by Ava Kendrick
The answer was always the same.
If I didn’t do it, somebody else would.
Twenty-Two
Roman
Cleo quivered. Her pupils were so dilated that her eyes looked inky black in the dim light.
My hand closed around her throat.
Why? Why him? I asked her silently in my mind. Not you.
Dmitri had said it wasn’t a domestic, but I wasn’t an idiot. Cleo wasn’t a criminal. Or a junkie. There was only one possible explanation. And it made me want to hunt him down and…
She smiled down at me and rode my cock even harder. I closed my eyes and groaned. My hand tightened.
Could I?
I cursed her for ever getting involved; cursed myself for letting myself fall for her. It would have been so easy to just walk away when I had the chance. Now? I was fucking screwed, every which way.
Cleo gasped; giggled. I opened my eyes and loosened my grip on her throat.
“You like that, baby?” I whispered.
She nodded.
Could I do it? I tightened my hand again. It was either her or me, now. If I didn’t kill her, they’d come after me. And I could do without that shit-storm. And who was she anyway?
I felt tears prick at my eyes for the first time in a long, long time. I hadn’t cried in years. But the thought of taking her life was having a strange effect on me. I didn’t care about anyone or anything anymore. That was what my reputation was built on.
So why was I reacting like this? I hadn’t even hurt her, yet I was consumed by guilt and sadness.
I looked up at her objectively. I’d known her for barely a month. It was lust. That was all.
She twisted her head, pulling away from my grasp. And I let her—for now. I watched. I was just thinking with my dick, was all. Because, fuck—she was a good lay. But she wasn’t the only one. I’d survived thirty-three years without her, and I’d survive another thirty-three. If I let her live, on the other hand, I might not make it to Christmas.
But was that it? Survival? Was that enough? A month ago, I would have shrugged. What did I care? Wake, eat, kill, drink, sleep. That was my life. A never-changing rota with no room for spontaneity.
What had changed?
She looked down at me, still bouncing on my cock. Her eyes were wide. Innocent. But the fire that burned inside them was not. She burned with desire for me, so strong I could see it written all over her face. She smiled and bit her lip.
It was her. She’d come into my life.
She’d knocked on my door one night and refused to be kept out by the walls I’d put up around myself. That was what she’d done. Not only that, but she’d brought her quirky, cute unpredictability. Let’s go for a walk at one in the morning, she’d suggest when we couldn’t sleep. A month before I would have asked why. Now, though, I was shuffling out of bed before she’d even finished suggesting it. Because it was what she wanted to do.
I thrust my hand between us, finding her swollen clit with my fingers. She cried out as I stroked and teased her, not losing her rhythm even when her cunt clenched around me.
Fucking hell, it was enough to tip me over the edge. No, not tip—throw. I grabbed her hips and pulled her tight to me, thrusting as deep into her as I could. She squeezed herself around me as I came, sending me to a place I don’t think I’ve ever been before.
I threw my head back and squeezed my eyes shut, wishing we could stay like that. It was so simple. If only life was the same.
But it wasn’t. I had a choice to make, and neither option was pleasant. But only one path would lead to my survival. Which made it a no-brainer—no matter how much I hated the idea of harming her.
It was time to stop thinking about it and just accept it. I had no choice.
Twenty-Three
Cleo
“Ben! No! Don’t!” I woke with a start, my hands held out in front of me. Blinking in the darkness, I fought to hold onto the memory; fought as hard as I could. But it just trickled away like sand through my fingers; gone before I had a chance to unlock its secrets. For all I knew it was just a meaningless dream.
I sat up, hugging the comforter to my naked body. The dream was gone now, but its feelings still lingered. I glanced behind me. Roman was asleep, turned to face me like he always did in the night. Why was I dreaming about Ben when I had Roman in my life? I didn’t know.
Dread and gloom hung over me. I didn’t know why. I was happy with Roman. Happier than I’d ever been with Ben.
Ben, who’d left me alone in the hospital and hadn’t even visited to tell me it was over. But was I surprised? We’d only lived together for a few months, and it hadn’t exactly been a wonderful honeymoon period. He worked late nights in the brokerage. Often I found myself at home alone with nothing to do. We’d moved to the other side of the city, away from Julia. I’d lost count of the number of nights I’d spent in front of the TV, alone with a microwave meal for one.
I’d go to bed and he’d come home while I slept, crawling in beside me stinking of smoke and alcohol from whatever bar he’d gone to that night for client drinks. At least when I’d lived alone in my studio, I’d been close to my best friend.
So I knew that even if the home invasion hadn’t happened, we probably wouldn’t have been together for much longer.
That was why I was confused by my dreams. Even awake, whenever I thought of Ben, I felt this enormous dread. I guessed it was grief at the way we’d broken up, because it sure as hell couldn’t have been grief for our relationship.
I glanced back at Roman. He was nothing like Ben. He made me feel good. He made me want to pounce on him every time he walked in the damn door. Why then was I still dreaming about Ben? I shook my head. The crazy thing was I was starting to feel guilty, like I was somehow betraying Roman by dreaming about somebody else.
