Black Listed by Shelly Bell

past comes back to ruin it all? Will she stand by you or kick you out?”
    He leaned across the table and took her hands again. “I can’t speak for Thea, but if our situations were reversed, I’d support her. We can’t change our pasts. We can’t predict the future. It’s how we live our lives each day that matters.”
    â€œWell, isn’t this cozy?” said Sawyer dryly, standing by the door.
    What was he doing here? He wasn’t supposed to pick her up until she called him.
    She yanked her hands from Asa’s and shot out of her chair. “Sawyer, this isn’t what it looks like.”
    He crossed his arms, anger radiating off him. Was he jealous?
    â€œLet me guess. He’s a client.” He continued, not giving her a chance to speak. “No? I’ll try again. Brother.” He shook his head. “Not it?”
    â€œActually, he is,” she blurted. “My brother. This is Asa.” She dipped her head, gesturing to her brother. “Asa, Sawyer Hayes.”
    Asa stood, his eyes narrowed into dark slits. “I know who he is.”
    Sawyer shocked her by continuing to appear angry. In fact, if anything, he seemed angrier. She would’ve thought that once he knew Asa was her brother, he would’ve relaxed. But his jaw was clenched so tightly, she wouldn’t be surprised if he broke a tooth.
    â€œAt least one of us knows the other,” Sawyer said. He shoved his hands in his pockets, something she suddenly realized he did whenever he felt vulnerable. “I thought you had no family. Of course, that was another one of your lies, wasn’t it?”
    She nodded. When they’d been together before, she had lied and told him she had no family. But once she left and until today, that lie had become her truth. “I have two older brothers. My mother died before I met you, and I just learned that my father died as well.”
    Sawyer winced. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
    â€œI’m not. He wasn’t a good guy.”
    He nodded, his shoulders no longer around his ears and his jaw relaxing. He told her with his eyes that their conversation wasn’t over. “The crew finished up with your condo. I made sure to pay in cash and paid them to lose the paperwork, so that there’s nothing tying you to the vandalism.”
    Her brother’s eyes widened. “Vandalism? What’s going on, Annie?”
    Sawyer snorted. “Annie? Cute.”
    She ignored him and turned to her brother. “Someone broke into my condo yesterday and trashed it. It’s no big deal.”
    â€œNo big deal?” Sawyer said from behind her. “They destroyed every piece of clothing and every book you owned. And don’t forget about the ants.”
    Horror crossed Asa’s face. “Ants? They knew you don’t like ants?”
    â€œNo one likes ants.”
    But her especially. On her tenth birthday, her father had taken her and her brothers to a horse farm under the guise of giving them riding lessons. What she hadn’t realized until later was that while she’d proudly ridden her first horse, he’d been conning the farm’s owner out of ten thousand dollars. Unfortunately, when she finished her lesson, she found that her brothers had disappeared, and she’d run around the farm looking for them before stumbling face-first into a large sand hill. It didn’t take more than thirty seconds before she was covered with ants.
    Red ants that bit every part of her body until she was swollen and red.
    To clean her off, her father had thrown her into a filthy pond, forgetting that she didn’t know how to swim. She’d almost drowned before Asa had jumped in to save her.
    Her brother moved closer to her, speaking low, as if he didn’t want Sawyer to hear him. “You think it’s one of your old marks?”
    â€œYou found me. Sawyer found me. It wouldn’t be a stretch to assume someone