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A gust slammed into me the moment I stepped out. I lowered my head and made for her first class, some more bullshit on money laundering. Like she needed to learn more of that. My phone let out abeep.
Dad: Progress. 5m coming my way. Get the rest to me immediately.
Five million. We were getting five million. But it wasn’t a drop in the bucket of what we had tucked away in cryptocurrency. I lifted my head, my eyes drying from the harsh salt spray. There was nothank you.No,I’m proud of you.No,job well fucking done.
Just, get me what I’m owed.
I don’t care how you do it.
The only problem was, I'd had nothing to do with the sudden release of funds.
I'd neither asked nor spoken to Anna.
Instead, I wanted to be as far away from her as possible. But I couldn’t…could I?No, that wouldn’t go down with the mighty Dominic Salvatore and fuck if I needed that getting back to him. Not the way we were.
Others on the island ran from the wind, making their way to the buildings with their heads down, sheltering against the collars of their jackets. But I didn't hurry, just took my time, feeling every bit of the growing storm inside me, and pushed through the door.
Voices echoed louder than normal in the vast, empty space of the foyer, battling against the roar of the wind from outside. I turned and made my way to the far wall before stopping. Max and Pavlov melted into the background around me.
I saw nothing, not the others waiting to go to class, or the other shadows who watched me carefully. They all faded away, until the door opened and she walked in. My gut hardened and my jaw clenched. But I didn’t turn my head, not even when I felt the weight of her stare.
Let her go…let her go…let her go…
The words were fucking torture.
But the demon inside me wrestled with teeth and claws.
Let her go…
I didn’t think I could.
I just pushed off the wall when the classroom doors opened, and walked right past her.
“Fin,” she called.
But I was already gone.
24
Anna
He didn’t look at me when we gathered before the class. Instead, Fin just stood there, leaning against the wall, his gaze fixed across the room, darker than I’d ever seen before. He wasn’t some perfect, brooding god now. He was vengeful, burning with wrathand changing before my eyes.
“Fin,” I called as he strode past, heading to the classroom…but my voice was swallowed by the roar of the wind from outside.
It was as though I was invisible to him, like I didn’t exist at all. The thought of that hurt deeper than it should.
Everything had changed in the wake of Baldeon’s death. Gone was the perfect sunshine and endless parties, gone were the smiles and laughter, and the person I shared my apartment with. Now I sat listening to the howl of the oncoming storm as others hid their fear behind careful, stoic gazes. But the truth was, we were scared, scared to leave our apartments, and scared of being alone. But alone was where I found myself. I glanced toward Finley sitting across the room…now more than ever.
Still, I sat quietly through the class on laundering, which focused on false descriptions of trade goods, and under- and over-invoicing of goods and services. The lecture was good, even if it was outdated. That kind of hiding and layering was for chumps, for those with little reach and a small stream of income. It wasn’t for the sharks like Dominic Salvatore.
He needed more…always more.Demanding and aggressive, pushing my dad to go without sleep for weeks, desperate to find a better,fastersolution to clean the millions of illegal dollars that flowed through his pockets every goddamn month.
Dad was more than panicked. His back was against the wall, faced with disappointing someone who had a reputation of being extremely dangerous…a reputation we hadn’t known about before. There was no way something as basic as illegal reporting was going to appease the kind of man we worked for.
Not worked for…workedwith.
There was a difference. We could walk away any time we wanted, I reminded myself.
