiled toothpaste. And I showed her how to flirt without giving off the wrong signals. She’s prepared for a short stay while Roach and I plan a prison break,” my cousin informs him, her cackles turning to real laughter when the door bursts open and Tee ambles in, throwing a dirty look behind her.
Oh, my God—is that Paris? And Ares? And for God’s sake…not Honey!
“No! Absolutely not. This isn’t family time,” I yell when Dad walks in, already sniffling and heading for me with his arms open and his lips puckered.
“Don’t be mean, Rosie-butt. Give Daddy a kiss and a hug, and tell me that you agreed to skip town with Zeus,” he sniffles, pulling me out of Z’s lap and into his arms for a second before Honey pulls me around and slobber-kisses me so hard that I feel my stomach protest.
“Mom!”
“Oh, hush, Rosetta. Now, we tried being understanding and giving you time and space, but I gotta tell ya, things are not looking good for you, baby. Listen to Daddy and Zeus. Take a short little Mediterranean holiday with your man, let your people find the truth, and then come back once we’ve nabbed the killer.”
I’d agree, if only to get away from them all, I think, swiping an arm across my mouth to dry it, but I am not running. Did you all hear me? I am staying right here and catching this guy. As Bee, Carla, and Jan taught me, the best defense is a good offense. Or what-freaking-ever. It’s called baiting the hook.
And now that I know the name of my fish, I am going to bait that hook so perfectly that he won’t be able to swim free. I hope. I mean, God has his plans, so there’s really no fighting destiny, but I’m hoping that he’s on my side on this one, and that I am not destined to be prisoner one-oh-redhead for the rest of my life.
“Mom, stop yapping nonsense at me, and sit down. Sin, stop smoking—fine, but you and Mom are smoking it out on the terrace. And Tee, if you’re not going to have the decency to talk to me, then go make some coffee,” I bark, watching people scatter to avoid my red-faced glares.
Tee stays, as I knew she would, and just keeps glaring, her eye ticking when I glare back and bare my teeth.
“You’re an idiot, you know that? A freaking idiot to the core. Get on the plane, Rosetta. Go vacation in Spain. Do something; just don’t stick around here and get your ass strung up.”
“We’ve been over this, you wonky-titted freak. I am fighting!” I yell, taking no particular pleasure in her blush or in the way she covers her chest defensively.
The size difference isn’t even all that big, so I don’t really understand her look of betrayal, but I do get a slap that rocks me back onto my heels before she storms off to the kitchen.
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br /> “Simpleton!”
“Lopsy!” I yell back, knowing that she’ll get super annoyed at the old nickname that I used to use. Honestly, the size difference isn’t that big; it’s all in her head.
A weakness that I will exploit shamelessly until we both die—or until we kill each other.
Honestly, I don’t know what her problem is. You’d think that I was planning to just hand myself over, the way she’s carrying on. What did I ever do to these people to make them believe that I would ever, ever just give up and roll over without a fight, and what the hell is up with their thinking that I don’t have any options? Hello! The guy I saved from serious time in federal prison is one of my best pals. You think that I couldn’t plan a prison break and pull it off with more smarts and freaking speed than that show with the bad, tattooed troll?
Come on!
Chapter Eleven
Rosetta
Sometimes, we make mistakes.
Sometimes, they’re small mistakes, like accidentally dropping your mom’s toothbrush in the toilet a few times, and then fishing it out for a quick rinse before hustling away from the crime scene. Sometimes, they’re slightly bigger ones, like paying for a three-year gym membership upfront because you tell yourself that you will definitely go. And then you don’t because, let’s face it, working out is for people who have to try harder to be cool and hot.
Then, there are times when you make a mistake that’s just a tad bit larger than that three-year membership, which sees your phone blowing up with reminders until you block the number and file a harassment charge against Britney, who just looooves yoga, and who says everything in an airheaded, “I totally have a foreign accent” kind of voice.
During those times, when the mistake is bigger than simply showing up at the gym with a nine-millimeter pistol and a whole lot of “get the fuck off my case, Britney,” it’s sufficient to say that a Tums and a Valium aren’t going to fix things.