QUINTON

Quinton hadn’t grown up in a happy home.

He wasn’t delusional. There were worse things to be than unhappy. He knew that, in many ways — most, even — he had it better than millions of other children his age.

Quin was healthy, and warm, and went to an elite private school. He never wondered about whether he would eat. He had medical care, and plenty of books, and the kind of car that made his clout-chasing friends seethe with quiet envy.

His parents paid for his college. For his apartment. For his furniture, and his wardrobe, and his expensive hair gel that he picked because he thought they would say ‘no.’

It was a charmed life, technically speaking.

But nobody loved him.

Quin had never experienced the violent sort of abuse and neglect that he saw in media. His parents, his older brother…they never left a mark on him. Leaving marks was unsightly. Low. Classless. 

There was nothing the Reids hated more than being common. It was below them to be boorish and violent.

Instead they tore him down, piece by piece, for who he was. They held up a magnifying glass to every part of Quin and pronounced each molecule of him lacking.

Utterly boring. Completely talentless. Shamefully average. Not worthy of being a Reid.

Maybe that was why he sought them out, these people who seemed so very much more interesting than he was. Deep down, perhaps he thought they would forge him into someone worth the love of his family.

It would never be enough for them. He knew that, logically. But something better left unexamined compelled him to try anyway. Quin had some pathological yearning for the affection they would never have for him. A desperate need to fit in.

He wanted to be interesting, and if he couldn’t be interesting, he would import the interesting parts someone else.

He would be anybody else if it quieted the roaring, pulsing emptiness inside of him.

Anyone other than Quinton Reid.

Looking into the hooded, cruel eyes of Marika Cervena, Quin realized now how big of a mistake he had made in the process.

Something about her here was infinitely worse than the polished, public version he had met in his office. This Marika Cervena was dressed down, hair up, face empty and desolate and fierce.

The dress wasn’t her armor. She didn’t need armor. She was bulletproof, even without it.

He had woken her up, or at the very least, kept her awake. He could tell by the slick, silky chemise underneath her jacket. She didn’t seem like the kind of person who appreciated being kept from sleep for no reason.

Her expression held the unsettling calm of someone who could peel him apart and feel nothing for the trouble. He could see, on the bare planes of skin not hidden by her coat, that she had lived a painful life. One that he could scarcely even begin to picture.

Shit.

He didn’t know why he talked back to her. Perhaps it was a life of privilege and luck that made him fearless and stupid. Perhaps he just wanted her to know he had been right all along, so that at least someone would before he died.

Either way, he had said it, and if this was how he went out, maybe at least his little brother would spare him a filial tear or two for the cameras.

“You seem to think you have done something terribly clever.” Marika motioned for one of her associates to get her a chair, and she sat down and crossed her long legs. There was a pock mark, stark and white and old, that looked like a healed over bullet wound on her thigh. “That you have uncovered something meaningful, or interesting, or timely.”

“I may not have the evidence, but your sort don’t kidnap someone for no reason.” Quin, you absolute idiot, stop talking. She is going to actually kill you. “So what is it you do? Drugs? Money-laundering?”

“Mr. Reid, your entitlement knows no bounds.” She offered him a very small, very unkind smile. “What of myself do I owe to someone who broke the law to re-litigate my private life?”

“I did something a sight less illegal than kidnapping.”

Kidnapping, he said. Because he couldn’t bring himself to say murder.

“About that I’m not so sure.” Marika gestured for the woman who had accompanied her to the basement to hand her an uncomfortably cartoonish looking cell phone. “Perhaps they are the less sexy crimes, but you still inappropriately accessed a secure building using deliberate lapses in bank security. I think a court would find it reasonably compelling that you were the cause of the other damage to the structure, as well.”

Quin paled. “Your men did that.”

“Did they?”

She said it with such an air of genuine curiosity and surprise that it almost made Quin doubt his own lying eyes. 

“You know they did,” he managed, eventually.

Marika tutted her tongue and sighed. This seemed to make the men watching Quin stiffen, like this was something he should take special note of. A sign of displeasure. “This will go one of two ways, Mr. Reid. It is up to you which.”

She held up a finger. Her nails were long and as red as her dress had been. “One. You belong to me now. My team repairs the damage to your bank before you open. They erase any evidence you left behind because, believe it or not, you are not as sly or smart as you think you are. You return to your tedious, boring life and when I call, you answer.”

Quin’s stomach fell to his feet. A lifetime of belonging to some unknown criminal syndicate? What would she ask of him? What would he have to do?

“Or?”

Marika blinked at him. “Or you find out exactly what it is that I do. Slowly. And in excruciating detail.”