Bad Boy Ink (Get Ink'd #5) - Ali Lyda Page 0,1

who had their eye on that same prize. A man who looked like he could be in the movies, who smiled like he farted rainbows and sunshine, and who I’d all but challenged to try and take that job away from me.

And fuck me, he had the skills to do it, too.

Bryce was a conundrum, a puzzle that I was so, so tempted to solve. I couldn’t help it. Finding someone who was on par with me when it came to cracking code was thrilling. But sometimes Bryce made me think of a carnivorous plant. The hacking skills and competition were the nectar I craved, all wrapped up in a beautiful package, but if I got too close…

“I really want to be self-sufficient,” I added, refusing to go down that particular rabbit hole. I played all my cards safe and straightforward. But Bryce was a wild card that held far too much risk. “You know me, Bryan. I don’t mix well with others. Besides, I need this job.”

The job had become sacred for me. What had started as an idea printed on a flyer had grown into the answer to all my problems, of which I had several. Just imagining my father’s face as I told him what I’d managed to accomplish on my own...

“What’s so special about this one in particular?” Bryan asked. “You could have any computer career you wanted now, with or without a degree. You have the skills.”

Bryan wasn’t wrong. I’d been a computer prodigy from a young age, young enough that I hadn’t had any moral qualms with breaking rules, so long as it gave me the rush of cracking something new and forbidden.

“I mean,” I said, pushing my food around on my plate. “My parents are loaded and decided not to share it with me when I wouldn’t bend to their ideas of ‘acceptable’ careers. Just trying to make enough to live on my own has been a struggle.”

“It seems more like it’s been a struggle to make enough to live legally. Or without selling more than a pound of flesh.” Bryan shuddered at that, and I was sure he was revisiting his very scary run-in with an obsessed sugar daddy last year.

My shrug was casual, but only because I knew Bryan didn’t judge me. “Fair. But even the money from the app—and my extracurricular activities—only goes so far. I’m tired of living one keystroke away from danger. Still, it’s better than trying to be the surgeon or hedge fund manager my dad thought I should be.”

Bryan laughed and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, Dr. Porter. Your bedside manner might make that difficult. Although being a complete asshole worked out for Dr. House, so who knows?”

Just the thought of wearing scrubs or a white jacket had me wincing. “Uh, yeah, that was not going to happen. And I mean, I knew they were going to be disappointed, but I guess it was one straw too heavy in a long line of disappointments that I wasn’t the perfect high society child they’d hoped for. I didn’t realize just how conditional my parents’ tolerance of me was—they wrote me a check to stay out of their hair if I wasn’t going to live my life their way and said goodbye and weren’t even sad to see me go.”

I was able to speak about what went down with my parents with carefully crafted nonchalance after all these years—mostly out of necessity. It was hard to imagine getting pity from anyone, even someone as empathetic as Bryan, when your biggest complaint was “Waaaaah, mommy and daddy wanted a successful life for me and got angry when I didn’t want the same life.” It felt stupid to whine when I knew Bryan’s mom had deserted him as soon as his safety had interfered with her dating life.

But that didn’t mean I didn’t feel the acute pain of rejection each and every time I thought about it. It didn’t erase that even at twenty-one years old, a large part of me just wanted my parents’ respect and love.

I wanted them to want me, and not just because I did what they said.

But since I couldn’t have that, I mostly wanted to prove them fucking wrong.

“This degree, this job at the FBI...I know it will mean something, you know? I can prove that my skills are valuable not just to a bank account, but to society. Not their society, but society as a whole. And I can shove my success in my