by Lara Adrian
“What do you want?” she demanded, knowing there was nothing he could take from her now that meant more than what she’d already lost.
“I’m sure you know what I want. My money. All of it.”
She swallowed, shaking her head as she stared out at the sunlit road and the garish signs that flanked the Strip. “If that’s what you wanted, then you shouldn’t have killed Michael. The money’s in his bank account. I can’t get to it.”
“Find a way, Narumi. And I want the rest of it too. By my accounting, you owe me another two-hundred-and-thirty-seven-thousand dollars in addition to what you and your friend stole from me the other night.”
She scoffed, but her heart was racing with fear. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He exhaled a tight, impatient sound. “You may have cheated me right under my fucking nose, but do not take me for a fool. I’ve seen the video footage from my casinos over the past many months. I don’t know how you did it and I don’t care. I want my money back. Every. Fucking. Cent.”
He was asking the impossible—more than the impossible—and she didn’t think for a minute that he didn’t know that. She’d spent more than half of his money on the kids and helping Michael run the shelter. That money went to food, clothing, countless other necessities. As for the little bit she’d made waiting tables here and there or doing any number of other odd jobs, it wouldn’t make even the smallest dent in what she owed him and besides, her menial wages were gone practically before she even brought them home. “I don’t have all of your money to give it back to you.”
“Then find a way to get it. All of it,” he said again, menace in the calmness of his viper’s voice. “Or you’ll be forcing me to take something else from you if you fail.”
The line went dead. Naomi’s breath gusted out of her, part in relief, part in paralyzed dread. She hardly cared what Slater might do to her personally, but she didn’t want to imagine how far he’d stoop to hurt anyone else she loved.
Her hands were shaking so hard she had to pull over. She sat in a loading zone for several minutes, until a truck blasted its horn at her and nearly made her jump out of her skin.
God, what had she done?
For the last eighteen years of her life she’d lived with the sole purpose of getting even with Leo Slater. Making him pay for hurting her mother, for taking her away and destroying everything Naomi had.
For nearly two years now, she’d been chipping away at the monster of her past. Cutting him where he would hurt, in the only place a man like Slater would bleed. But even as she was taking his money, each of those little victories felt hollow. That’s why she kept going, kept hitting him for more and more and more.
Now, she was the only one who’d lost.
And even if she had the chance to take every last nickel of Slater’s fortunes—even if she could be assured that one day she could destroy him completely before stabbing him in his black heart—she knew that would be an empty triumph too.
Simply put, Leo Slater didn’t matter.
The cost of her vengeance was already too high.
She just wanted it to be over.
If she could, she’d surrender all of his damned money right now, just as he’d demanded. But she didn’t have access to Michael’s personal bank account, nor did she have the more than two-hundred grand she’d taken from Slater’s casinos over time.
But she had some.
And she could never spend it anyway, knowing every penny she took from Slater was now stained with Michael’s blood.
Numb and wracked with tears she refused to let spill, she glanced at her phone and tapped one of the numbers stored on the device.
A perky voice answered. “Anytime Private Vaults, can I help you?”
“Yes,” Naomi said. “I need to empty my safe deposit box.”
CHAPTER 21
Less than an hour later, Naomi walked into Casino Moda carrying a Las Vegas souvenir tote bag filled with eighty-seven-thousand dollars cash in large bills. Everything she had left from all of her repeated hits on Leo Slater’s casinos.
Asher had been calling her repeatedly since she left Michael’s house, but she had yet to speak to him. She felt awful for silencing her phone, but she knew what he would say if she told him she was heading in to give Slater what he demanded. Or, part of it, at any rate. She hoped the money she had to give him would appease him enough to back off and not hurt anyone else close to her.
If she had to work the rest of days to earn back the remainder of what she owed him, she was fully prepared do it. She just wanted him out of her life now and forever.
She just wanted to be able to grieve for Michael and bring home Tyler and Penny and the rest of the kids and never let them go.
Those plans bolstered her as she marched through the casino toward the glass central elevator that would take her to the executive offices on the top floor. Her finger only trembled a little as she pushed the button on the panel and waited for the car.
Someone was on the way down.
As the lift descended smoothly to the lobby level, she found herself staring into the face of a man she’d never seen before. A dark-haired man with arresting silver eyes who she would never mistake for human.
The massive Breed male who stepped out of the car stood easily as tall as Asher, and was built just as solidly beneath the crisp white button-down shirt and graphite-colored dress slacks that strained over his muscled physique. In the open V of his shirt collar an elaborate tangle of dermaglyphs curled and twisted onto his neck.
Every instinct in her body told her this was not only a Breed male, but the trained assassin Asher had warned her was on Slater’s payroll.
Cain.
Those shrewd silver predator’s eyes glanced down at the bag in her hands then back up at her in glowering suspicion. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”
“I need to see Slater.” She tried to step around him, but he was too enormous. His body blocked the elevator doors, which had slid closed on a whisper behind him.
“Like hell you do. What’s in the bag?”
