29. Vuk
CHAPTER 29
Vuk
B lood stained my hands.
The thick, red liquid dripped from my fingers, painting the floor with sins past and present.
Charred flesh. Screams. The resigned determination in Lazar’s eyes when he urged me to leave, and the heart-stopping moment when a bullet streaked through the air toward the altar.
In both cases, I’d had a split second to make my choice. Now Lazar was dead, and Jordan was…
“Sir.” The word floated beneath my pounding heartbeat. The walls closed in; the acrid scent of smoke tainted my nostrils. Drip, drip, drip, went the blood. “Sir!”
My head snapped up to see Sean staring at me, his face wreathed in concern.
The sight of him slowly brought the world back into focus.
I wasn’t at the church. There wasn’t a fire, and no one was pointing a gun at me. When I looked at my hands, they were clean—literally, at least. Not a drop of blood marred the polished wooden floor.
It was the day after the church attack, and we were in the living room of my secondary house in Westchester. We were safe—for now.
Not at all of us, a voice whispered in my head.
An image of Jordan’s deathly still body swam before my eyes. Guilt settled thick on the back of my tongue, but I swallowed it and forced my pulse to return to normal.
What? I was on edge. We all were.
“Confirming the Kidanes are settled in on the second floor. It took some convincing, but they’ve agreed to return to D.C. on Monday,” Sean said. “We’ve placed additional security at Ayana’s building as well as around the Fords’ house and the hospital. We told them it was to hold off the press, and they bought it.” He hesitated. “We’ve also taken care of the perpetrators from the wedding. All but one were eliminated.”
All but one , I repeated.
So there was still a culprit on the loose. Running, breathing, living when he should’ve been six feet under with a bullet between his eyes.
“He escaped in the chaos after Jordan got shot.” Sean’s face was impassive, but I detected a bitter seed of guilt. He’d had his hands full fighting the fake minister, who’d turned out to be a Brotherhood member in disguise, but he still blamed himself for not saving Jordan in time. “We have every informant and half the surveillance cameras in the city looking for him. We’ll find him.”
The memory of Jordan lying unconscious in his own blood resurfaced again, sharp and biting. It was overlaid by an image of Ayana’s terror-stricken face and the sound of her scream.
Something cold and insidious stirred in my gut.
I took back my earlier sentiment. A bullet was too good for the last Brother.
When you do, leave him to me.
Sean nodded.
There’d been four assassins in total—the minister, the pianist, and two drivers who’d been waiting outside as backup. My team surmised that their primary objective had been to take me out while I was performing my best man duties and my guard was down. In case that failed, they would take Jordan as bait or, as a last resort, eliminate him in order to throw me off my game. Make me act on impulse instead of strategy and commit mistakes that they could then exploit.
It was a decent enough plan. Too bad for them they’d failed.
The other Brothers had died before I could get my hands on them, but once we found the last one, I was going to make it hurt.
Until then, I had other things to take care of.
I finally asked the question I’d been avoiding all morning. How’s Jordan?
I’d gone with him to the hospital, but I couldn’t stay since I’d had to formulate a battle plan with Sean. A full day had passed since then. Anything could’ve happened.
My chest tightened until Sean spoke again.
“He’s still in critical condition,” he said. “He’s unconscious, but his vitals are stable.”
I released a long breath. That was good. Unconscious was better than dead.
Still, it was a minuscule island of relief amidst a sea of guilt. This all happened because of me. I was the reason the Brotherhood showed up. I was the reason Jordan was shot, and Ayana almost died in the crossfire.
In that crucial moment, I could’ve saved one or the other. I chose Ayana. Now Jordan was in a coma with no prognosis as to when he’d wake up. The press was having a field day, and the Fords were, understandably, inconsolable.
My team quickly spun a cover story about how the attack had been part of a larger gang turf war. The minister and pianist were members of rival gangs. It was ridiculous, but it was more believable than the truth. Everyone bought it.
Thank you. I dismissed Sean. He was about to leave when I added, It wasn’t your fault. You performed admirably yesterday.
No one on our side had died, and Sean had done the best he could with the time and information he had.
He swallowed. “Thank you, sir.”
Get some rest.
He wouldn’t rest until the last Brother was caught. Complacency wasn’t in his DNA, but gratitude flickered over his mouth anyway.
He left, and I took the stairs to the second floor. I stopped outside Ayana’s room, listening for the murmur of voices. I heard none.
Her family must be giving her space. Ayana had gone into shock after the shooting. Otherwise, she was physically unhurt, but they’d stayed by her side all day yesterday.
