Marla always had a knack for landing on her feet, even when the ground was made of quicksand. I met her back when we were both broke enough to call a half-empty pack of smokes dinner. She had that kind of charm that made men forgive her before they knew what she’d done wrong. Then she vanished for a year. When she came back, she was all shine, new car, high-rise apartment, clothes that whispered money. The kind that didn’t come from a paycheck.

We met again at Tony’s, the kind of bar where the floor stuck to your shoes and the regulars looked like unpaid debts. She ordered champagne, which was like bringing a chandelier to a knife fight.

“Doing better these days?” I asked.

“Something like that.” She smiled, lazy and confident, but her eyes were running the math on everything, exits, faces, how much I knew.

I didn’t push. I figured if she wanted to lie, she’d at least make it interesting. But a few nights later, I saw her on the news, standing in the background behind Frankie Delano, a mid-level mob boss with a grin like a wolf’s skull. That told me everything I needed to know.

Frankie Delano didn’t do charity work, and nobody hung around him without paying a price.

So I went to see her.

Her place was uptown, marble floors, glass walls, and a view that cost more per month than I made in a year. She opened the door in silk and looked like sin that hadn’t been confessed yet.

“Frankie around?” I asked.

Her jaw tightened. “He’s not coming back.”

That’s when I saw the small tremor in her hand, not fear, not yet, but close enough.

“What happened?”

She turned to the window, shoulders drawn tight. “You ever get tired of living like you don’t matter?”

“Every day,” I said. “But at least I wake up.”

She faced me again. There was a pistol in her hand now, small and silver, just like the one Frankie liked to carry.

“He was going to kill me,” she said. “So I did it first. Then I took his cash. All of it.”

The silence after that was the kind that hums in your bones.

“How much?”

“Enough to disappear,” she said. “Enough for both of us if you’ve still got some loyalty left.”

I should’ve walked away right then. But loyalty’s a funny thing, it sticks even when it shouldn’t.

I helped her pack. I didn’t ask questions, and she didn’t offer answers. We left that night in a stolen car that smelled like pine air freshener and panic.

She said we’d drive to the coast, find a boat, start new. But the city doesn’t let go that easy.

By dawn, every station was talking about Delano’s body found in a warehouse by the river, two shots, execution style. Cops wanted Marla for questioning. The mob wanted her for everything else.

By the time we hit the bridge, I saw the black SUV in the mirror. No lights, but moving too clean, too steady. I knew that kind of tail.

“Friends of yours?” I asked.

She didn’t look back. “They won’t quit.”

The SUV gained on us. I cut through traffic, but the city was awake now, delivery trucks, taxis, morning commuters. Nowhere to run.

We hit a red light. I slammed the brakes, turned, and clipped a cab. Glass rained down. She screamed my name. By the time I got the car pointed down an alley, the SUV was gone.

She was shaking, clutching the bag in her lap, the money. I saw a flash of stacks bound in rubber bands, neat and heavy. A lifetime’s worth of bad decisions.

“We can’t keep running,” I said.

“We don’t have a choice.”

That’s when I knew it wasn’t we anymore. It was her.

She wasn’t scared, she was calculating. And I was the loose end she’d forgotten to cut.

We laid low in a motel outside the city. Cigarette burns on the carpet, a humming neon sign outside the window that buzzed like an electric flytrap. She showered while I sat by the door with the gun.

When she came out, she was dressed to move, jeans, boots, jacket. The bag was gone.

“You planning on saying goodbye?” I asked.

She froze. Then sighed, like it was all too predictable. “You’re too good for this life, Vince. You’d only slow me down.”

I stood, blocking the door. “That money’s not yours.”

Her eyes went cold. “It’s nobody’s now.”

The gun came up between us. I didn’t flinch.

“Don’t do this,” I said.

“I already did.”

She fired. The bullet hit the doorframe, close enough to ring my ears. I lunged, grabbed her wrist, and the gun clattered to the floor. She kicked me hard, and then she was gone, running into the night with a half-million in dirty bills.

I didn’t chase her.

By the time I staggered outside, the sun was bleeding over the horizon. The street was empty except for the sound of sirens somewhere far away.

That was three months ago.

They found the car she stole outside Phoenix. They didn’t find her. Rumor says she made it to Mexico, maybe Costa Rica. Maybe she’s sipping rum by the beach, still watching every door.

Sometimes I think about her, that look in her eyes when she realized she could buy her way out of anything.

And sometimes I think about what she left behind.

A gun with my prints on it. A dead mob boss. A warrant with my name.

I moved cities. Changed jobs. I don’t go by Vince anymore. But some nights, when the air smells like rain and gunpowder, I still hear her voice, soft, dangerous.

“You worry too much, Vince. I told you, I just got lucky.”

Maybe she did.

Maybe we both didn’t.