Chapter 2 ⊰ 2 ⊱ Unknown Variable

⬩ 𝓚eegan ⬩

The envelope is in my jacket pocket. It’s been there for a week.

Address. Class schedule. A photograph I still haven’t looked at.

I didn’t see the point. I had what I needed to start building the approach—her routines, her patterns, the shape of her daily life before she knew anyone was looking. A face could wait. Faces make things personal, and I don’t do personal.

I step outside Cade Sinclair’s front door and light a cigarette.

The Sinclair estate is the kind of house that makes a statement about itself. Manicured hedges, stone facade, the kind of driveway that exists purely to give guests time to feel the wealth before they arrive at the door.

Six years.

Six years of playing the long game. Embedding myself in Cade Sinclair’s world, earning his trust one carefully managed conversation at a time, all under Levi’s orders and David’s design. 

I’ve been in this game for nearly half my life. The mafia has been my only family since I was an eighteen-year-old scared kid with nothing to lose and everything to prove. When Levi first pulled me aside for this assignment I was fresh off a job, hands still dirty. 

“Long-term. Deep cover. You up for it?” He’d said. 

I didn’t hesitate. 

In this world, hesitation gets you killed.

Now Cade Sinclair thinks I’m one of his most trusted men. He has no idea that the person he brought in to protect his family works for the very person he’s trying to protect them from.

The meeting today was routine. He’s been running scared since David escaped prison, tightening every loose end he can reach. He wanted a status update. I gave him one—sanitized, careful, everything he needed to hear and nothing that would make him ask the wrong questions.

He trusts me.

He shouldn’t.

I’m halfway done with my cigarette when a car pulls up.

I clock it automatically—compact, city plates, a small dent on the rear panel. The engine cuts, but nobody gets out. I don’t look directly; I don’t need to. My peripheral vision handles it while I finish my smoke.

The driver sits. One minute. Two. A woman, slight, dark hair. She’s staring at the house through the windshield. Not the way someone stares when they’re impressed. The way someone stares when they’ve made a decision they’re still arguing with themselves about.

Interesting.

I know that look. I’ve worn it myself, outside of rooms I had to walk into. The look of a person calculating whether what’s on the other side is worth what it’s going to cost them.

She finally moves. The door opens, she gets out, and—

I look.

Not a conscious decision. It’s just what happens.

There’s a sway to the way she moves—not the exaggerated bullshit you see in clubs, but something natural, almost predatory. Dark jeans, worn jacket, boots with some mileage on them. My eyes track her movements, a habit from years in this business. 

Always be aware. 

Always be ready. 

She reaches the bottom of the steps and slows. Her eyes go to the house, then—briefly, without expression—to me. She looks me over once. Then she moves to the porch railing and stands near me, like she’s decided I’m not worth adjusting her plans for.

“Enjoying the view?”

Still not quite looking at me. Just asking it at the air between us.

I turn to look at her, fully this time, and instantly realize—

She’s not talking about the view.

She clocked me watching her—somehow, without ever fully looking—and she’s calling it out while leaving herself a clean exit if I take it the wrong way. Plausible deniability, perfect delivery, completely unbothered. 

Who the hell is this woman?

I take a long drag. “Just taking in the sights,” I say.

The corner of my mouth pulls up, just slightly. I can’t help it.

She makes a sound. Half scoff, half something less charitable. Then, she reaches into her jacket. A joint, placed between her lips before she’s even fully turned back to the driveway. She pulls out a lighter. Flip. Nothing.

“Hope you don’t mind.” It’s not a question. She’s already trying the lighter again.

Oh?

The flame doesn’t catch. “Fuck,” she mutters, frustration coloring her voice. Her eyes flicker to me, a silent question dancing in them. I smirk, feeling a small thrill at having something she needs.

She tries the lighter a third time. A fourth. The wind kills it each time and she stares at the thing in her hand like she’s deciding whether it’s worth the energy to be annoyed.

I reach into my pocket and hold my lighter out toward her.

She looks at it. Then—finally, briefly— at me. The eye contact lasts exactly as long as it needs to: a flat, assessing second, the same look you’d give a door you’re not sure you want to open. Then she leans in and accepts the flame.

I smirk.

Control. I like being in it.

The tip of the joint glows. She straightens. Exhales. That close, I catch a whiff of her perfume—something expensive, I’d bet.

“Thanks.” Flat. Not unfriendly. Just not much.

She smokes. I smoke. She’s facing the house again, working through the joint with the focused economy of someone doing something medicinal. She’s not interested in conversation. She’s not interested in me. She’s not, as far as I can tell, particularly interested in being here at all.

I file it. Go back to my cigarette.

She takes a second hit. Holds it. Lets it go slowly.

And then, on the third, something shifts.

It’s subtle enough that I almost miss it. Almost. 

The line of her shoulders drops. The set of her jaw loosens. When she exhales this time it’s slower, longer, like something unwinding.

