CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE #2
And I want to scream. For who I am and what I do and why I’m here.
For all the reasons I can’t give in to my urges and enjoy him.
For the confusion of feeling like a traitor to my family after having spent an evening with one I was instantly determined to preserve.
I have never been surrounded by such freedom, joy, and love. It’s unlikely I ever will be again.
I’m so tired.
But I don’t share any of that because this isn’t the place, though there is no place that I could safely reveal that regret.
Since I owe him something for gifting me the answers I craved for two decades, I give him what he requested.
“My father trained me—for protection purposes. And I was an incredible student. Driven. Single-focused. Fueled by a desire to be the best, to forget, to find a place where I fit. By twelve, I was an incredible shot. By fifteen, I’d earned a black belt in numerous martial arts.
By seventeen, I’d mastered my fifth language.
I could keep up with my father’s … colleagues. ”
I choose my words carefully, even though it’s plausible that he knows about our covert training camp. “Regardless of some belief from his colleagues that I would make an excellent asset, he refused to let me even consider it.”
A flicker of relief washes over Axel’s features, which seems incongruent with his question. “You went against his wishes?”
“Kind of.” I sip my wine, composing myself for the part of my history that I’m a bit embarrassed about.
“When I was nineteen, I got involved with one of his colleagues. He was fourteen years older than me, charismatic, one hell of an assassin. We snuck around together on and off for months. One week, when my brother was traveling, I told my father I was going with him to lie on the beach. But really, I joined the guy I was involved with on his job. He set it all up.”
A blend of both curiosity and wrath stains Axel’s face. He’s always so far ahead of everything.
Not bothering to hide this part since he alluded to his darkest moment, I bob my head to his silent insight.
“I was capable, but easily manipulated. So much of what he said was right that it confused things. Even at my young age, I was one of the most skilled among the group of assassins we knew. I was quick on my feet. But my skills were always left to training. He convinced me that my father was holding me back. Because I was a girl. Because he didn’t believe I had what it took. And I bought it.”
“So, you started working with this colleague of your father’s?”
“Only on one job. Well, he took me with him once before on a trial run,” I correct. “An easy mission, just to see. He did everything else for that. All I was charged with was the final kill shot. The first time can be hard. Not everyone can handle taking a life.”
“And was it? Hard for you?” His face is neutral, betraying nothing.
“No,” I tell him honestly, though I don’t add that I saw my mother’s face in every victim and her killer in every mark.
Maybe he knows.
He dips his chin, so I continue, “He’d gotten himself in trouble with a client.
He had signed on to be their asset for five years, and a year into the job, he got sloppy, so they weren’t happy with him.
I didn’t know any of that. He invited me to assist, told me the men we were killing were monsters—traffickers, like the first mark for the trial run had been.
He even showed me pictures of some of the imprisoned women.
It was the first time I’d seen that type of horror.
Well—” I cut myself off from admitting that I’d seen the pictures of my mom because Axel already seems to be shouldering the evil his father carried out.
“It was a big job, but I was emboldened by those images, and he claimed I was the only one he trusted to help him. There were eleven targets in a private room in a nightclub in Dubai, and I was in and out in less than three minutes, but …” It takes a beat for me to confess how stupid I was, but this is how I got my start. “It was a setup.”
“Explain,” he demands.
There’s something other than his traditional domineering edge lacing that order. Something darker. Maybe judgment. Of all the things I’ve done, my first job is still the worst.
“I wasn’t killing traffickers. He had me kill his client.”
Eleven deaths that weren’t mine to bestow.
They weren’t good men, not innocents by any means.
I couldn’t find much about their connection to one another—a bunch of businessmen involved in duplicitous affairs that seemed unconnected to them as a group.
Some of them did have relationships with known traffickers, but I wasn’t convinced they were less deserving of life than I was.
I can still see the hazel eyes of my final shot—the only one I chose to hold.
Axel swirls the cognac in his snifter without a single word, staring at the amber liquid before swallowing it and my admission. Maybe any chance I had at him trusting me just got devoured.
“You were a pawn?” he finally asks.
“Yes. He was essentially a double agent. He wanted out of his contract, so he made a deal with a rival of his client. He’d kill the entire board employing him and, in turn, be let go.
But they had another stipulation. They wanted him to do a few other jobs before he was completely free.
Knowing that sort of thing snowballs, he sold them on the idea of an asset better than him and completely unknown.
He gave me the heavy lifting on the mission.
They saw me in action, and that was that.
They owned me. If I didn’t do the other jobs for them, they’d kill me. ”
His jaw clenches, and even with his more relaxed attire and his homey personal space, he appears positively lethal. “Where is the man you were involved with?”
