Asa (Marked Men #6) by Jay Crownover Read Free Book Online Page A

my side when I was dying. I knew she had every reason to walk away from me, but instead she had done everything in her power to save me and she had given me a new life of my own. One I was terrified I was going to rip to shreds any second now.
    Zeb shook his head a little and yanked the door open. “I think you need to cut yourself some slack.”
    I shrugged. “Maybe.”
    I shoved him on his shoulder out the door and closed it in his face. I liked Zeb. We had a lot in common, but he didn’t know the whole story, didn’t know some of the really terrible things I had done. He didn’t know that when I died, when everything went black and I knew I wasn’t coming back to rejoin the mortal coil, every single, terrible, awful, horrible thing I had ever done in my life floated before me live in vivid color.
    The way I used Ayden. The way I had never stopped her from doing what she was doing, which I did so that I could get what I wanted. The sex, the drugs, all of it a kaleidoscope of regret so hard and heavy I was sure it was dragging me to hell. I loved my sister more than anything in the world and yet I hadn’t ever been able to stop myself from treating her like a pawn in one of my games. Watching what I did to Ayden, what I allowed her to do for me, was worse than every blow from the baseball bats the bikers had wielded. Seeing the heartbreak in her whiskey-colored eyes when I finally caught up to her after years apart was enough to make me glad I wouldn’t ever be opening my own eyes again.
    On top of that, there were the old ladies I scammed and the bikers I ripped off. There were the cars I stole and the men I knew my mom was sleeping with to pay our rent while I did nothing to stop it or help the family out. There was the debutante I had charmed into giving me her college fund, which I promptly wasted on a backroom poker game. There was the elderly gentleman looking for a companion that I had convinced not only that I was gay, but that I was interested in him, convinced him just enough to get him to write me a check so I could pursue my passion for photography; needless to say, I wasn’t gay or a photographer, but his ten grand had gone a long way in funding my next scam. The number of people I had screwed over was endless, and as their faces rolled like a movie behind my eyes as life leached out of me, I knew I was getting what I deserved.
    When I had woken up, had seen Ayden looking down at me while I struggled to realize that even the devil in hell didn’t want me, I realized something bright, sharp, and clear. I was an asshole. I was a bad man that had done bad things and I was always going to be that guy, but I never, never wanted to hurt my sister again. I never wanted her to have to worry about me, never wanted her to have to suffer for me or lose anything because of me ever again. I was always going to be a screw-up, but I was going to actively try to avoid causing any more damage, and so far it had been going pretty well. I just had to hold on to those memories, those regrets and that remorse, tight enough that my hands would be too full to ever do the devil’s work again.
    I pulled the cash drawer out and put it and the sales receipts in the safe that was in Rome’s office. I made sure all the cameras were on, especially the ones in the parking lot that he had recently installed. I got jumped one night after work by a bunch of kids with a vendetta that had actually led to my arrest and a legal headache that had taken longer to deal with than it should have because of my past. So now I was hypervigilant and always made sure the eye in the sky was watching my every move.
    It was a little after one in the morning. The parking lot was mostly empty except for a few cars that were left over from people that hadn’t wanted to drive home after drinking or local neighborhood cars that Rome let borrow a slot. The Bar wasn’t in a terrible part of town and I was now pretty used to keeping odd hours since I