Chapter 19 Helena
HELENA
Erryn was unraveling. I could see it in the too-calm mask she had put on.
She had lost two people she had trusted in one day.
Two sides of a painful coin, and I wasn’t even sure which was worse.
I had silently arranged for a clean-up crew to deal with the house and bring the two bodies and the injured man back to base, and fuck I was looking forward to a call from the medic to confirm he’d been stabilized.
“Lox,” I murmured, after she hung up with the Paris faction. She was leaning on her desk, her thumbs massaging her temples. I wanted to touch her, but she was a coiled spring ready to explode, and if that was going to happen, it needed to be somewhere safe.
“What?” she snapped, not looking at me.
“I’m going to the Meridian to retrieve essentials,” I said evenly.
She scoffed, straightening. “You want me to just abandon my home too, Rossi?”
I didn’t let the slip back to the old name sting, just set my phone down in front of her so she could see the smart home system, now updated with Vanguard software.
“I’ve tried every workaround I can think of,” I said. “I can’t isolate it. Not without base-level override.”
Her jaw tightened.
“He’s won this round,” I said, shaking my head, “so we damn well won’t be giving him another.”
“Fine,” she said after a moment, picking up her phone. She closed her eyes briefly, then put it down again, muttering a curse under her breath.
She noticed me watching her and raised her chin. “What?”
“Do you want to discuss Ben?”
The muscle in her jaw feathered, her eyes hardening.
“Are you judging my decision to terminate him?”
I snorted. “No! He knew damn well what he was doing. It’s his reason I’m questioning. Did you not want to know why?”
“I don’t care why,” she said quietly. “Trust is hard won and easily lost, and I don’t forgive betrayal.
There wasn’t any reason he could give me that would excuse what he did, nor any reason that I couldn’t have fixed if he had come to me.
He made his choice, and I didn’t get to where I am through leniency. ”
I understood that. Loyalty in this industry was rare, and lives could be made and lost with it. I nodded, reaching for my bag.
“Stay in base,” I said. “I’ll be back soon.”
It didn’t take me long to retrieve what we needed from the penthouse.
Matilda met me there and gathered everything Erryn required while I collected my own things, along with a couple of additions on a last sweep before leaving.
It was as if nothing had happened there, not a speck of blood anywhere to be seen.
I had never returned to the scene of any of my hits that had required a cleaning crew, and I was impressed.
Turns out I could have been a lot messier.
Noted.
I refused to look at the place Claire had died as I escorted Matilda out and saw her off. I could still see the older woman’s face. Her shocked, agonized look. Her body contorted from trying to drag herself out of the elevator. I’d liked Claire, and I could see the blow her loss was to Erryn.
I hailed a cab, paying in cash for the ride to a hotel in Mayfair, secured a suite and sent the luggage up, then returned to base to collect Erryn, flicking her a message on the way.
Citadel is cold.
Erryn
Phone lines are secure. They are encrypted.
Okay, well. Your boudoir awaits? Your chariot arrives in ten.
Erryn
I’ll be down in five.
Tough crowd.
She was already outside as the cab pulled up, something I decided was an argument I wasn’t going to win if I even attempted to broach it, so I just opened the door for her, and she slid in beside me in silence.
She didn’t ask where we were going, nor did she say a word as we reached the hotel, where she followed me through the marble corridors and up a flight of stairs to the suite.
“I’m taking a shower,” she murmured as I slipped the key card into the control panel in the room, the low lighting flickering on.
“Okay,” I said, doing a quick sweep of the place.
“You are coming with me.”
I paused, but she had already disappeared into the bathroom, leaving me blinking at the open bathroom door.
Oh, fucking Jesus fuck. I was still blinking at the door.
Is this gay panic? Get yourself together, Helena.
Erryn had thoroughly fucked me the night before, and I could still feel its lingering effects, my body pleasantly sore from everything she had done to me.
But she had remained clothed through it all, even when I’d begged to touch her.
She had played my body like a damn instrument, and I had forcibly pushed it to the back of my mind all day.
Okay, that’s a lie.
I had constant flashbacks. But it’s really unprofessional to have ruined underwear from thoughts of your employer’s tongue being every bit as devastating as she claimed, while…You know what. Never mind. That whole thought process was a lost cause.
The shower turned on with the door still open, and I finally snapped out of my momentary glitch to kick my shoes off and follow her.
The shower was glass.
The shower was fucking glass.
I deserved an Olympic medal for bullshit for the way I casually leaned against the wall, cocked my head, and took in the sight of her.
She was standing side on, the water so hot steam was already filling the room, her pale skin turning pink under the rivulets of water sluicing down her body.
She pulled pins from her bun and tossed them to the floor as she loosened her hair.
