KICK ASS: A Boxed Set by Julie Leto Page A

hand to apply pressure while he fished out the rest of the supplies.
    “I don’t understand,” Marisela said. “You were working with the DEA? You mean, you only went to prison to work undercover for the feds?”
    Laughter burst from his gut. “Not by a long shot. I was one of the few guilty men in prison, vidita . Grand theft, assault, attempted murder. I did them all.”
    “Because of the gang,” she said, attempting to rationalize, though why, he didn’t have a clue.
    Frankie had come to terms a long time ago with the fact that he didn’t play by any rules except his own. He had no idea why he’d so easily gravitated away from the straight and narrow path his hardworking parents had charted for him, but he had no one to blame but himself. And he certainly hadn’t gone to work for the feds out of any sense of good. Or more asinine, out of guilt. He’d worked for the feds because it beat staring at four walls twenty-three hours out of a day and provided a nice income for luxuries like cigarettes and deodorant.
    “In the hole,” Frankie explained, “the DEA sought me out, promised me a shorter stint if I helped bring down some asshole Columbian kingpin. I didn’t have anything better to do, so I helped them out. They liked my work, so they started moving me from lockup to lockup, never keeping me in any joint long enough to get shanked or ratted out.”
    “You didn’t mind being a snitch?”
    “What the hell did I care? They never asked me for shit on my own boys. I was working the system.”
    And after you got out?”
    Frankie couldn’t miss the expectation in her eyes. He glanced aside, hating the way one look from her reminded him of all the things he should say to her about his past, but couldn’t.
    “After I got out, I worked on the docks in Miami and kept my ears open. I did some more work with Titan when some Swedish smuggler set up shop in South Beach. After a while, I got bored, so I came home for a while, hoping to explore my options.”
    “By getting back in with los Toros and dealing drugs?”
    “Don’t fool yourself, Marisela. Los Toros were my boys. I called the shots, but I didn’t want to be responsible for nobody else no more. I’d given up enough for the gang.”
    “Including me.”
    She didn’t allow a wounded sound into her voice, but Frankie saw a glimmer of pain in her eyes that didn’t stem from her injury.
    “I had to do what I had to do, Marisela. You got out of the gang because you were tired of the life. Back then, I fed off the power, the violence.”
    Marisela glanced aside and inhaled sharply, handling her emotions with more control than he thought her capable. Or maybe, she just didn’t give a shit anymore. “What do you feed off now?”
    He grabbed surgical tape and more gauze and finished the last steps of dressing her wound. “The money. One more job and I can tell Ian Blake to stick his fancy organization up his ass. I’ll be my own boss again. I’ll answer to no one but me.”
    Voicing his dream out loud, even with spite searing his words, injected him with a euphoria more powerful than any drug he’d ever tried. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been truly in charge of more than what he had for dinner. For whatever naive reason, he’d thought his release from jail a few years ago would change his life, but the freedom had been just an illusion. He’d remained under the thumb of the DEA and NTSB, or whichever agency decided they needed him, addicted to the money they paid outside the joint—and the thrill. At first. But not anymore.
    “Once you break with Titan, what are you going to do with all that free time?”
    He shrugged. Beyond telling Blake to fuck himself, Frankie had no clue. “Haven’t decided. What about you? You gonna work for Blake?”
    “I don’t know.”
    Frankie frowned. Once she heard the details of the mission, she’d likely break something in her haste to sign up. Marisela might be a ball-breaker, but she was still a