A pit opened in my stomach. The past day had been so chaotic I hadn’t had a chance to really talk to her. I also wanted to give her time with her family. This would be our first face-to-face conversation since I brought her to Westchester.
After a beat of hesitation, I knocked on the door and waited for her soft “Come in” before I opened it.
I walked in. The curtains were drawn, but a trickle of late-afternoon sunlight leaked through the edges and cast a pale glow on the floor.
Ayana sat on her bed, dressed in an oversized T-shirt and sweats. I’d had my team bring some clothes and toiletries for her last night. Shadows of exhaustion smudged her eyes, and her dark hair tumbled past her shoulders in natural curls.
I closed the door behind me and sat next to her. Have you eaten?
I yearned to touch her, but what did I know about consolation? What business did I have comforting her when I was the one responsible for her distress? My skin was clean, but my hands were bloody.
“A little. I’m not that hungry.” She wasn’t in shock anymore, but I could tell she was still processing yesterday’s events. She drew her knees to her chest, her face vulnerable. “Is Jordan still…”
Unconscious. But he’s stable. He’ll pull through.
I tried to look reassuring. I wasn’t so confident about the last part, but he had to survive. There was no other option.
I hadn’t wanted the wedding to happen. Hell, I’d been on my way to stop it before I got Roman’s call. That didn’t mean I wanted Jordan dead or injured.
If he never woke up, our last conversation would’ve been one of anger.
Regret punched through my chest, making my ribs tremble. I set my jaw and forced the ache aside. I didn’t have time to dwell on what-ifs right now. My top priorities were making sure everyone was safe and hunting down the last Brother.
Ayana expelled a shaky sigh of relief.
She’d wanted to stay at the hospital with Jordan; I’d insisted we leave after an hour. I hated saying no to her, but even with my men standing guard, it was too dangerous.
The Kidanes had believed me when I said the “gang members” were neutralized, but I’d had to tell them the rest of the gang might be looking to eliminate witnesses in order to get them to Westchester.
The Brotherhood likely needed time to regroup after their failure yesterday, but I wasn’t taking any chances.
My team is escorting your family back to D.C. on Monday. You should join them. Get some breathing room.
I’d checked in with Roman last night. He was still in the dark about the Brotherhood’s next plans for me, but he said both factions were closing ranks. They were congregated in New York, and their presence along the rest of the coast was sparse.
I would feel a hell of a lot better if Ayana was out of the city until we caught the last Brother and interrogated him.
“No.” Her jaw set with determination. “I promised my parents I would stay with them next weekend, but I’m not running away before that. Not while Jordan is in the hospital and all this is happening.” She gestured at her phone. Every few minutes, it lit up with a new notification. She must be inundated with calls and texts from everyone with even the smallest connection to her.
“I just…I need time alone. You can stay,” Ayana said when I moved to leave. “I meant I need time away from all the hovering and questions. I know my family means well, but I can’t think when they’re constantly checking in on me.” She offered a wobbly smile. “You’re different.”
Because I rarely talk?
“Because you always know how to make me feel better.” Her smile faded, and emotion glistened in her eyes. “Can you hold me?” she asked, her voice small. “Just for a little bit.”
Fuck . My heart cracked straight down the middle.
I didn’t say a word. I simply gathered her in my arms while she curled into a ball against my chest. She didn’t cry, but she felt so fragile and vulnerable I wanted to go out and annihilate anyone who dared to even think about hurting her.
We sat in silence for minutes or perhaps hours. This was my first time truly holding her since I left the hotel. What happened then seemed so inconsequential compared to yesterday, especially after Jordan’s admission of truth, but we had to acknowledge it eventually.
“I’m sorry for what happened in the hotel.” It was as if Ayana had read my mind. “I was sending mixed signals, and I didn’t mean to imply that you…that I wanted to marry Jordan in public and hide you away in private.”
My heartbeats tied into an uncomfortable knot in my throat. “I know.”
The thought had passed through my mind. She was the beauty, and I was the beast. What person would look at us and think I was worthy of her in any way? But Ayana wasn’t that shallow. She judged people on their character, not their appearance. I wasn’t exactly an upstanding citizen, but for some reason, she seemed to find my presence appealing.
“Jordan told me about your arrangement,” I said, my voice low.
She raised her head and pulled back, her eyes widening with surprise.
“We fought over it. I told him I’d wire him the total sum of his inheritance if he called off the wedding. He refused.” I swallowed. “That was why I wasn’t at the church at first. I couldn’t bear to see you marry him. I was on my way to stop the ceremony somehow when I received a tip that the wedding was compromised.”
A glossy sheen brightened Ayana’s eyes. “I wanted to tell you. But Jordan…”
“I know,” I said again.
