“Whether I did or not is irrelevant. Circumstances change. I want out.” I lit up a joint coolly, throwing the still-lit match onto the desk between us. I did it mainly to spite him and to remind him that he was not the boss of me. Though I wasn’t entirely sure if that was true. The match sizzled and died, and I wished Darren would follow suit.

“You have a few more months left, I believe.” Darren cracked his neck, glancing at the time on my phone. He looked oddly at ease, and I wondered what kind of Xanax he was popping these days.

“She has a job. She’s got friends. She’s got me. None of that is going to change in the next six months, or years, if she decides to stay in Todos Santos.” The thought she might not made me want to break someone’s nose. “So the whole timeline issue is irrelevant. I’m not asking for the remainder of the money. I’m letting you walk away after paying me three million dollars for way more than six months.” For a lifetime. But, of course, I didn’t utter this shit aloud because for one, it was pathetic, and two, I knew Jesse was going to wise up sooner or later and go for a guy who deserved her. Life doesn’t stop for anyone. Even not for a low-bending asshole like me.

“The time limit was the reason we had a contract,” Darren argued, his left eye ticking, before adding, “but that was before you broke the contract. You’re right about one thing, Bane. Circumstances have changed.”

I leaned forward. “Don’t give me this bullshit. I helped your stepdaughter more than her therapist and the two of you have, combined.”

“Still broke a contract,” he said dryly.

I realized I didn’t have the time nor the interest to bicker with this clown, so I just waved him off. “Know what? Whatever. I spent around a mill of what you gave me. I’ll wire you the remaining two million back. We’ll call it even. Move on with your life and put that wife of yours on a shorter leash.”

“Bane.” He sprawled his bony fingers on the desk, grinning. “You’re not listening carefully to this entire conversation.”

I cocked my head to the side. “Huh?”

“You’re seriously, stupidly fucked.”

Darren opened a locked drawer in his desk, not sparing me a look. He took out a pile of documents from it and slapped it on the surface between us, before taking a steady breath, his expression blasé and foreign on his face, and said, “Why don’t you read clause number seventy-seven, point seven, Mr. Protsenko? Maybe the damages clause will make the penny drop.”

Then I finally got it.

The lisp.

It was gone.

It was gone, and so was the man I thought I’d read so well. Darren Morgansen straightened in his seat. He looked sharper, more alert. Not the same god the tycoons of Todos Santos were, but closer. Warmer.

What the fuck are you playing at, old man?

He slid the signed contract my way, and my eyes searched frantically for that goddamn clause I hadn’t bothered reading. I didn’t even have to ask why he’d faked a goddamn lisp. It was to throw people like me off. That’s why I’d skimmed the contract. Because he acted like a weak-chinned chicken. He wasn’t. He was something else entirely, and the worst part was that I had yet to figure out what. My eyes landed on the clause, and I could almost feel the chuckle Darren produced from his mouth inside my own throat, choking me.

77.7 In the case of termination or breach of the contract for any reason whatsoever by Roman Protsenko (The Entrepreneur), and with respect to the time, effort, and resources of Darren Morgansen (The Investor), The Entrepreneur shall compensate The Investor with $1.5 Million USD, which is a readily ascertainable sum certain of damages suffered by The Investor.

My eyes kept on reading and reading and re-fucking-reading the same paragraph over and over again, because it didn’t make any sense. How had I signed something like this? I was savvy. Every move I made was calculated to a fault. I may have looked like the easy-going pothead, and I certainly played the part—just like Darren played his—but I was a chess player, for fuck’s sake. Artem would kill me if he knew. If he was alive. Which he wasn’t.

Shit. Oh, God. Shit, shit, shit.

Darren propped his elbows on his desk, his smirk widening. He was having a great time. He pressed his index finger to the middle of the page and dragged it slowly back to his side of the desk, making a show of sighing. “Looks like you’re in a bit of a pickle.”

I stared him down, feeling the air inside my body turning into fuel, burning with anger. “What’s your fucking angle?”