Chapter 1 #2
Word began to spread. People started coming to me directly with their problems. And if those problems felt like something I could fix without getting my stupid ass killed ... I fixed them. Permanently.
Matthew Knockley was my sixth target, not counting those early, heat-of-the-moment kills. He was also, by far, the biggest.
When a terrified omega boy called Adrian had tracked me down and handed me Matthew Knockley’s dossier, my gut had urged me to run the other way and not look back.
Not only was this asshole the leader of a respected pack with a secret sideline in human trafficking; he was fucking rich.
Not to mention powerful and well-connected.
If he died under mysterious circumstances, the police would give a shit about it.
Lots of people would give a shit about it.
But... Adrian’s story hit me squarely in the unresolved childhood trauma.
His sister had been taken. She was only eleven years old. And she wasn’t the first.
I knew what kind of life awaited underage omegas sold into the sex trade. I’d almost been one of them, if not for a careless truck driver and a deserted fuel plaza in the middle of the night.
So, I’d taken the job. And now, here I was.
“Sorry,” Mr. Sex Trafficker slurred, rubbing at his face with uncoordinated movements. “I feel... really tired all of the sudden.”
The tumbler—mostly empty except for a bit of ice, slipped from his grasp and hit the luxurious carpet with barely a sound.
I smiled, thin and tight. “Then you should sleep,” I told him. “Here, let me help you get on the bed.”
I grabbed his arm and urged him onto unsteady feet, helping him stagger the few steps to the ridiculous king-sized bed. He flopped back, boneless.
“Mmm,” he nearly purred. “You smell like...”
“Caramel latte?” I offered dryly.
“Heaven,” he finished.
I rolled my eyes and did a quick inventory.
Satin gloves? Still on. Hair? Lacquered into an impenetrable chignon that wouldn’t shed any incriminating strands of DNA in the room.
I dumped my barely-touched Midori sour down the bathroom sink drain, rinsing and drying the glass thoroughly before returning it to the mini bar.
When I returned to the bed with a few squares of clean toilet paper, Matthew Knockley was snoring deeply, his breathing too loud and too slow.
That much acepromazine might kill him on its own, but I wasn’t the type to leave things like this to chance. Opening my clutch purse, I pulled out the empty 10cc syringe hidden there and sat at the foot of the bed.
I removed one designer shoe from my victim’s left foot, followed by his sock.
Finding a vein between a person’s toes was always a total pain in the ass, but this trick only worked if it got directly into the victim’s bloodstream.
Patiently, I delivered ten syringes’ worth of air into Mr. Sex Trafficker’s circulatory system, taking care to go in through the same needle hole each time.
When I was done, I wiped the blood from the needle, capped it, and returned it to my clutch.
I’d toss it in a dumpster somewhere far from here, where it would disappear among all the other drug paraphernalia.
Then I pressed the wad of toilet paper hard to the injection site to staunch the tiny amount of blood seeping there.
The area would still bruise, but so far, no medical examiner had gone looking for toe bruising after what seemed like nothing more sinister than a garden-variety heart attack.
Being a successful business owner in the competitive world of trade logistics was probably a stressful career, right? That kind of shit catches up to a person eventually.
Knockley made an awful choking noise and jerked on the bed.
Apparently, the air embolism had reached his lungs or his heart.
I checked that his foot had stopped bleeding and wrestled his sock and shoe back on.
I’d just flushed the blood-spotted toilet paper and was reaching for my clutch on the bedside table when a knock sounded at the door.
I froze.
“Oi, Knox!” called a voice with a faint Irish lilt, muffled by the thick door. “We just got some juicy gossip about the Mexico deal. You gotta hear this!”
I whirled around, my stupid brain seizing up. Should I try to hide? Open the door, dart past them, and make a run for it?
But I was too slow. The lock clicked. Whoever it was, they had a key card, and like an idiot, I hadn’t thought to engage the security latch once my target was down for the count.
I was still standing there like a surprised statue when the door swung open to reveal two alphas—one with flaming red hair and a beard, the other an absolute mountain of a man with a black buzzcut and heavy five o’clock shadow.
“Sorry, I know it’s late, old man—” Red Hair began, only to cut himself off abruptly as he took in his friend having a violent seizure on the bed, and me standing there like the world’s guiltiest hotel hookup. “What the fuck?”
“Knox!” shouted the giant, rushing forward.
I raised a hand, as though to fend him off.
“Call an ambulance!” I cried, thinking fast. “I... he just collapsed out of the blue! I think he might be having a heart attack!”
It was at that moment when the scents of whiskey and oakwood combined with baking bread and orange peel slammed into me like a freight train, swirling together with Knockley’s woodsy campfire aroma and my own sweet coffee and caramel.
The suggestion of belonging that had struck me earlier multiplied a hundredfold, blotting out every single thought in my head as a switch as old as time itself flipped in the depths of my hindbrain.
Everyone in the room went as still as though we’d been fossilized in amber.
Coffee laced with whiskey and sweetness, holiday bread toasted over an open flame as the sounds and scents of the forest wove around the four of us.
‘Home... home... home...’ echoed through my consciousness, tolling like a bell.
Oh, my god.
A scent match. It was a scent match.
I was scent-matched to alpha slave traffickers... and I’d just murdered their pack leader.