Empire of Lies

Michael Now

Three weeks later

What the hell is wrong with me?

I’m standing in front of my latest job, a hairbrush that I need to take from a target’s hotel room. It’s a much-needed piece for a DNA test Trevor has to run by the end of the day, and I’ve been staring at it for the past four hours.

I vow to pick it up and bag it within the next fifteen minutes, to get the hell out of here, but I know that’s easier said than done. It’s ten times harder because I’m not standing in just any hotel room.

It’s the penthouse suite at The Four Seasons.

All I can do is stand still and think about the passionate night of fucking Meredith and I shared when we were here several months ago. The first time I fucked up and never truly recovered.

I can still taste her mouth, perfectly envision the way her body felt against mine, and remember exactly how my cock felt buried deep inside of her.

It’s not just in this moment that I think about her, though. It’s every fucking day.

Memories of her haunt me every few hours, and her face invades all of my dreams. The five hours of sleep that I’m used to getting every night are now down to two, and I wake up and reach for her every single time my eyes flutter open.

My chessboards have remained completely untouched, since I let her go, which is a personal record for me. I can’t seem to set up a new game without thinking about how she’s the first person to hand me a loss. She’s made me too fucking stu

Like a lovesick sap, I’ve spent most of my latest days reminiscing about our better times, before marriage. I’ve reread her favorite essays—Goodbye to All That & Such, Such Were the Joys, too many times to bother counting. (I’ve even tried to read some of her favorite romances, but I drew the line once I read the phrase, “This alpha male of mine was strong enough to cry with me.” Did. Not. Finish.) I’ve flipped through the pages of her old journal, looking through the pictures she took while we were dating.

I’m convinced she’ll always be the only woman capable of turning me on with a mere pouty-lipped picture, the only one who can make my cock hard without taking off a single piece of clothing.

And no matter how hard I try to forget about her, there’s a certain set of words she said, when I dropped her off in Mexico, that keep playing in my head.

“Who burned you this badly? Who fucked you up to the point where you can walk away from someone who loves you enough to be fucking okay with everything you’ve done?”

She didn’t react much when I told her that I’d been hired to kill her, not in a way that I’d been expecting, anyway. She seemed accepting—at first, and I wasn’t sure if I was reading too much into it, but the look in her eyes before I shut down all her hopes wasn’t one of outrage or fear. It was intrigue.

“I feel like there’s a reason for what you’ve done, and you can trust me enough to tell me…”

I hadn’t paid too much attention to those words in the moment, but for the past few weeks, those were the ones that I harped on whenever I couldn’t sleep.

“So, you’re struggling to bag fucking hairbrushes now?” The sound of Trevor’s voice breaks me out of my thoughts, and I realize that he’s now standing next to me, bagging the brush himself. “I literally gave you all the easiest underlings’ jobs this week, and you’re still fucking up?”

“No.” I roll my eyes and follow him out of the room.

“Let’s get a drink, shall we?” he says, leading me to the elevator.

I say nothing as we take it down to the bar on the fifth floor, as Trevor slips the bartender a fistful of hundred dollar bills in exchange for “coming whenever we need you, and telling everyone else to get the hell out now.”

We take a seat in a booth near the back, and as he checks his phone for messages, I check mine for any new media updates on Meredith.

Something really is wrong with me…

“Where are we on the Harrington job I gave you?” Trevor asks, looking at me. “Did you pick up the dry cleaning?”

“I forgot about it,” I say, setting a key on the table. “But I did handle Mr. Ruth. You need to have one of the underlings retrieve his body from a barrel in a storage unit. Forsythe Street in New Jersey, unit 234.”

“Okay, so you’re not completely off your shit this week…” He picks it up and places it into his wallet.

He taps his fingers against the tabletop, signaling the bartender for the first round of beers. Then he orders four trays of bitter shots.

He waits until we’re alone again before taking a long sip, narrowing his eyes at me.

“Where are we on the research part of the Ware job?” he asks, finally. “Did you go to his apartment and set up the carbon monoxide gas to knock him out for the night?”

“No, I’ll do it tomorrow.”

“You can’t do it tomorrow.” He shakes his head. “I already have someone on it, though, since he has a flight to Japan, remember?”

I honestly don’t, so I pick up a beer and take a few sips.

Trevor stares at me for several minutes, not saying a word, and I don’t volunteer any conversation.

“I knew that I should’ve gotten an underling to do the Thatchwood job from the very begi

“How the hell was it ever a conflict of interest for you?”

“Numerous reasons,” he says. “For one, telling you who the client was, the pieces and the plans. We agreed that you would always be in the dark, and the moment I let you into the light, you lost your fucking mind.”

I signal for the check. I’m not in the mood for this right now, and the sound of Meredith’s soft laughter is starting to play in my head.

“Wait.” He pulls my hand down. “Wait…I’m not judging you at all.”

“That’s what it seems like,” I say. “I don’t think either of us is in a position to do that, ever.”

“Listen to me,” he says, looking more vulnerable than I’ve seen him in a while. “Once you finish the final guy on our personal list, you’re going to be tempted to run back to her and beg for her to take you back.”

“I’m not begging her for shit.”

“You say that now.” He looks like he’s on the verge of tears for some reason. “But you will, because you love her. You shouldn’t, but you fucking do.” He pauses. “Anyway, once you go back and tell her who you really are and everything you’ve done, she’ll never look at you the same again. She’ll tell you ‘thank you’ for sparing her life, but she’ll say that she can’t bring herself to ever be with a murderer.”

“I’m not a murderer.”

“Equalizer, revenge-getter, champion for delayed justice, whatever,” he says. “It won’t matter. She’ll never be okay with everything you’ve done. And you can’t build a relationship on a foundation of lies, so telling her the truth is a must. I’m just letting you know what to expect.”

“Can you also tell me if you have some type of psychic abilities that I’ve never known about? It really would’ve come in handy when we were younger.”

“I don’t.” He shakes his head. “I’ve just had a similar experience, and I never told you about it because you always said that I was too damn emotional.”