She turns and looks at me. Actually looks—direct, unhurried, the gold-brown of her eyes catching the light in a way I wasn’t prepared for. There’s something in them now that wasn’t there a minute ago. A kind of wry, lazy attention, like the world has just become marginally worth noticing.

“You gonna ask me for my name,” she says, “or am I gonna have to ask you for yours first?”

Dry. Amused. The voice of a completely different woman than the one who got out of the car.

“Keegan,” I tell her.

She nods slowly. “Maisie.”

I keep my face exactly where it is.

Maisie.

The name sits in my chest for one second—one—before I put it somewhere it can’t affect me. Because I’ve had her file for a week. I know her age, her schedule, hell, I even know her blood type. I have an unopened photograph in my jacket pocket right now.

I just didn’t know it was her.

I should’ve looked at the photograph.

“So.” I take the lead before she can, keeping my voice casual. “How do you know the Sinclairs?”

Playing dumb. But I need to hear it from her—need to gauge her reaction, see how much she’s willing to reveal.

She hesitates. I watch it happen. Then she takes another hit, exhales, and says, “Cade’s my half-brother. And his wife is my cousin who practically raised me.” A pause. The corner of her mouth pulls up, just barely. “But it’s not like some Alabama shit. They’re related to me, not to each other. It’s… complicated.”

A laugh escapes me before I can stop it. Short, genuine. She wasn’t what I expected—the delivery, the timing, none of it.

I bring it back quickly. But I felt it.

“How do you know Cade?” She asks it evenly, but I catch the slight narrowing of her eyes. She’s measuring me the same way I’ve been measuring her. “You don’t really look like the type of company he keeps.”

“What kind of company do I look like?” I ask.

She takes a slow hit. Studies me through the smoke with those eyes, taking her time about it.

“Honestly?” She exhales. “You’ve got a street criminal look to you.” Not an accusation. An observation. Like she’s reading something off a screen. “Don’t worry, though. It suits you.”

I feel a smirk pull at my mouth before I can stop that either.

She’s got balls. I’ll give her that.

“Street criminal, huh?” I lean in slightly. “And here I thought I was pulling off ‘misunderstood poet’ pretty well.”

Maisie laughs. A real one this time—warm, genuine, nothing like the flat half-sound from before. It’s a sound that nearly makes me falter. For a moment, I almost forget why I’m here, what I’m supposed to be doing.

Almost.

She offers me a hit. I shake my head.

“Don’t smoke?” she asks.

“Not pot.”

I’ve seen what drugs can do to people. As a child, I saw what they did to my own mother. I despise them.

Her grin widens. There’s a glint in her eye now, mischievous, deliberate. “Oh, sorry. I don’t carry my meth with me. Next time?”

The laugh comes before I can do anything about it. Genuine. Surprised out of me. It’s been a long time since someone did that.

I don’t like it. I like it completely. Neither is something I can afford.

The amusement settles but lingers in her eyes when she asks, “So, Keegan the misunderstood poet. Do you drink?”

Getting close is the job. Information lives in conversations. 

“Depends on the drink.”

She raises a brow. A small challenge in it. “What’s your poison?”

“Bourbon.”

Something shifts in her expression—a quiet approval, like I’ve passed something without knowing there was a test. “A man of taste.” She nods. “I’ve got a bottle of Blanton’s at home that’s begging to be opened.”

I keep the surprise off my face. Blanton’s isn’t a grad student’s bottle. Then again, she’s not your typical grad student.

“Well,” she says, and her voice takes on a mock-serious weight, “I’d invite you over for a smoke, but how about you come over for a drink, I’ll have a smoke, and we can talk about our hopes and dreams?” The sarcasm is clear. What’s underneath it is less so—loneliness, maybe. I recognize it because I’ve felt it too, though I’d never admit it. “I’m new here. I need friends.”

And there it is.

She’s not performing it. That’s what makes her dangerous. She just says the true thing in the voice of someone joking, and I can’t tell cleanly where one ends and the other begins.

I smirk. Habit. “I’m not the type of friend you want to make.”

It’s the most honest thing I’ve said to her. If she knew what was in the envelope in my jacket—the photograph, the file, what I’ve already agreed to do—she wouldn’t be looking at me like that.

She starts to say something.

“Was nice to meet you, Maisie.” I cut across it. Even. Final. I turn and walk.

Every step is controlled. Deliberate. The exit on my terms.

Except it wasn’t on my terms. None of this was. She was supposed to be a name in a file. An address. A schedule. A job I hadn’t put a face to yet because I hadn’t needed to.

I get to my car. Slide into the driver’s seat. Tinted windows, the city quiet on the other side of the glass.

I pull the envelope out of my jacket.

The photograph is a candid. Dark hair. Gold-brown eyes. Something in her expression that doesn’t quite close all the way.

I look at it for a long moment.

Then I put it back in the envelope, start the car, and pull out of the drive.

The job is the job.

Twelve years. It’s always been true.

I don’t think about the way she laughed.