Page 12 of Gorgeous Misery

“Just listen for a moment. Let me tell the story and then, if you say no, I’ll call Adam back and tell him it’s just no. I promise.”

“And then what will he do? Come fuck with me? Hunt down my kids?”

“No. I told you, he’s not like that.”

“He runs the Company.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Did the Company stop doing Company shit?”

“Not really, but—”

“But nothing. We have a truce here, Sasha. We can’t get involved.”

“You’re the only one left, Merc. You’re the only man left on this entire planet who has been trained in Company PSYOPS. Donovan is loved by some very dangerous people. He’s not a bad guy, either. He’s actually… I mean, I’ve always liked him. When he was him. Carter, on the other hand…”

I turn my head away from her. I don’t want to hear this shit. I don’t want to know this shit.

“Carter is insane. And there was some kind of… standoff at the Boucher house about a month ago and Adam’s daughter… I don’t remember her name. She shot Donovan in the back of the head with a psychotropic dart and he slipped into a coma. The Company thinks he’s dead, but Adam kept him alive, I guess. Life support or something. And now Adam needs someone to come in and… unfuck him. He wants to save him.”

“Why?” It’s blunt and cruel, but honest.

“They’re friends. They—Adam, Donovan, and another guy called McKay—they raised a Zero girl called Indie. And… well, Donovan has stacked up quite a few loyalty points, I guess. They just want to save him and you’re the only one left who can do it. Trust me, Adam would not have called in this favor if he didn’t really want to save Donovan.”

“Called in what favor?” I ask. “Why do you owe him?”

“I mean”—she chuckles—“he’s the whole reason I was able to get those drug lord assholes on board with that Santa Barbara massacre. I knew him from my father’s gun-running days. He used to come in to the antique mall a couple times a year. So I called him up and asked him for that favor. How do you think we got that meeting with the drug lords in the desert that day?”

I think about this for a moment, trying to conjure up the memories. Nick left Sasha behind to go do Nick stuff and she called me to pick her up from a hotel room in Wyoming. She was like thirteen when all this went down. But she was pissed off about the Company assassinating her father and grandparents, so there was no way to stop her once she got her mind on murder.

“It was Adam, Merc. He delivered me the drug lords.”

“He delivered you…” I pause to think. “That Matias guy?” The moment that name comes out of my mouth I regret it. Because he’s the man who took Nick Tate. He’s the man who crushed Sasha’s whole world when she was just thirteen years old. He’s the reason she had to shoot Nick in the head nine years ago. He’s the reason she’s broken.

And I don’t care how happy she is with Jax—and she is happy. She won. And every day she thanks her God for what she has left. But when you have to shoot your best friend in the head to change the world, you don’t get over that. Ever.

That’s the whole problem with breaking things.

You either have to put them back together or throw them away.

When you survive an event like the Santa Barbara massacre you don’t get to throw yourself away. You have to just suck it up and put it back together. And no matter how well you match up those pieces—even if the thing you broke still functions—it’s just never the same again. But when you have to metaphorically kill yourself to save the rest of us, what’s left isn’t broken. It’s destroyed.

Sasha lets out a long breath. It’s packed with weariness. “It’s an old debt. But it’s a real one, Merc. I owe him. If I didn’t feel some kind of genuine obligation, I wouldn’t even bother you. I would just tell him no.”

“But you don’t want to tell him no, do you?”

She shakes her head. “I want to do this for him. I liked Donovan. And yeah, I was just a dumb kid back then so what did I know about it? But we’ve lost enough loved ones, don’t you think? Yes, the Company is still around, but none of those old-school assholes are alive. Adam had something to do with that. He helped get rid of them.”

“And then he took over. Don’t you think that’s a little opportunistic?”

“Of course. But someone has to run things. The Company isn’t going away. People are greedy, Merc. They want shit. And some of these fuckers are not only greedy, but evil enough to do whatever it takes to get their money. Adam isn’t like that. He doesn’t care about money. He doesn’t want more, he wants less. He wants to be left alone, but that’s never gonna happen. And trust me when I say this, when you’ve got an organization like the Company that needs leadership, you want a man with no ambition in charge of it. We could do a lot worse than Adam Boucher.”

I let out a long weary breath too. She already knows I’m going to do this. I would never tell Sasha no. If she comes to me looking for help it’s because she needs that help. For whatever reason, she needs to save this Donovan guy.

“There’s something else,” Sasha says.

I turn back to her.