“You’re walking a very dangerous path. Boss will have your head for this. Now I’m going to tell you one more fucking time: you put it back down and we get out of here –”

I turned back to him and took a step forward. I stared daggers at him, feeling the anger in me roar like nothing else before. I’d been treated like shit by this dickhead for far too long. I’d been fine with it, too. I’d accepted my new life, but that didn’t mean I was going to drop every single one of my morals in the process.

“No,” I cut in, pinning him with my icy stare. “No, Ricardo, you listen. What I do from here on out is none of your fucking concern. You don’t want any part of this? Fine. Take your ugly ass out of here and leave me to it. Nothing you say is going to change the fact I’m not gonna leave a baby behind, and if that means I’m walking to my death, then I’ll do so with a smile on my face. I’ve got nothing to lose, princess, so don’t be threatening my life like it’s all that matters to me. It ain’t.”

He just stared at me for a long moment. His eyes had widened some. He was speechless. Good, because I was certain I couldn’t hold another steady conversation. When the surprise wore off, he simply took off out of the room, and I was glad to see the back of his head. He wouldn’t leave me behind. He’d be waiting for me in his car, and the fucker was going to take me to the hospital whether he liked it or not.

You want me to make another man bleed? Fine. You want me to break some bones and empty a wallet or two? Fine. You want me to take some druggie’s life? Sure, it’d be hard, but I’d probably find it in me to do it. However, I was not going to turn myself into the kind of monster that was too far gone from humanity to let a baby die in the process.

If that meant I’d get a bullet to the head for this, then sure.

I’d gladly eat it.

*

There are some moments in life you can’t move on from. They twist your soul on the inside, until you’re sitting here, snorting more coke just to wash it away.

Four hours ago I was washing away the reality of being with thugs who hurt people for a living. Right this second I was washing away the image of a dying baby in my arms. Her sunken eyes and flushed cheeks wouldn’t leave my mind.

Fuck.

Wearing my hoodie, I’d dropped her off at the emergency doors in the hospital. The hardest part was walking away and not knowing what was going to happen to her. Was she going to be alright? How long had she been crying before her sounds died off to those soft grunts that I could still hear inside my ears? This shit was killing me.

“Not joinin’ in on the fun, I see?” I tensed at Boss’s voice from behind me. I was sitting on the porch outside of the shitty cabin we used as our rendezvous point. There was a party inside. I could hear the music from here, and the loud hoots from the sheep I liked to call henchman. Lot of alcohol. Lot of chicks. Same shit, different day.

I barely moved my shoulders in a shrug. I bit the inside of my lip to fight my frown as he took a seat next to me. I didn’t want to look at him. He could read all of me when I locked eyes with him. I stared out into the dark forest, and it was only when he nudged me that I looked down at the beer bottle he was handing me. I took it from him but didn’t drink.

“Ricardo told me everything,” he then said. I couldn’t detect any disapproval in his tone. He sounded neutral, and that was sometimes worse. Unable to resist, my eyes jumped to his face for a brief moment. Nothing but a bald head and a thick black beard to look at, his face was just as impossible to read.

Boss was a man of mystery. Nobody knew his real name. Nobody knew where he lived. Nobody knew a single thing about him. He just came, barked orders, and left. And at nights like these, he stuck around and celebrated, sinking his dick balls deep into any young looking thing.

“I didn’t have a choice,” I quietly said to him. I nervously kicked the soil around on the ground with the tip of my shoe, waiting for something bad to happen.

“I’m not hiring angels, Ryker. I need hard men. I can’t have you openin’ that heart of yours every time something bad like this happens.”

“Would you rather I left her to die?” I retorted, unable to resist the anger in my voice.

“I’d rather you have done something that didn’t risk people sniffin’ around my business. You could have returned sometime later, made sure there were no witnesses, made sure the hospital you dropped that kid off had nobody looking at you on your way to those doors. Shit like this has to be done in a way that leads absolutely no tracks to my cartel.”

I didn’t reply. Yeah, he was right. I’d been hasty, but I didn’t take any of it back. To me, that baby couldn’t have been left for later.

“You won’t survive until you harden yourself up,” he continued. “You’re one of us now, and that means there will be losses in the process. There’ll be shit you just have to leave behind. The second you slip up is the second you become a target. You don’t want to be that. I’d hate to see you in a similar situation: your head blown to smithereens over some mistake with a crying baby left to die without someone’s softened heart to save it. Think on that, boy. It’s a dog eat dog world, and the only way you’re going to survive it is to be the bigger animal than the rest.”

My brows bunched together in thought as his words replayed through my mind. Distraught, I set the beer down and ran my hand through my hair. A hardened heart? I’d have to shut down my emotions? How does someone do that successfully?

“I took you in for a reason,” he mused, more to himself than me. “You’re the same age as my kid, and he’s a fucking disappointment to me. Can’t stand that little bastard. So when I saw you strapped to that chair, there was fight in you. I admired that. I saw potential. You’ve got it in you to lead. You ignored Ricardo because you believed in what you were doing – that’s leadership material, Ryker. That’s the kind of thing I look for when I pass the torch along, because I ain’t going to be here forever. I need to know I can leave behind someone dependable. At this rate, that could be you.”

Without waiting for my reaction, he stood up and disappeared back inside. He saw fight in me? Saw a leader in me? I couldn’t process that.

I knew the second Boss let me in that my future would be forever changed, but it hit me more now than before tonight. The image of a crying baby beside my cold, dead body did strange things to me. It made me want to keel over and vomit. As if I could have a kid! That shit wasn’t possible. Any mistake and anyone I loved would be a target.