Scars dotted her body, lean muscle flexing under them as she moved.
I stepped closer as she turned, the bullet scar coming into full view, and I couldn’t stop myself from reaching out and running my hand over it, water spattering my clothes.
Erryn turned, and I was suddenly against the far wall of the shower, her lips crashing into mine in a near-painful kiss. I took it for a minute—let myself get lost in the feel of her—and then I gave her the fight she was looking for.
I pushed her back under the water, sending a small tray of soap flying as her elbow knocked into it. My clothes were instantly soaked, the water only just shy of too hot as I took control of the kiss, my hand slipping up her body to cup her breast and pinch her nipple.
She bit my lip hard, and I broke the kiss with a gasp.
She smirked, her fingers gliding up my neck as I slid one hand down, following the trails of water. My pulse picked up with every inch my hand lowered, past her navel to graze the manicured little strip I’d caught a glance of.
Erryn shifted, making a warning noise in her throat.
“Let me touch you this time,” I murmured, as her thumb pressed against my throat.
Her eyes flashed, and I could see the pent-up rage in their depths; she was on the edge of a spiral, her control the only thing stopping her from giving in.
“You want to please me?” she murmured, drawing near as if to kiss me again.
“Yes.” Water sluiced over both of us, the heat near unbearable.
“Then get on your knees and fucking beg for it,” she whispered against my lips.
I lowered myself to my knees at her feet, my eyes devouring every part of her as I did. I was desperate to run my tongue down the smooth line of her stomach, nip at her hip bones, then lower.
“Keep those pretty eyes on me, Helena.”
I looked up at her obediently as she leaned back against the wall, water running down my back as I slipped my arm under her thigh and pulled it over my shoulder. Her fingers slipped into my hair and she held me there, not allowing me closer.
I made an impatient noise in the back of my throat, and she gripped me tighter.
“Words, Helena.”
“Let me taste you.”
She looked down at me with those gunmetal grey eyes, unimpressed and waiting.
“Please,” I said. “I need to know what you taste like. Let me and I’ll do anything you ask.”
The corner of her lips tilted in a satisfied smirk, drawing me into her with a soft groan as my tongue slid slowly across her clit, savoring her taste.
I dug my fingers into her thighs and lost myself in the pleasure of finally touching her, licking and sucking at her clit until her breathing hitched and the hand in my hair gripped so tight my scalp burned.
“Fuck, Lena,” she breathed as I wrapped my lips around her clit and flicked my tongue, shifting so I could tease her entrance with two fingers.
She was drenched, and I groaned as I felt just how aroused she was, my fingers sliding back and forth once, teasing slowly until she tugged on my hair and I pushed into her in one fluid thrust.
The sound she made almost made me come, her chest heaving and her head thrown back as I stroked her inner walls, still working her with my mouth. I shifted again to press the heel of my foot into the incessant ache of my own body as I knelt, the pressure of it nearly enough to—
Fuck, I was going to come.
I rocked my hips gently against my heel, desperate to relieve some of the pressure, and moaned as the waves of my own orgasm built faster than I had anticipated, crooking my fingers inside her as I did.
Erryn came hard suddenly, her body gripping my fingers as she gasped through the spasms of it. The taste of her release, salty and sweet on my tongue, was all I needed to tip over myself as I came too.
She released my hair, tugging me up on shaking legs to take my mouth in a kiss, gentler this time, her hands cupping my face as she turned me out of the stream of water to lean against the wall.
She undressed me slowly. Both of us were struggling a little as the fabric clung to my skin, and we left it all in a wet pile in the corner of the shower.
Then I retrieved the scattered bottles of soap, lathering us both.
It was intimate in a way I couldn’t explain.
I’d just had my fingers inside her—tasted her—and yet the act of cleaning her body felt…
more. Her eyes closed and her body loose under my touch was intoxicating.
I leaned in and kissed her shoulder, subtly inhaling her scent before raising my head to find her watching me, a little of the guardedness back in her eyes.
I turned to gather my wet clothes and give her a moment to compose herself, sliding my phone from the soaked trouser pocket and quickly checking it.
A notification waited from one of the private Discord servers I had.
A few favors were owed to me from people who preferred to operate in the quieter corners of the internet, and one of them had dropped a file.
I opened it and skimmed the attached notes.
Travel records. Shell companies. A tidy list of William Vanguard’s movements over the last three years compiled from a handful of databases that technically shouldn’t have been speaking to each other—and a birth certificate for a daughter who hadn’t been in the files in the Triarchy’s system.
“Gotcha,” I murmured. I turned to Erryn, holding out my phone. “Vanguard has a weak spot,” I said, “and I just found it.”