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Devil's Prey(5)

By:S. E. Chardou


"Funny you should say that because it is, indeed, a proposition but one  you must make a decision as to whether you want in on it. There's a lot  of money at stake and believe me, my employers will compensate us very  well."

Magnolia waited until the waitress dropped off their waters before she inquired, "How much money are we talking about?"

"Well, let's just say I have been doing this for a lot longer than you,  little girl. I'm tired and I want to retire. I may look young but I'm  older than my years. I want to be through with the bullshit. This will  be the last contract I will do for anyone. After that, I'm gone," Max  explained coolly.

"Oh, really?" She arched perfect eyebrows before sipping from her ice  water, grimacing at the taste and pushing it to the side. "If we're  talking about ‘retirement money' for you then this isn't going to be an  easy mission. We don't get paid that kind of money to get rid of an  easily accessible target. So . . . who's the unlucky mark?"

Max smiled, using the moment to elicit a pregnant pause. "Angelo Abandonato."

"You're kidding, right?" Magnolia's pale green eyes narrowed as her face  scrunched up in barely concealed distaste. "Angelo and my mother were  cousins. He's my family for Christ's sake, and you think I would help  you with assassinating him? Are you out of your fucking mind?"

"Actually, no, I'm not." He leaned toward her though the table between  them hardly allowed him to get as close he would have liked. "Why do you  owe them any allegiance, Magnolia? When your parents died, why didn't  your relatives make an effort to find you?"         

     



 

"I'm not for certain they didn't," she snapped back in a cold voice. "I  was being held against my will by the WKs. Do you really think they  would have handed me over to my family? Nel and Brad would have faced  consequences they didn't even want to think about. Besides, if no one  was looking for me then why was I held a virtual prisoner for over five  years?"

Max's blue-green eyes glanced her way dismissively. "What exactly do you mean? You've been in their care for twelve years."

"True but I wasn't allowed to leave the compound until I was almost  eighteen years old. I didn't travel anywhere or see anything for five  years of my life. I was held like a prisoner. I could roam the compound  but that was only when Brad instructed me I was safe to do so. Other  than that, I stayed inside." Mags shook her head slowly. "That, to me,  certainly doesn't sound like my disappearance off the face of the earth  went unnoticed."

He shrugged his shoulders apathetically. "Your parents' murder did make  national news and there was an AMBER Alert issued for you. Perhaps your  abductors were just playing it safe. They knew by the time you reached  eighteen, the media attention would have died down. Now that you are  twenty-five, no one really cares anymore. All this time has passed . . .  why didn't you ever reach out to Angelo?"

She sipped from the water, grimaced and pushed it to the side again. "To  be honest, I don't know. I was scared for a very long time and then . .  . after that, I felt nothing. Brad and Serra became my family and the  Knights felt more like my club than anything else. It was infinitely  easier to stick with what I knew rather than taking a chance on the  unknown."

"Even after they made you a contract killer? Cleaning up their messes  they couldn't be directly involved with for fear it might bring down the  force of God? Every time you left on a mission, you could have been  killed-"

"That's a given, regardless what your profession is, Max." Her green  eyes hardened as they stared directly into his. "My father owned a pawn  shop and my mother was a housewife. Brad and Nel claimed my father stole  two million from them yet they had no definitive proof, at least none  they showed to me. For all I know, my parents died because they were  pissed about my old man leaving the MC."

Max cocked his head to the side and realized Magnolia didn't know nearly  as much as he thought she did. How could she be so dense? It couldn't  truly be only due to losing her parents as a teen. Or maybe it was but  for some reason, he'd thought her deceased family had been more honest  with her about how they made a living.

Of course he was also viewing her situation through his own deranged  prism of a childhood. He'd always known he was the son of a  stripper-whore mother and an outlaw father. Whether his father knew of  his existence was of little importance to him but he was the main reason  why he'd lost his mother at an early age.

