SEVEN
RIFT
Step four: Finding out what my target needed.
Step four and Gwyn was already proving to be unlike any other mark I’d dealt with before. By this point, with any other mark, I’d have been able to pinpoint at least one vital missing piece from their life. I’d once become the secret admirer of some asshole’s neglected wife. He’d claimed he was bored with her and needed someone more exciting, someone who hadn’t been ruined by his three kids.
For an entire month, I sent her roses, chocolates, gift cards, and presents. Anything and everything that would make her heart pitter-patter. By the time I revealed myself to her, I had her in bed that night. It was my fastest turnaround time to date. It was also one of the few times I’d been more than happy to rid my target of her dead weight.
She ended up leaving her husband, and we screwed around for another month before it was time for me to disappear. I’d given her everything she needed, everything she wasn’t getting from the prick she was married to. She was better off without him.
Knowing what my mark needed made it easier to establish my second chance meeting with them. But with Gwyn, she wasn’t as transparent, and I had to get creative.
My steps were a hundred times vital to my entire process, to the existence of my business. I followed each and every one like a religious regimen. They were my rules—my bible—and I didn’t start or end a job without following each one.
Already I was doing things a bit backward with Gwyneth. Instead of staging the epic rescue for her, I’d ended up cutting her with anger in the bookstore. Our first meeting hadn’t gone as planned, and I needed to make up for it quickly.
Also, step four with Gwyneth would be a bit tricky since she didn’t seem to lack anything in her life. She didn’t technically need me to ride in on a white horse and save her. If anything, seeing her with the children made me feel like she was much more of a hero than I could ever be.
Still, I played the secret admirer from afar to get a feel for the things she needed. If Mitchell wasn’t being everything she wanted, I would find out exactly what she wanted in a man and be that.
I sent flowers and chocolates and watched from afar when she received them, so I could gauge her reaction. She wasn’t impressed with those things and assumed they came from Mitchell.
“I had to sleep with her,” he said at our next meeting.
Disgusted with the way he worded his sentence, I sipped my coffee to keep myself from saying what I really wanted to say.
You should be so lucky that a woman as beautiful as her would want to be anywhere near your dainty dick.
“Please don’t send her any more flowers or chocolates. It’s not doing anything but pushing her closer to me.”
Setting my cup down, I cleared my throat. “I wouldn’t need to do such things if you would tell me the things she wants and needs.”
“How the fuck am I supposed to know what she wants and needs?”
I shook my head and chuckled, careful not to piss him off. He was my paycheck, after all.
You’re her fiancé! You should know more about her than anyone else!
Again, I thought it but didn’t say it aloud.
I was starting to see more of a problem with Mitchell than with Gwyneth, which tended to happen. I wasn’t in denial. I knew men were stupid, cheating assholes just as much as women were heartless whores, but I tried not to think about it. My revenge wasn’t for the men. It was for the women. So, because of that, I tended to overlook the men’s fuckups.
“Don’t worry. I won’t be doing that again. It was a waste of my time. She wasn’t impressed, and she ended up taking everything I sent to the kids at the hospital.”
He snorted. “Those fucking kids. They’re all she thinks about.”
His words made me hate him even more, but not so much that I would walk away from the job.
Maybe if he was more present in their relationship, she wouldn’t have to spend all her time with the children.
Maybe if he wasn’t busy fucking a model, he could spend a little time getting to know the woman he was supposed to marry.
It wasn’t my problem, so I wasn’t going to dwell on it. Instead, I sank my brain into all things Gwyneth and moved on to my next plan.
Thanks to Mitchell, Gwyneth did indeed need a white knight on a white horse. She needed saving from him, and after seeing a bit of how their relationship worked, I was able to determine something she needed.
Attention.
Someone who took the time to get to know her. To find out her wants and likes. To understand her needs and the things she enjoyed doing.
I would be that man, and she wouldn’t stand a chance. But first, I had to follow the essential rules in this game.
Rule number one: Men and women always go for the impossible.
It was human nature to want something we couldn’t have. It might make the process a little longer, but I had to somehow become everything Gwyn wanted and couldn’t have.
Rule number two: Women loved assholes.
Plain and simply put, they loved to chase. It was no different with men. The good news was, I had already been a dick to Gwyn once. Doing it again wasn’t going to be hard, considering I was beginning to get annoyed with this job for several reasons.
Not only was the man paying me completely fucking clueless about his fiancée, but his fiancée was probably the sexiest woman I had ever laid eyes on.
It angered me to no end that when I fucked her, and I would definitely be fucking her at some point, I would be doing it for Mitchell instead of for myself. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy it.
I smiled.
It tilted my lips, deepening the irresistible dimple in my right cheek, and my teeth showed. I felt like the big, bad wolf. Gwyn would be a challenge, and like any self-respecting businessman, I loved a good challenge.
“So what’s the next step?” Mitchell asked.
I turned toward him, my smile firmly in place and my plan slowly forming behind my eyes.
He chuckled. “I see you have it all figured out. I’ll leave you to it.”
And then he was gone, leaving me at the table with my thoughts.
Later, I found myself across town standing over the engine of a seventy-thousand-dollar Mercedes. It was time for my second meeting with Gwyn, and as I casually disconnected her battery cables, I smiled to myself. Catching this little bird in my trap would be more fun than it should be.