She knew the only thing she should be feeling under this menacing male’s gaze was fear for her life, but she was still too numb and in shock from Michael’s death to feel anything but fury now that she was staring up at one of the men likely responsible for taking his life.
“I’m sure you know why I’m here. To deliver your boss what he’s demanded. His blood money.”
Cain shook his head, his scowl deepening. “I can’t let you do that.”
“What are you going to do?” She scoffed. “Kill me right here in the lobby of the casino? Or take me somewhere and string me up to make it look like I killed myself the way you and the other thugs working for Slater did to my friend?”
The vampire’s lips pressed flat on a low snarl. “I had nothing to do with that. In fact, I just heard about it from some of the men on the security team.”
She glared at him, bitterness in her voice. “Like I’m going to believe you? I’m sure Slater and the rest of you thugs have been up there patting yourselves on the backs for killing a man who had little chance of defending himself.”
A tendon jumped in Cain’s tense, beard-shadowed cheek. “You couldn’t be more wrong, at least as far as I’m concerned. And on the occasions that I have killed someone, I’ve never needed an excuse or a reason to make it look like something else.”
She swallowed, seeing a glimpse of the coldness that lived inside him. “I’m sure you must sleep like a baby knowing you have such high standards. Now, get out of my way and let me pass.”
“Naomi.” His hand clamped around her wrist like a band of iron. His face darkened, even while his irises lit with amber flecks of irritation. “If you go up there, Slater will never let you leave. At least, not while you’re still breathing.”
She tried to wrench loose, but there was no breaking his hold. From his expression, that kind of strength came easily, without even a thought.
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“Cut your losses and leave town as soon as possible,” he told her. “There are plenty of places you can go. As a Breedmate, you’ll find safe shelter in any of the Breed communities around this country or any other. Go there. Stay away from Las Vegas.”
Strange how different this advice sounded coming from someone other than Asher. In the beginning, he’d insisted on nothing less than her getting the hell out of town and staying gone. As much as she’d balked at the idea then, the thought of being driven away from her city and her life here was something she’d never consider now.
Especially if Cain were suggesting she should leave Asher behind too.
She glanced down, realizing only now that Cain had a black leather duffel bag at his feet. “Where are you going?”
He grunted. “I don’t know. Anywhere but here. I’ve spent too much time working for slime like Slater. I’m done.”
She frowned, shocked and not quite sure she could believe him. But as he held her stare, she saw deep shadows in his cold silver eyes. She saw the same haunted, bleak abyss that she still glimpsed in Asher’s deep blue eyes sometimes.
“I’ll help you get somewhere safe,” he said, his tone too solemn to be a lie, even for a killer like him. “You can come with me right now, Naomi. I promise, you can trust me on this.”
Maybe she could, but she didn’t want what Cain was offering her. Her life was here, and if she needed a safe haven she had Asher.
She shook her head and stood her ground. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m already right where I belong.”
Cain studied her, then exhaled a slow breath. “You’re making a mistake.”
“I don’t run for anyone, not even Slater. Especially not him.”
“No,” he said. “I’m not talking about Slater. I’m talking about Asher.”
That took her aback. Suspicious of this killer now, she hiked up her chin. “You’re going to warn me about him? That doesn’t mean much coming from someone like you.”
“Like me?” Those sharp eyes narrowed on her in question.
“I know what you are. Asher told me. You’re a cold-blooded killer. A trained assassin.”
Cain said nothing, not for a long moment. “I am all of those things, Naomi. I was born a Hunter. But so was he.”
“What?” A frisson of uncertainty crept along her spine now. She knew the term Hunter, if only in broad terms. There had been a madman among the Breed twenty years ago who’d been raising a homegrown army of killers in his hidden labs for decades. All boys, all bred off the same monstrous father using dozens of imprisoned Breedmates. The babies born inside the lab were enslaved from the moment they took their first breath and raised to be killing machines by Dragos until he was finally destroyed by the Order.
Was Cain saying he and Asher had been part of that awful program? If so, why wouldn’t Asher have mentioned it?
“You didn’t know.” He chuckled, but it was a sympathetic sound, one that said he might even pity her. “I’m not surprised that you don’t, considering the fact that he actually seems to care for you. Never would’ve thought a bastard like Asher to be capable of the emotion.”
The bag of money in her arms had been heavy before, but now it was beginning to feel like a lead weight. “Tell me what you know.”
He gave a gruff shake of his head and started to walk past her. “Never mind. It’s not my place.”
“It is now,” she said, taking hold of his shirt sleeve. “Dammit, tell me what you know about Asher.”
“You already know the worst of it just by saying his name.”
“What are you talking about?”
“One of the tenets of the Hunter program was obedience to our master, Dragos. But there were always some who resisted, headstrong boys, cocky teens . . . adult males who refused to be broken. Dragos believed in discipline. He believed in making examples for others to follow or to learn from. And to help him maintain his control he had mind slave servants to monitor us, but he also had enforcers—other Hunters who’d excelled in their training and who could be called on to mete out justice as he deemed fit.”
