Chapter 4 Trading Secrets

• -Mason
• I’m fuming and I can’t explain why. Just her words alone have made my blood boil. I don’t know if she realized what she just told me. But that fact that it came off so easily to her means a lot. Says a fucking lot!
• She expected to be married to some old fucking bastard. I can’t imagine her married to someone else for some fucking crazy reason. Even though we just met. Even though she hates my guts and I'm not sure I like hers. She might be a pain in the ass but she's my pain in the ass.
• That little slip when she said her life never belonged to her, what the fuck did that mean? This woman shouldn’t find killing so easily. But as I watched her in that warehouse, it was clear as day she’s been doing this for a long time. It didn’t bother her one bit to take that man’s life. Hell, it looked like she enjoyed it. She’s nothing like what I had expected to marry. I don’t think I’ve ever met a woman who enjoyed staining her hands with blood. We don’t have a lot of women in this line of work who are this...cold-blooded. We do the dirty work while they shop to their hearts' content. But not this one. She’s getting her hands dirty and is saying she doesn’t mind it.
• “Well, it’s true. You shouldn’t know this life.” I state back. My response irks her, if her sneer is anything to go by.
• “Why? So I can sit around on my ass, brushing my hair and looking all pretty? Worrying about shit getting under my nails and crying when one breaks? No, thanks. I’m not some pretty little princess with headphones on, pretending to not know what world she was born in. I took my first life at eight. Killing is just–"I cut her short with my surprised growl.
• “Eight?!” I practically yell as I hit the brakes and glance over at her. what the fuck kind of world has this girl seen?! I didn’t take my first life until I was twelve!
• She rolls her eyes at me, nonplussed.
• “Yes Mason. Eight. When my father brought some drug dealer home and told me he killed some kids. He asked me to slit his throat and I did. At first it hurt to take a life. I cried for days. But after the tenth or twelfth kill, l I started hollowing out whatever feelings I had left, until there wasn’t any. Until killing didn’t bother me. Until it didn’t make me cry. Slitting a guy's throat or carving a guy's eyeballs out and sending them to his wife doesn’t bother me one bit. I’m broken, Mason. Broken and heartless and I’ve come to accept it.”
• I didn’t know the fuck to say to that. I don't want to feel sorry for this woman who's been nothing but trouble ever since she had breezed into my home. I can't help it, though. There's something about the almost robotic way she proclaims herself broken that tugs at my heartstrings. I just want to protect her and kill everyone who's ever made her this way. But I know she wouldn't want that.
• “We live in a world that’s surrounded by death." She continues, taking my silence as a cue to keep talking. " I’ve accepted that. And I’ve accepted I'm stuck with her... So we can either make this tolerable, me and you. Live a fairly comfortable life. Or we can take turns trying to kill each other.
• So… Mason. Accept I kill. Accept this is what I do and it doesn’t bother me. And let me in, let me help."
• “You want to help me with killing." I ask disbelievingly.
• “Yes! God dammit. I don’t want to sit at home doing nothing, I’d rather carve my own eyeballs out at the thought of being one of those wives sitting around all day doing nothing! That’s not me.”
• I huff and turn back to facing the road. I needed to go to my own turf and deal with a traitor of my own. So now I guess I’m taking my wife along with me.
• “Fine!”
• “Fine?” She sounds surprised.
• “Yes. I have a guy I need to deal with. So I’ll take you with me.”
• “Yay!" She says all excited, looking the happiest I've ever seen her since our first encounter and I almost laugh at how thrilled I just made her by telling her we’re going to go torture a man. Not at all what I expected. The drive is quiet for the next twenty-minute drive to my club. I have the guy down in the basement and it’s soundproof, unlike her warehouse in the middle of nowhere.
• I park and she follows me quietly down the stairs. When I open the door, she pops her head from behind me to look at the scene. Mark, Grant and Ethan are all standing around waiting on me. I expected to be here earlier but her little escapade made me take a detour. I don’t know why I was so curious of where she was going and going to go do but I'm glad I was. Who would have known my Kitten was so bloodthirsty?
• My friends look surprised to see us together, considering we were at each other's necks last night.
• “Ugh… man I don’t think your wife should…” I put my hand up to stop Grant from saying anything else. My wife is definitely not like either of their three wives. Their wives are exactly what my wife doesn’t want to be: Sitting around waiting for her husband each day. Doing nothing.
• “Nice to meet you Mrs. Rhodes. I’m Ethan.” He sticks his hand out to Reyna. She takes it and smiles. “Nice to meet you too.” She then turns to Mark and Grant. “Nice to see you both again.”
• "Yeah. Same.” Mark mumbles awkwardly
• “So, what did this fucker do?” She asks and all three stare at me in shock. I’m caught off-guard by the small chuckle I emit. Yup, she's a different breed, this woman.
• “We suspect he’s trading secrets.” Grants chimes in. Guess he’s curious.
• “Huh. Has he said anything?”
• “No” Mark adds.