I sighed and lay back down, listening to the sound of his shallow sleeping breath. I knew it would take hours for me to drift off.
Twenty-Four
Roman
I kept my eyes closed even though the first beep of her alarm had woken me. I was a light sleeper—always had been. I’d wake at the slightest noise in my apartment or near it. Sometimes it bugged me, like when a neighbor’s dog barked, or somebody upstairs slammed a door too hard when I’d just managed to switch my mind off after an intense job.
Or when I had to face my girlfriend, whose jerk fuck of an ex-boyfriend had hired me to kill her.
I tried to concentrate on my breathing, keeping it light and steady as she tiptoed around the room collecting her clothes for the day. In. Pause. Out.
Anything but think about what I needed to do.
I couldn’t put it off any longer; that was the truth. And I needed to accept that—for both our sakes. I thought of the scrunched up paper in the nightstand, irrationally hoping that all of the times I’d screwed it up might have made the ink fade. No such luck—and it wasn’t like Dmitri’s client would accept that excuse anyway.
No—it had been too long. I needed to call him before he lost patience and decided to track me down himself. Sure, only a handful of people knew of my existence and where to find me, but I had no doubt that if he didn’t know where I was, he had the resources to figure it out. And if he found me with her…
Cleo padded back into the room after her shower. Even with my eyes closed I could picture what she was doing. I could picture the way her round tits strained at the towel she’d twisted around her. I was one step ahead of her, her footsteps confirming my knowledge of her routine.
A quick towel dry of her hair in front of the tiny mirror on the dresser. Then she pulled open one of the creaking drawers and took out the mascara and powder she’d stashed in there.
I smiled at the memory—she’d seen the look on my face and told me that she was taking a damn drawer and not to get all pissy and precious about it because it didn’t mean she desperately wanted to get married. She just needed some damn storage space because of the amount of time she spent here. The fu
nny thing was I hadn’t been freaked out at all.
Remembering that ruined my train of thought; so much so that it took me by surprise when she brushed her lips against mine—just like she always did if she was leaving when I was still asleep.
I must have jerked in surprise.
“You awake?”
“Mmm,” I muttered, pretending I was still half asleep.
“Okay lazy,” she said, and I felt a flutter in my chest as I heard the smile in her voice. I loved it when she teased me like that. “I’m going to the library. Back in a while, okay?”
“Mmm,” I said again.
I wanted nothing more than to reach up and pull her back into bed beside me. To tell her that I had more than enough money to take care of us both.
But it was too late for that.
I didn’t regret taking the call from Dmitri; if anything I was grateful. If I’d turned down that job, then she wouldn’t have just gently closed my bedroom door to keep from disturbing me. I wouldn’t be able to smell the subtle scent of her perfume in my room.
No, if he’d hired someone else, they’d already have taken her; my life would have been as empty and as pointless as it had always been.
I opened my eyes when I heard the front door slam, relief and guilt flooding through me. I couldn’t look at her now without feeling a stab of pain with the usual lust and need.
I could have had all of the money in the world—it was too late now. I couldn’t buy myself out of this. Oh sure, I could have run for the Caribbean or some other far-flung island. But I’d have been kidding myself if I thought he couldn’t find me there.
The way I saw it, I had two options.
Do the job.
Or get killed and she’d die anyway.
Whatever I did, it’d work out the same in the end. I closed my eyes, delaying the inevitable for as much longer as I could, even if I could only put it off for minutes more. I wished for the millionth time that I’d never gone to Tully’s that night.
Twenty-Five
Cleo
I put the popcorn on the table and glanced at Roman with a smirk. When I lived with Ben, all those nights with popcorn and movies just reinforced how lonely I was. Now, movie nights were like heaven. The smile soon left my face when I saw the expression on his.
“Hey, are you okay?” I asked, flopping down beside him.
He glanced at me as if he was looking at me in deep water—seeing but not really seeing.
I felt my heart flip-flop. There was something up with him. Or so I thought—I mean, it had only been around a month since we’d met; it wasn’t like I even knew him that well.
But it didn’t seem that way. It seemed like we were inseparable; I felt like I’d known him my whole life. We could barely keep our hands off each other—that was the main reason for all of the cozy nights in—it was way more convenient to tear each other’s clothing off in the privacy of Roman’s apartment than it was to do it in a movie theater or in a bar. Plus, there was virtually zero chance of being arrested on public nudity charges. Major bonus.
Roman continued staring at the screen. I divided my attention fifty-fifty between the movie and his rugged side-profile. But I couldn’t leave it be.
“Is it that work stuff? The problems you were telling me about?”
He turned his head to me slowly, as if the slight movement took a huge effort. He shook his head.
I turned my attention back on the movie we were watching, even though I’d seen it several times before. But I couldn’t focus. I shuffled closer to him, leaning my head on his arm. I glanced up at his side profile and my heart twanged. He was the best sex in my life. And underneath his cool, hard-ass demeanor, he was a really funny guy. But there was a distance between us—I knew I wasn’t just imagining it.