He almost sounds jealous with that inquiry, which is absurd because that was ten years ago. His irritation with me having drinks with Cash made more sense, though nothing about this evening is particularly tangible, so I’m at a loss.
I hitch a shoulder, feigning aloofness that doesn’t really apply here while ingesting a sip of the Cabernet. “He disappeared.”
“And how did your father respond?” His tone is even, but nearly all the blue has retreated from his eyes.
A chill skitters through me, similar to the eerie trepidation that ensnared me the day he whistled on the Riverwalk. It’s not fear of him, but rather an awareness of his formidability.
Still, I maintain as much pragmatism as I can muster.
“He told me that every choice has a consequence and that this life was mine. He wasn’t wrong.
I rode out my contract with that rival client.
He and Tripp—my brother—helped so we could knock it out quickly.
Then I chose to become the best, to see the work for what it was, to concentrate on jobs that made the biggest difference. One stone.”
“One stone?”
I glance at the city lights surrounding his private suite in the sky, abundantly aware of how Axel and I both serve the underworld, but from drastically different positions.
He has people who want him dead, but a fortress and an army protecting him.
As an assassin, if you aren’t killing, you’re the next mark.
Sitting in Axel Noire’s gilded kingdom, my options are limited.
I remain his captive, betray him, or die when I leave here.
Sadly, none of those include me crawling into his lap.
Shaking that off, I answer him. “It’s something my father says—a play on that kill two birds with one stone saying. Our stone isn’t used to kill two birds. We kill one to save another. Every life taken is a life saved. One stone.”
Stone being my father’s name—a name he refused to relinquish—sprinkles our mantra with his victor-mentality conceit, but I don’t share that.
Axel walks to the bar, pouring himself more cognac. “And did your father handle the rogue asset who had conned you and disappeared?”
“No,” I respond to his back, noting the way his shirt stretches taut across it and recalling how chiseled it looked that day in the gym. A flush creeps over my cheeks. “We never act out of anger. It muddies the waters. Vengeance only leads to more vengeance.”
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hurt that my father hadn’t been more outraged on my behalf, but it’s what makes him an indomitable warrior. I can’t fault him for that.
“Of course,” Axel agrees, returning to his seat with a subtle tic in the back of his jaw that he can’t conceal. “What was the assassin’s name?”
I huff a mirthless laugh. “You know I can’t give you that.”
He lounges in his chair again, manspreading and owning the room with his feigned nonchalance. “That’s not the type of person I would permit to reap the benefits of my services. I need the name to blacklist him from here. That’s not vengeance. That’s good business.”
“Well, you don’t need to worry about that. He lives a quiet life in some secluded town in—I don’t even know—Montana or Wyoming or something. He’s been out of the game since I entered it.”
He spins his luck on his watch—something I think he does to regroup—before his probing leer lifts to me. “Living off the millions he made from that job, no doubt.”
I finish my wine in a single swill, growing antsy. “Probably.”
“But you like what you do now?”
“I think that’s enough air clearing for one night. I should go.” I stand, deliver my glass to the sink in the bar, and head toward the door. “Your family—what you’ve built here—is truly amazing. Thank you for letting me be a part of it tonight.”
“Zara,” he husks out, waiting for me to peer back, but when I do, he only drinks me in, a silent message that is a mystery.
“I’m not sure what you want from me. I … this is too complicated, and I’m confused.” It all tumbles out of me, clumsy and entirely too distressed.
I don’t tell him that I have information I’ll be sending to Tripp in the morning, or that I’d let my father extract me if he offered, or that in that instance, a piece of me would be left here with him.
That last one doesn’t make any sense. I haven’t kissed this man.
He isn’t even open to anything romantic.
We’ve both issued threats. I am, for all intents and purposes, his enemy.
But there is a dormant part of me that awakens in his presence, a part that feels safe when no refuge is in sight, a part that longs to know what it would be like in his care.
“You have a job to do, you’re conflicted, and you know from experience that these types of situations tend to spiral.” He states that so matter-of-factly, like he’s not worried about any of it. “I believe I have a solution.”
“You do? Is it erasing me?”
“Is that what you want?” he counters.
I consider it for a moment, but being here only compounds the loneliness that notion brought the last time he suggested it. “No.”
“Good,” he replies before another swill of his cognac, his eyes never leaving mine. “It’s something I need to work on.”
“Okay. And in the meantime?”
“Do what you need to do.”
He’s telling me to keep myself alive, to do my job, no matter what it is. Probably because he trusts I won’t harm his family, but it’s still perplexing.
My breath is caught in my throat, so I simply smile and turn to leave.
But his deep rasp halts my tracks and rockets through me, setting my core on fire. “Zara.”
“Yeah?” I ask, not facing him, my heart thrashing my sternum with a pipe-dream cadence.
“Lock the door.”