One Second After Another (The After Another Series #3) - Bethany-Kris Page 0,27

men in suits waited at the velvet, braided rope. Their presence and posture was more than enough to tell her there were likely guns under their three-piece suits.

They wouldn’t be a problem.

Knowing better than to linger—with a live bounty on her head, even being in a packed club with hundreds of faces all around her was dangerous—Penny headed for the platform VIP section. Unsurprisingly, she caught the eye of the man sitting in the booth alone before she had even managed to reach the stairs.

He didn’t stand. His dark gaze didn’t show surprise. Almost like ... he expected to see her there.

“Take a break,” she heard him tell the two guards who had finally noticed her approach. “It’s fine. Go have a smoke, and take him with you.”

“But, boss—”

“Go.”

They didn’t question the order again. Penny wondered, as the two men took the metal stairs down and passed her on the way, how many times they dared to question Cross Donati even once. By the look in his eye as he followed their retreating backs, it wasn’t very often. So was the life of a mafia boss, or that’s what she had come to learn.

The older man—with hair as dark as tar and only a whisper of gray despite the years that had left crow’s feet at the corner of his eyes—didn’t bother to stand even when Penny stood on the other side of the table from him. He tipped his head to the side, taking in her getup and the long white braid that she had flipped over her shoulder to at least keep it under control for the moment.

“Plans tonight?” he asked.

Penny shook her head. “Being cautious.”

“Yes, I suppose you have to do that now, don’t you? Comes with the territory of having a million-dollar bounty on your head.”

“Semantics.”

Cross gave her a look.

Penny only shrugged back.

Where was the lie?

“How did you find me?” he asked. “Tonight, specifically.”

“I know the right people. And I’m good at making phone calls.”

“And you’re here because—”

“Out of respect,” Penny told her former boss. “In case you had something to say to me, or you wanted to make a request. I thought it was only fair, considering ... well, you know.”

“That I paid millions for you to become what you did? That you’re offering a single million to make it all go away? That every effort we made to make you invisible was completely shot to shit? Or how about even that I’ve had to lie to my son and—”

“How did you know it was me—the bounty, I mean?”

Cross smirked, reaching forward for the glass of whiskey on the table. He downed half of what remained in the glass in one go and set it back down on the table with a crack. “Who else, Penny? Who else would do that the way it was done?”

“I’ve got a lot of enemies.”

“Now,” he agreed.

“I always did.”

The second she made her first kill within the ranks of pedophile rings overseas, she became a target. Each kill she added to the list after the first only added more to her back. It never really bothered her—that was a sacrifice she was willing to make, after all. Better her than ... everyone else.

Right?

She wasn’t so sure anymore.

“You didn’t need to come here—not for respect or anything else,” Cross told her, sighing as he cracked his knuckles and leaned back into the booth. “The contract with The League is void. You’re free to do what you want without my input, and honestly, I expect you to do just that.”

Well, then ...

“I am,” she replied softly.

“Then, you’re lying. Again. Like that night in the office on your birthday. You didn’t come here for the respect of the matter because I’m sure nothing I have said is anything you didn’t already know. Or suspect, either way. What are you lying about now?”

Penny swallowed hard, hating how he was right. “I’m trying to figure out something.”

“What?”

“What comes after, I guess. If there is one for me. I’ve been thinking about it. I have a lot of time to do that sort of thing lately. Apparently, they just kept me busy to keep me from thinking ... not because I was doing what everyone else wouldn’t.”

Cross considered her with that hard stare of his. The silence between them dragged on until she thought maybe it would be better to just turn around and leave. “That depends, Penny.”

“On what?”

“When the after is.” He lifted one shoulder, the blazer he wore custom fit to his tall