I felt his eyes on me. I looked at him, willing myself to ask him what was up.
“Yeah,” he said, watching me carefully. “It’s work stuff.”
I waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t, leaving me to watch the rest of the movie only half paying attention. Part of me was relieved; a smaller part uneasy.
“Anything I can help with?” I asked when he hadn’t spoken for several minutes.
He turned to me, a wary look on his face.
“You don’t have to tell me specifics. You can vent if you want to.”
He shook his head. “Nah. I’ll sort it.”
He reached over and squeezed my shoulder tightly, pulling me to him and crushing my face against his chest. When I looked up, he was smiling at me almost tenderly. I thought I saw a flash of something else in his eyes; a strange intensity. But for once I managed to successfully tell my inner critic to shut the fuck up. I relaxed against him, feeling his slow rhythmic heartbeat vibrate against my cheekbone.
Twenty-Six
Roman
I pushed open the door of the restaurant on 12th and froze. I smelled her. It must have been a trace of her perfume on my clothes. But it didn’t feel right. Not there. I shook my head and forced myself to continue into the bar. Of all places to hesitate and think about the situation…
It didn’t help that it was a total mindfuck. I still couldn’t imagine what in the hell she’d done to get involved with one of the most notoriously sadistic fucks in the city. I mean, I’d never met the guy before, but his reputation was well-known. Well, by everyone apart from the police, who seemed completely unaware of him. That was always a dangerous sign of deep pockets and ties higher up in the law enforcement chain of command.
Of course, there were good cops too. I knew that. My brother was one of them. But I was under no illusion that there were bad ones. Extremely bad. Worse than any criminal in max security. They operated above the law. No one could touch them.
“Kane.”
I glanced up to see who had called me by my working name. A man walked along the gloomy corridor toward me. It was a strange set-up for a bar—most places, you walked in the door and found yourself in the bar. This one was laid out like an old house, where you had to walk past a series of closed doors to get to the bar area. But I didn’t have time to take in my surroundings.
“Our friend told me you wanted to see me,” I said, keeping my voice as neutral as possible.
I was suddenly glad of the darkness. If this fucker was as much of a criminal mastermind as everyone said, then I had no doubt his instincts were second to none. And I didn’t want him sensing that I wanted to tear his throat out with my bare hands.
He nodded, holding out a hand. Bile rose up in my chest as I forced myself to take it in mine and shake it firmly. Had this hand touched her? No doubt it had. This clammy, cold hand. I had to consciously stop myself from squeezing until his fingers broke. This was his territory—he’d have armed heavies on me within seconds if I tried anything that foolish. That’s not to say it was easy to hold back.
“Nice place you’ve got here,” I said, breaking the silence and trying to distract myself.
I didn’t give a fuck about his bar. All I wanted was to sort out our business for once and for all.
He nodded, a smug smile on his face. “My father gave it to me. He was given it in return for a debt he cleared. I don’t get to spend as much time here as I’d like—I’ve got another business in the financial district.”
I watched him as he glanced around the hallway, clearly impressed at his own good fortune. He seemed so unremarkable—not thin, not overweight. Medium height. I wondered again how he’d met her. I had to stop myself—I knew I’d lose the little control I had if I thought about it too much.
“So what can I help you with? I have to say, this is unusual.”
He looked confused for a moment, then his features ironed out to the blank look that seemed to be his default. That was the thing that surprised me—I had expected him to be careless and sloppy based on my dealings with him through Dmitri. I had built him into some sort of caricature in my mind—and so risked underestimating how dangerous he truly was.
“Let’s
go to the bar. We can talk in comfort.”
I nodded and followed him along the corridor, glad of a few seconds’ respite to rearrange my features and get a hold of myself. I’d never been so agitated before.
The bar was small; smaller than I’d expected. There was an old-fashioned wooden counter in the corner and three booths lined up against the wall opposite the door. That was it, apart from a few tables spread around the small room.
“So,” he smiled, leading me to the booth farthest from the door and gesturing for me to sit. I sat in the side facing the bar, glancing cautiously at the suited man working behind it.
He followed my gaze. “Oh don’t worry about him. He’s one of my guys.”
Where were the others? I wondered. Hidden in the other rooms? In the ceiling? Or was that his trick, the Soldier’s—to travel light? I didn’t know, but I had a sinking feeling that I’d find out real soon.
Two glasses of amber liquid appeared on our table out of nowhere. I had to hand it to him—he knew how to find good bar staff. That was how they should be—anonymous and discreet. Not like the damn fool in Tully’s. Though I guessed this guy wasn’t just a bartender, not when his boss was the Soldier.
“You must be wondering why I’ve asked you here.”
I took a sip and grimaced, holding the whisky on my tongue and relishing the honeyed oaky flavor until it started to burn. “Yes,” I murmured. “It’s unusual.”
He looked nonplussed. “It is. It is.” He took a sip. “And that’s why I called in the professionals.”