A trickle of my earlier regret seeped through the cracks in the box I’d locked it in. I wished I could turn back time and do yesterday over.
Ayana inhaled a shuddering breath. I kept my arms around her as silence descended again.
Now that I knew about her arrangement, where did that leave us? She was technically still engaged to Jordan. If and when he awoke, would they carry on with the wedding like nothing had happened? His grandmother’s health slipped more and more every day, and yesterday’s attack couldn’t have helped.
Also, how fucked was I for thinking about these things when Jordan was in a coma? I really was a bastard.
“You said you received a tip.” Ayana’s voice was quiet. “Who were those people at the church? And don’t say they were part of rival gangs. Tell me the truth. I deserve that much.”
I suppressed a flinch.
My knee-jerk instinct was to give her a partial version of the truth. She didn’t know about my fucked-up past or the many lines I’d crossed, and I wanted to keep it that way. I wished I was the man she saw when she looked at me—someone who was less flawed and worthier of her trust.
But Ayana was right. She deserved the whole truth. My past affected her directly, and if I wanted to protect her, I had to let her know what we were up against.
“They were members of the Brotherhood,” I said. “It’s an organization of professional contract killers. Extremely elite, extremely secretive. They operate out of the East Coast and have been responsible for thousands of deaths over the years.”
Ayana paused as if to give me time to admit I was joking. When I didn’t, she pulled away, her face stark with disbelief. “A secret organization of hitmen? Are you messing with me?”
I shook my head. “I know it sounds unbelievable, but assassins do exist outside of Hollywood. Powerful people don’t like getting their hands dirty. They need organizations like the Brotherhood to take care of their more…delicate problems for them.”
She sat frozen for a moment. “That’s…okay. Okay. Hitmen. Got it.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them again, they were sharp with inquisitiveness. “This Brotherhood. They were after you.”
“Yes,” I said simply.
“Because you’ve hired them before, and things went wrong?”
“Because I used to be one of them.”
My admission rang with painful clarity. I hadn’t talked about my involvement with the Brotherhood in years. Besides Jordan and Lazar, Sean was the only other person who knew.
These conversations were never easy, but telling Ayana was the hardest of all. She belonged in a world where weddings were happy occasions and assassins didn’t exist. She didn’t deserve to have her innocence stripped away by my sordid past.
Her lips parted. She rocked back on the bed, seemingly too stunned to respond.
“I told you my brother hadn’t gone to college,” I said. “What I didn’t tell you was that he worked at a casino in Maryland instead. D.C. insiders went there to gamble and make backroom deals, and one of them ended up being a Brotherhood target. My brother witnessed the hit. He escaped before they killed him too, but he knew he was a loose end and they might come after him again. He told me what happened, so I tracked the Brotherhood down and offered them a deal.”
Ayana looked dazed. “You tracked them down? How?”
“I was my brother’s twin.” I smiled humorlessly at her jolt of shock. “I used myself as bait, and it worked. I didn’t know about the Brotherhood then, but based on what Lazar told me, I correctly assumed the person who carried out the hit was a professional. I was also fortunate enough to have skills that organizations like theirs find useful.”
Few people knew I had a twin. Lazar and I came into the world together, grew up together, and almost died together. He’d been the one person I trusted implicitly. Losing him had been worse than losing a limb.
That was why I didn’t talk about him or have pictures of him on display. It was painful enough looking at myself in the mirror. Every time I faced my reflection, I was reminded of my losses—my brother, and the person I used to be.
“I majored in chemistry,” I continued. “But I was interested in more practical applications outside the classroom. I was at Thayer on scholarship, and to earn money on the side, I created…substances that I then sold through intermediaries. Their effects varied. Some helped students concentrate when they had an exam; others helped them relax or feel good. They weren’t lethal or addictive, but they were highly profitable, and I developed a reputation amongst certain circles in D.C.” Those days seemed like a lifetime ago. “The Brotherhood had heard of me, and as luck would have it, they were looking for a chemist at the time.”
“To make drugs?” Ayana ventured.
“To make poisons.”
She fisted the comforter, her knuckles tightening. Her eyes were huge, dark, and unreadable.
Her opinion of me had undoubtedly, irrevocably changed. Barbs prickled my throat, but it was too late to change course. I had to finish the story.
“I offered to join them if they left my brother alone. They agreed— if I put up half a million dollars upfront as insurance. If I didn’t, the deal was off, and they’d kill both of us.”
Realization sparked in Ayana’s eyes. “That’s the money Jordan lent you.”
The mention of Jordan made my gut twist again. If it weren’t for me, he would’ve never been in danger. He would be conscious. Healthy. Safe .