“What does any of this have to do with Asher?”
After the wracking pain of what she’d already been through today, she was surprised she still had the capacity for more fear or dread. But she did. They were carving a chasm in her as she waited for Cain to tell her the rest of what he knew.
“All of us in the Hunter program wore ultraviolet collars that would detonate if we tried to run or if we fought back against our training. Or if we gave Dragos any reason to want us gone. There was one enforcer he relied on the most. One Hunter within the program who had no qualms about pushing the detonator that would ignite the ring of UV light around a Hunter’s neck—his brother’s neck—and reduce him to smoldering dust.”
Naomi closed her eyes as a wave of understanding swamped her. “Asher.”
Cain grunted. “There were rumors that he enjoyed his role so much he would touch the condemned in the seconds before he killed them. Just to savor their pain. To feel their terror while some of them begged for mercy in the seconds before he ashed them.”
Naomi felt sick thinking about Asher’s gift to recall—to relive—the worst of someone’s memories with his touch. God, if this were true it would make him an animal. Worse than an animal, a sadistic monster. She didn’t want to think it. Part of her refused to. She’d only known Asher a handful of days, but she could hardly reconcile the man she loved with the cold killer Cain was describing.
“I can’t believe he’s using that name after all this time. He could’ve chosen to call himself anything once he was freed—we all had that choice.” He shrugged. “Hell, maybe it’s a badge of pride for him.”
“Stop.” Naomi shook her head, overwhelmed with everything she’d heard. She had wanted to know, but she couldn’t take any more. Not now. Not after today.
“He hasn’t told you any of this.” It wasn’t a question, because the look of shock on her face must have been enough to remove any of Cain’s doubt. But then he seemed to clue in on something more. “Ah, Jesus. You’re in love with him?”
Part of her wanted to deny it, but she couldn’t force the words out of her arid mouth. Not even when Cain’s steely gaze was looking at her as though she were the biggest fool on Earth.
“Walk away, Naomi. From Slater. From Asher. From all of this shit. Do it for yourself . . . before you end up regretting it any more than I think you already are.”
CHAPTER 22
More than a dozen calls and twice as many texts and she still hadn’t responded.
Asher paced the house like an animal in a cage, his glyphs writhing all over his skin and his eyes burning like hot coals in his skull. His fangs filling his mouth, he snarled and cursed as he wore a hard track in the living room rug while Sam stared anxiously from his position nearby.
Asher wasn’t angry at Naomi. All of his self-hatred and futile rage was directed entirely at himself.
He never should have let her go today. They could have found another solution for the boy stranded at the doctor’s office—anything but the one that had sent Naomi back to Las Vegas without him. But even as he thought it, he knew she’d never stand for shirking her responsibility to a child who was counting on her. Hell, even Asher wouldn’t have suggested it.
And none of that would have changed the fact that Michael Carson was dead.
Murdered in cold blood.
He could hardly believe the kind, smiling young man was gone now.
Asher blamed himself for that too.
He should have known Slater wouldn’t take such a big loss at his casino in stride. He would have been scrutinizing Michael with laser focus, sniffing around for any cause he could find to renege on the payment or snatch it back before it was fully out of his grasp.
Killing the winner was certainly not the smartest way to go about that, but if Slater thought he had another way to get his hands on the money . . .
Fuck. Where the hel
l was she?
He took out his phone again and started to hit her number when he heard the crunch of gravel in the distance. Finally.
It was just after noon with the sun shining high overhead, but he didn’t give a damn. As Ned’s old truck bounced on the narrow dirt lane out front, Asher practically yanked the latch off the screen in his haste to meet Naomi as she pulled to a stop at the house.
The light seared his vision and the rising cloud of yellow dust gathered in his throat like cinders as he raced to the driver’s side of the vehicle and tore open the door.
“Thank God you’re okay. I’ve been going fucking crazy here.”
She didn’t answer. She hardly looked at him as she stepped down from the seat and onto the ground. He gathered her close, ignoring the sharp sting of the sun’s deadly rays on his exposed skin. Relief rocketed through him to be holding her again and seeing for himself that she was still in one piece and not a mark on her.
“Naomi.” He didn’t want to let go, but she was wooden in his embrace. Her breath was shallow, her expression blank. “Baby, are you all right?”
He could feel that she was—his bond to her blood told him she hadn’t been injured. But she was awash with a shell-shocked quiet that shredded him inside. He knew that look. He had seen this kind of numbness before, in other Hunters back when he was a boy. He’d felt it himself after he’d completed his first kill order from Dragos.
A shock and horror so deep it hollowed you out.
Touching her now gave him a jolt as a new and awful memory flowed out of her to take root in his mind and senses. Naomi’s grief and horror as she discovered her friend slumped in his bedroom, his face almost unrecognizable for the awful color and swelling the leather garrote around his neck had caused.
He ran his hands over her face, smoothing her slack ebony hair out of her eyes. “What happened after you left Michael’s? I’ve been calling and texting all this time. Why didn’t you respond? Have you been out there looking for Tyler or the other kids?”