"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."