Of course that brought to mind all the debauchery and experimentation that played out live and in color on the monitors in his office. Before working at the club, I would’ve told him to go to hell. Giving up that kind of control, especially to him, would’ve sent me into a panic and caused me to flee. Now it seemed intriguing and titillating. I blew out a low breath and reached out to put my hand on his hard thigh.

“Maybe. You’ll have to work for it, though.”

He chuckled and turned the SUV into the parking lot in front of the club. He parked next to a nondescript van that looked like it belonged to one of the work crews that were taking care of the drippy mess in the building.

“What happened with Bayla?” He shut the engine off and turned in his seat so that he was facing me. The look on his face was intense, so I was thinking really hard about the words I wanted to use to explain that I wanted the girl gone without ratting her out. To avoid that probing gaze, I shifted my eyes to the van and frowned a little when I saw the side door begin to open. I hadn’t seen anyone working when we pulled up, so I thought it was weird that someone would be exiting the vehicle as soon as we rolled to a stop next to it. Only the door just rolled open a few inches. There definitely wasn’t enough room for any kind of grown person to come in or out.

“That’s odd.” I was lifting my hand to point over Nassir’s shoulder at the van when I saw the back end of the gun poke out of the opening. I didn’t have to utter any more words. I frantically reached out and grabbed a fistful of Nassir’s long hair to jerk his head down at the same time as I folded myself over. As soon as both of our heads were dash level, there was a deafening bang followed by the driver’s window of the SUV shattering and covering both of us in a blanket of glass shards. I heard Nassir swear over my own startled scream as I lifted my hands to cover my head. Another blast rang out and I cowered into the smallest ball possible as the window on the passenger side of the car exploded and rained glass down on us.

Nassir was saying something to me and his eyes were huge in his face, and for the first time ever I could see fear twisting and turning in the molten depths. He leaned over my back, popping the lock on the seat belt and lifting up just enough to push my door open.

“Go!” He had his hands on my shoulder and was trying to push me out of the car, but I was too busy pulling on the front of his shirt to get him to come with me. I couldn’t let him go. “Get out of here! Go find Chuck!”

Even if I didn’t want to cooperate, there was no way Nassir was going to let me remain in the line of fire. In fact, as soon as I slid out of the car, with the help of a mighty shove from him, another shot rang out and I heard it thump into the metal on the opposite side of the Range Rover. I was gasping for air and trying to reach back into the car and blindly grab for Nassir so I could pull him out with me but my hands came up empty. It took every iota of courage I possessed to get on my knees and peek back inside the car. I was terrified I was going to find Nassir bloody and filled with holes, but instead he was sitting up straight behind the wheel of the SUV and looking directly into the barrel of the gun that was pointed at him.

I whispered his name and his eyes shifted to me, but they were wrong. The fire that usually lit them up was gone and in its place was a cool bronze that looked like it had been molded and crafted into some ancient weapon. He waved a hand at me and told me to get myself safe and then he pushed open the door of the car and stepped right into the line of fire. The barrel of the gun couldn’t have been more than two feet away from the center of his chest. I screamed his name but he wouldn’t look back at me. I frantically scrambled for my phone so I could call 911 and Chuck.

“I know why you want to hurt me, I understand why you think you want me dead, and I can’t say I blame you.”

Nassir’s voice was calm. Too calm.

“I recognize that I made you into what you are, and that you think the only way to change your circumstances and to have a better life is to kill your creator. I grew up thinking the same thing.”

I watched through the opening of the doors as the van door slid open a fraction more to show the entire pistol and the shaky arm of the kid holding it. It was obvious he wasn’t familiar with the weapon and one of his hands was still all messed up, and that made me think Nassir might end up taking a bullet even if the kid didn’t mean to fire one.

“The thing is, it doesn’t matter where you go or who you punish or what kind of life you make for yourself, you’ll always be that thing that was molded, crafted, formed. You will always be the product of the things you have done and the things that were done to you, but if you want a chance at any kind of life, if you want to be worthy of anything, you have to be more than what you were made to be. You have to break that creation apart and make something new.”

The gun dipped down for a second and I saw the kid poke his head out. He looked so young, so untried, that I couldn’t imagine him being the one that was behind all the things that had been happening at the club. I couldn’t fathom that he was the one that might very well give my devil hell. I couldn’t sit there and do nothing while the man I loved had a gun pointed at him. All this time I was determined to be by his side and that included when he was facing something that might end it all for both of us.

“You have no idea what he put us through.” The kid sounded like he was going to cry.

I saw Nassir nod his head and looked down at the buzzing phone in my lap. I knew that Chuck was making his way around the back of the club and the cops were on their way. Chuck had heard the gunshots from inside. I crept around the fender and poked my head around the side. Both Nassir and the kid turned to look at me, and before I could say anything, Nassir took a step closer to the end of the gun so that now, if the kid did pull the trigger, there was nowhere for the bullet to go but right into the center of his chest.

“I do know and it isn’t right. You didn’t deserve it.”

The kid snarled something low and furious as Nassir lifted his hands up and away from his chest. The kid slowly moved to exit the van, the gun only inches from the center of Nassir’s chest. It was almost touching him. The kid wiped his free hand over his mouth and his eyes started to dart around the parking lot.

“He was always an asshole. He liked to use his fists on all of us. He drank too much, cheated on my mom, and there was never any money, but he was gone most of the time, so we just sort of weathered the storm when he was home.”