It was true, Max planned to retire but his retirement years wouldn't be  spent living idle. They would used to extract his own brand of revenge  against a family who'd rather believed he never existed. That included  his father and brother who never acknowledged him at all. They would  both pay and their families would too.

The waitress suddenly appeared at their table. "You two ready to order?"

"I'll have the cheeseburger with fries and a diet Coke," Magnolia  responded without glancing at the menu and handing it back to her.

"What about you?"

Max didn't bother to look at the waitress. "I would like the  beer-battered fish and chips with two shots of whiskey and two beers.  Whatever's on tap is fine."

She nodded after writing down their order and walked away.

"What's all the booze for? Don't you have to drive?" Magnolia asked as  she pulled out her smart phone and began to study something interesting  on the screen.

"Is that a burner?" he demanded in an icy voice.

"Aren't they all?" she replied rhetorically. "This account is a under a  false name I use and can't be traced back to me. You don't live the kind  of lives we do and not have multiple identities. Enough about me and my  damn Samsung Note, what the hell is all that alcohol for?"

He sat back and studied her, which was easy enough to do. No matter how  much he tried to twist what ever they had in his head and pretend there  was nothing more than a potential job that tied them together, he hated  the invisible pull towards her.

She was a decent looking chick-scratch that, she was fucking drop dead  gorgeous and he understood why Brad and Nel had kept her under lock and  key for twelve long years. Her looks hadn't even started to wane; they  were enhanced with age, her beauty maturing into full bloom.         

     



 

Magnolia was a woman, full stop. There wasn't anything about her girlish  and she acted much wiser than her years. Her eyes, so gorgeous and  ethereal, still held a look of glee, as if happiness eluded her only  along the edges of her life. She certainly didn't seem to be the victim  of a horrific crime that had stolen some of the best years of her life.

"Earth to Max." Mags broke the silent intensity between the two of them.  "Yeah, I know you find me deliciously fuckable and all but seriously,  I'm not getting in the car with you half in the bag. My life's only just  begun-I don't want to spend the rest of it as a paraplegic after you  drive us into a ditch along the side the of the road because you were  wasted."

"The alcohol's for both of us." He cleared his throat again. "Prevents  food poisoning, and in a joint like this, you can never be too careful."

"Tell me about it," Mags replied as she looked around the diner in disdain. "I'm shocked this place was given a liquor license."

Max chuckled as he shook his head. "You don't get out much, do you? I've  been in worse places than this that served alcohol. The food's decent .  . . it's the only reason why I returned on this trip up north."

He paused as the waitress dropped off two shots of whiskey and two draft beers in what appeared to be clean mugs.

Mags held up her shot glass as soon as their surly waitress flounced off  again. "To new beginnings, where ever they might lead us."

Max balanced his shot glass in one hand. "To new beginnings it is then."

They clinked their glasses and each downed their shots effortlessly.  Mags didn't even grimace as she set it down and sipped from her beer.  Why he thought she would have a problem with alcohol was beyond him. She  had been raised within the confines of the White Knights MC during her  most poignant years. Of course she wouldn't be a stranger to booze-hard  liquor or beer.

"So, before we started talking about food poisoning and whether or not I  kept a burner phone, the conversation was firmly on why I should help  you kill a member of my own family. Sorry to say but you haven't  convinced me to do this ‘assignment' with you at all," Mags explained in  a no-nonsense manner.

"I understand you must feel I should have an overwhelming sense of  revenge for the wrongs inflicted on me by the Abandonato family but I  don't. They didn't kill my parents or subject me to anything. Were they  careless and perhaps a bit laissez-faire with my treatment after my  parents died? Perhaps but I have absolutely no proof they weren't  worried to death about me. After I turned eighteen, everything that  happened is on me. I didn't seek them out because I was ashamed of what  I'd been through . . . the horrors I'd witnessed. I didn't have anything  to offer them."