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All I did was make sure waiting stopped being an option.

“You know what this mean?” Mr. Tonchile asked.

“I know exactly what it means.”

“And you can live with that?”

I thought about Xay standing in my doorway.

His fingers around my wrist.

His face when he told me what I wasn’t going to do.

I smiled.

“You get what you want.”

I leaned back in my chair.

“And so the fuck do I, Mr. Tonchile.”

That was it.

The detectives never found some secret enemy they hadn’t already known about.

There wasn’t one.

They found the debt.

They found the gambling.

They found the people Xay owed.

They were right.

Xavier Lawless died because he owed dangerous men money.

What they never figured out was why those men suddenly stopped being patient.

Nobody knew.

And nobody ever would.

I picked Xay’s picture up.

Ran my thumb across the glass.

“I did love you,” I whispered.

That was the fucked-up part.

I had.

Deeply.

Stupidly.

For years.