Greyson. I slip inside the darkened home, wake him up with the tip of my SIG right on his temple while he startles up in bed

It was an easy mark.

I slip inside the darkened home, wake him up with the tip of my SIG right on his temple while he startles up in bed. He shook like a flag in the wind as he opened the safe, gave me the money.

He’ll probably never again sleep.

Welcome to the club, old man . . .

But I’m not thinking about that anymore. His name is scratched, the fights were good tonight. Riptide owned the ring—and that’s fine by me. Riptide is money, and the Underground is all about money.

But I’m not thinking about that either.

I’m thinking about her. Wondering if she’s sleeping. Or even half as tortured as I am. It’s six a.m. at the hospital, and I’ve been sitting here, hating what I already know.

Hating that I already know what she’s going to tell me later on today when I go to see her.

That I don’t deserve her, am a liar, a con, and not the man she wants and it’s fucking. Eating. Me. Alive.

Can’t sit still. Can’t stop going over shit in my head.

I’ve sat all night at the hospital watching my father struggle to breathe.

I feel choked myself, the air clogged in my lungs. I knew what my life was, what I wanted. It was all clear.

Nothing is clear anymore except that I can’t imagine continuing a day without her. If she won’t have me, I already know I will be obsessed. I will stalk her. I won’t be able to let go of her. I will need to be sure that she’s safe, that she’s herself, that she’s laughing. I’ll have to see someone else touch her. The man she wanted—the man I couldn’t be. My heart thrashes in my chest. A firestorm rages in my body at the thought of anyone touching her but me.

But I won’t be the Hades that drags my Persephone into hell with him.

She’s not Persephone. She’s Melanie Meyers Dean, and I love her.

I exhale and put my face in my hands, shuddering as I try to get a grip on myself.

I’m sick and she’s the only cure.

I’m sick for her, as sick as my father.

I glance up and he’s hardly moving in bed, the sound of his breath low and even. Yeah, it hurts. I hated him all my life. He took everything good from me. And it still hurts that he’s weak and mortal, and still, the motherfucker clinging fiercely to where my mother is.

Rage, impotence, it all swells in my chest. I’ve just worked my last mark with the help of Tina’s information. I carefully worked around my numbers so that only one mark remains . . . number five.

“The list?” Eric anxiously asks me after conferring with the doctors and realizing my father only has hours left. Hours.

“I’m going to get the payment,” I lie, pushing the chair back and rising.

But I won’t. I’m going to get back my girl, and then I’m going to come back here and tell my father that he failed. That he failed in making me like him. In making me completely selfish and evil.

I’m going to get back my girl and I’m going to fetch some of my cash and buy back my girl’s paper. He can put any price he wants on it. He can put my own life on it. Or the price of the Underground. But he’s going to tell me where my mother is, and he’s going to watch me scratch off Melanie’s name while I hand him the cash she owes.

He will think me weak. He will die thinking me weak.

I don’t give a shit anymore.

I’m fighting for what I care for and I’m going to fight for it if I spend the rest of my days in the shadows, making sure my girl’s all right.