“Yes,” I said. “I worked for the Brotherhood for two years. Most of their targets weren’t good people. They were corrupt politicians, drug lords, sex offenders—or so they told me. I didn’t question them too much. It was easier to do what I did if I thought the targets deserved it.”
In hindsight, I’d been naive to believe my poisons were only used on those who “deserved it.” The Brotherhood prayed at the altar of cold, hard cash. They would kill anyone if the price was high enough.
“But I couldn’t stay with them forever,” I said. “That wasn’t the life I wanted, and the more I learned about them, the less I wanted to be part of that world. I had to get out. There was only one problem: the only way anyone left the Brotherhood was through official retirement, which the leadership had to sign off on, or in a body bag. I was too valuable for them to willingly let me go, so I needed leverage to force them to release me.”
I could see the wheels turning in Ayana’s head. “That’s what they were looking for when they broke into your house.”
Beautiful and smart. A woman after my own heart.
“Yes,” I confirmed. “I got my hands on the leadership’s ledger. It included a full list of Brotherhood members, their hits, their aliases, and who hired them. It was fully encrypted, of course. It would’ve taken me years to crack the code, so I didn’t bother. I simply threatened to send it to rival organizations.”
Fortunately for me, the leadership at the time had been overly paranoid about their members’ loyalty (hence the ledger) and overly confident about their security measures.
I still had the ledger, but it was outdated and useless as leverage after so many years.
“Even if their rivals couldn’t hack into it, the existence and possible discovery of such an item would’ve been devastating,” I said. “In their field of work, discretion and word of mouth is paramount. If their clients found out their darkest secret was proven in writing , no one would ever hire them again. The organization would implode. With the threat of the ledger hanging over their head, they agreed to let me leave. But then…”
“They went back on their word and came after you,” Ayana finished.
I gave a short nod. I left out what I did to the Brothers after Lazar died. She didn’t ever need to see that side of me.
She blew out a huge breath. She appeared overwhelmed by the onslaught of information, which was understandable. It was a lot to take in, but it was better to rip the Band-Aids off all at once rather than drag it out.
Nevertheless, my skin drew tight over my bones. Every heartbeat felt like it might be my last.
I was used to being in control. Money and power meant authority was always at my fingertips, ready to be deployed. But I couldn’t control the way Ayana reacted to my confessions.
She had the power to kill me with a single word, and she didn’t even know it.
“That all happened so long ago,” she said. “Why are they coming after you now?”
My shoulders relaxed an inch. She wasn’t running screaming from the room—yet.
“Internal politics. Old leadership is gone, and people are fighting for the top spot.” My mouth twisted. “I’ve been the ultimate thorn in their side. Killing me would cement the new guard’s power.”
Except the new guard wasn’t as smart as the old one. They were sloppier, less disciplined. Yesterday’s mess proved it.
The old Brotherhood would’ve never tried to pull off a hit or a fucking kidnapping at such a public, high-profile event. They were either desperate, or they were so caught up in beating the other side that they weren’t strategizing properly.
I could use both those things to my advantage.
I was meeting Roman soon to debrief. He’d gained a smidge of my trust after yesterday’s intel. If he hadn’t tipped me off, the wedding would’ve been a bigger disaster than it already was.
“I see,” Ayana said. It was impossible to gauge the feelings behind her neutral tone. “Thank you for telling me.”
I felt the need to clarify. “I haven’t been involved in that world for a long time. If they hadn’t come looking for me, I would’ve happily left them in the past.”
I wasn’t a good man, but I wasn’t that man anymore. Not unless I had to be.
“You mean you don’t want to return to your life as a secret poison master for a deadly organization?” Ayana’s mouth quirked up a fraction at the corners, and a tingle of relief loosened the vise around my chest.
I hadn’t scared her off.
“People change, and you were forced into your position. I don’t blame you for that. But all of this …” She gestured around the room. “It’s a lot to process. I need time. I just…just give me some time to think, okay?”
It was a reasonable request.
Space would be good for both of us. With the escaped Brother on the loose and Jordan’s life hanging in the balance, there was too much uncertainty for us to do anything except wait and see where the pieces fell.
Still, my stomach sank at the thought of leaving her.
“Okay.” I stood, hiding my disappointment. “I’ll let you get some rest. It’s been a long day.”
I was halfway out the door when she stopped me. “Vuk.”
I turned.
Ayana’s face softened. “Thank you for holding me.”
A thick, foreign sensation invaded my chest. It was so warm, it was almost uncomfortable. I had no words to describe it, so I responded with the simple truth.
“Always.”