Chapter 39
Rhys
Reality smacks me in the face later that night in the form of a text from Ares Zervas.
Shipment en route. ETA two a.m.
It hits me, hard and sudden, as my eyes gaze warmly over at Fallon in bed next to me. I have something to lose.
I brush my lips over her shoulder, and she stirs with a gentle purr. “I’m heading to work, love,” I murmur.
Her eyes flit open, hazy with sleep. She reaches for me with warm arms that loop around my neck. “Don’t forget about me this time,” she whispers.
The comment startles me. Does she think that in the past I’d been too busy for her? That she was easy to overlook?
She couldn’t be more wrong. Not this time.
“Never, love.” I kiss her lips softly. “Go back to sleep.”
She gives me that cute sleepy grin that’s unraveling me piece by piece. “I love you.”
The words rip through me like a bullet. My emotions go everywhere at once. I’m stunned, wrecked, and sick to my stomach at how she can love someone like me.
Mess around with? Sure. Fuck until we’re both breathless and used? Yep. But love? Only, it doesn’t feel crazy. It goddamn completes me.
“I love you, too,” I tell her, and it’s the truest thing I’ve ever said.
Her smile deepens. “I knew it.”
“I bet you did,” I murmur to myself.
She knew what I needed before I did. Fallon tucks back into her pillow, clutching it like it’s me. I lock the image into my mind before I move, terrified I may never see it again.
I’m careful on my assignments. Now I’ll be merciless. Take the extra kill shot.
My cousin Ewan once told Lachlan O’Rourke: “When you have something to lose, the stakes are even higher. Then you’re ruthless, not reckless.”
I slip out of Fallon’s place quietly, pulling her door closed behind me, and engaging the three extra deadbolts I installed. A few steps down the corridor, my flat greets me like a stranger. Cold. Silent.
Except for the plants. Our plants, she called them. They sit on the stand she bought and put together for me. Living things, climbing, growing, reaching, she trusted me with.
Me, a murderer.
Yet, these little pieces of Fallon soften every corner of my sharp-edged world.
I strip out of my sleep pants and rebuild myself into something lethal.
Black cargo pants. Compression shirt. Kevlar vest. Tactical boots. I snap a blade into the sheath inside my jacket, load my Sig 9mm into the holster with practiced efficiency, and pack extra mags into my belt.
Ear comm. Gloves. Mask.
I complete the final step and add the tattoo, which transfers to my skin with incredible ease. But it’s Dirk’s stencil, so I’m not entirely shocked.
This thing better come off my neck just as easily.
By the time I finish, there’s nothing left of the man who wakes up smiling in a warm bed next to a gorgeous naked woman who thinks I hung the fucking moon.
Now I’m the weapon Ares Zervas needs.
With an AR slung in my hands, I stare at myself in the mirror. I now see someone I don’t recognize. The dangerous shadow I become. An echo of who I really am now.
For years, this was the only me I knew. In six weeks, my little elf next door turned me back into someone human.
Dressed in a trench coat, my AR tucked in a pocket sewn inside specifically to conceal it, I leave my building, and the lobby guards stare at the floor as I pass. There is only one reason a man dressed like me goes out at one a.m.
Frigid air bites my skin the second I step outside. For a job like this, I hail a cab. A few pass me, but eventually one stops. I slide in, and the driver’s eyes skim over my dark clothes.
“Walk of shame?” he asks, smirking.
I laugh under my breath. If he only knew.
In an American accent that will make me harder to place, I scoff, “Not at all, guy.”
I may look like I left someone I’ll never see again, but he couldn’t be more wrong. Fallon is mine. This started as fake, and now it’s the most real thing I’ve ever laid my hands on.
I give the driver the dock address where I was told to pick up the shipment, but then tell him to let me off sooner to throw him off.
I hit the street, boots crunching over salt-streaked pavement to melt an early ice storm. My breath mists into the cold as I draw closer to the waterfront, and my body pulses with the sharp focus and edge I need to be efficient and deadly.
Most importantly, alert.
The Greek guards who work for the Zervas brothers wait near the yawning mouth of his warehouse directly next to the harbor. Men I know as Greed and Envy have had their real names burned to ash.
Greed leans against a crate, smoking, eyes dull. Envy stands perfectly still, like a coiled wire. Both of them straighten when they see me. Greed speaks, low and deep. “The tracker our men installed shows the truck will be here any minute.”
“Aye,” I say, pulling out my AR, as he vanishes back into the shadows.
Minutes later, headlights blaze in the distance, growing fast. A matte-black Mercedes Sprinter van grinds to a halt, brakes squealing in front of the warehouse.
I step forward, the AR steady across my chest.
A man climbs out in a bulky coat with Bratva ink across every hairy knuckle.
The fucking Bratva are the sellers? I’m going to murder the head of the Greek mafia.
The Russian’s eyes sweep me up and down. “Show me,” he hisses in rough English. “I was told to only trust a man with the mark.”
“You’re only going to see this once,” I say without my accent and tug at my collar to expose the fake tat that is ugly, but tonight it earns me currency.
The guy studies me, then glances at Greed and Envy.
“Those are my backup.” I jerk my chin behind me.
The man mutters something in Russian, then shrugs. He’s a courier. And a low-paid one, obviously. He disappears behind the van, and I breathe in relief, hearing the back door rattle open.
That’s when floodlights, white-hot and blinding, break out across the dock, from a motorboat speeding toward the pilings.
Before I can decide who to shoot, gunfire shreds the silence. Bullets spark against the concrete, snapping the air.
“Too early,” voices snarl in the dark.
“Shite,” I hiss. “This was a setup. An ambush.”
I spin around, lifting my AR just before seeing a baseball bat arcing toward my head.
Head pounding, I open my eyes to find myself, body aching and broken, under a blood-stained sheet.
“You’re okay,” Trace says, but the worried lines around his taut mouth make him look ten years older.
Fuck, this job is killing both of us.
“What happened?” I stir on a gurney. I don’t need to look around to know we’re in a back-alley clinic because hospitals are too risky to bring someone like me.
“You took a blow to the head,” my brother answers.
“I was ambushed.”
“Shane is pulling camera footage,” Trace says, sitting with me. “And checking ballistics from the shells left behind.”
“Is Shane pissed at Ares for roping me into this side gig?” I mutter.
“You would have been killed on this side gig if my men didn’t drag you away from the gunfire,” Ares says, emerging from the shadows.
Damn it…
“Where are Greed and Envy? Are they all right?”
Trace closes his eyes and whispers, “They’re dead.”
“Why them and not me?” I look from Trace to Ares.
The God of War presses on my neck, touching the mark. “Respect. Fear. Who knows?”
“Where are the chips?” I ask.
“Gone,” Ares says, stepping back with arms crossed. “That’s all they wanted.”
I grit my teeth because moving my head will make me pass out, “Just perfect.”
“I called Cormac in for this one.” Trace mentioning his best friend Dr. O’Rourke to patch me up brings my blood pressure down somewhat. “I don’t trust your skull to anyone else.”
“I need…” I struggle to speak.
“What do you need, brother?”
I only imagine, one name, one word comes to mind.
“Fallon.” I swallow, and even that fucking hurts, too. “I need her. Get her for me. Now.”