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Because Carmen will lose everything. And it’s not like she’s asking for diamonds or a mansion or some bullshit superyacht. She wants a dog shelter. She’s got plans and little lists all over her kitchen table. I can already picture her there—hair tied back, muddy, that ridiculous soft look on her face while she’s surrounded by a bunch of old, half-blind, limping dogs nobody else wants. She’d be smiling the whole damn time, talking to them like they matter, even when they’re pissing on her shoes and walking into walls.

It’s what she’s like with Fifi. That ugly little gremlin looks like something a witch coughed up, but Carmen looks at her like she’s a prize show dog. Talks to her in that gentle voice. Pets her like she’s precious. Loves her exactly as she is—bad bladder, bad breath, horror-movie face and all.

My throat tightens.

“While I’ve got you,” Ray says, like we’re discussing paperwork and not ruining a woman’s life, “there’s something else I need you to sort out.”

“I’m busy.”

“You’ll make time. Need you to visit a friend of yours.”

“Don’t have any friends.”

“Dean Carter bought that casino. I smoothed the path, introduced him to the right people, made sure the right palms got greased, and the prick didn’t even have the decency to invite me to the reopening.”

I let out a short, dry laugh. “Don’t you have better things to worry about than whose party list you’re on?”

“It’s not about the invite,” Ray says. “It’s about the principle.”

“Right. Much more mature.”

“I want you to go down there and remind him who put him in that chair.”

“I’ll get to it when I can,” I say.

The line goes dead before I can say anything else.

I lower the phone slowly and sit in the dark, staring at nothing.

This is a shit job. I knew it the second Ray laid it out.

I could just kill Maverick. Go behind Ray’s back and make it look like an accident. There are a hundred ways to do it if you don’t care what happens afterward.

But Carmen would get dragged right into the middle of it. With the divorce still active and millions on the line, the timing would look suspicious as hell. Police, lawyers, reporters. Her name splashed everywhere while strangers pick her apart.

There has to be another way.

I could tell Ray the job’s dead. Let him bitch about it. Except Ray doesn’t bitch. Ray calculates. He’ll send Marco.

My eye twitches.

That’s not happening.

I drag both hands over my face. This is getting out of hand.

No more thinking about Carmen.

Especially not the part where she made me whimper like a fucking idiot.

I push the thought away hard, lay back, and pull the covers over me. Before I can settle, my door creaks open. Theo stands there in his dinosaur pajamas, rubbing one eye.

“You should be asleep,” I say.

“I had a nightmare.” His mouth wobbles. “A cookie turned into a monster and tried to eat me.”

“That’s what you get for eating so much sugar.”

He doesn’t smile.