Chapter 20
20
T he sound of fists hitting pads echoes through the training area, a steady rhythm matching the beat of my pounding heart. Whit stands across from me, holding the pads, his gaze assessing as he tracks my movements, ready to correct me at a moment’s notice.
“Again,” he says, his voice measured, guiding rather than demanding.
I throw another punch, my knuckles connecting with the pad. It stings, but I don’t stop. A small nod of approval from Whit pushes me to keep going.
“You’re stronger than you think,” he says, lowering the pads for a moment. “But strength isn’t enough. You need control. Precision.” He grabs my hips, turning them a specific way. “When you throw each punch, make sure your hips rotate like this to generate power.”
“Easier said than done,” I mutter, shaking out my hands.
He chuckles, stepping closer. “It takes practice. And patience. You’ll get there.”
I still don’t know how I let Whit talk me into this.
Yesterday, I wandered into the training area, curious about the way they moved—so fluid, so controlled, like every step and strike was part of a dance only they could hear the beat of.
Okay, it might have had more to do with the way their muscles rippled and sweat dripped down their bodies.
I hadn’t meant to get caught watching, but Whit spotted me anyway.
“You should learn,” he said casually, like it wasn’t a big deal. “Unless that’s not why you were watching.” His grin let me know, he knew exactly what I was doing.
And now here I am, sweating and exhausted, trying to land punches while he teaches me the basics of self-defense. All because I refused to admit I was drooling over them. Josiah and my father would be appalled.
“Good,” he says with a nod. “You’re getting better.”
“Feels like I’m hitting a brick wall,” I mutter, shaking out my hands.
He laughs lightly, lowering the pad. “That’s what training is for. Build strength, get the form right, and one day, the wall shatters.”
Assuming my hand doesn’t break first.
I groan, wiping the sweat from my forehead with the sleeve of my shirt—it’s so nice to have clothes that fit and cover me again. “You make it sound so simple.”
Whit doesn’t reply immediately. Instead, he grabs a bottle of water from the edge of the mat and tosses it to me. I catch it a bit awkwardly, unscrew the cap, and drink deeply as the silence stretches between us.
And then, the question that’s been gnawing at me since I learned what they do slips out before I can catch it. “How did you guys even get into this? The whole… assassin thing?”
Whit freezes, a flicker of surprise crossing his face. It’s gone in an instant, replaced by that same unshakable ease he always carries. He takes a long sip of his water, as if buying time to decide how to answer.
They had to know I’d ask at some point, right?
Not that I’m ready to tell them anything about my past.
“You really want to know?” he asks finally, his voice quiet yet serious.
I nod, my curiosity is begging for the information, but I try to play it cool. “Yeah. I mean… it’s not exactly what you would call a normal career path.”
Whit chuckles, setting his bottle down and motioning for me to sit. “Fair enough. But you might not like what you’re about to hear.”
He leans forward, resting his arms on his knees as he begins. “It started at Caldwell Academy. A fancy boarding school for the elite. Beckett, Quinn, and I were sixteen, stuck in this place full of rules and expectations. We hated it.”
“Hated it?” I echo, bursting to ask several other questions. What’s a boarding school? What does he mean when he says it’s for the elite? Somehow, I manage to keep them to myself.
“Hated it,” he repeats with a grimace, his voice firm. “The pressure, the constant reminders of what we were supposed to become. Beckett’s family wanted him to be the perfect heir to their business empire. Quinn’s parents didn’t care what he did, as long as he didn’t embarrass them. And me… I was just trying to figure out where I fit.”
“So you decided to… what? Run away and start killing people?” I ask, half-joking.
Whit shakes his head, a faint smile tugging at his lips. “Not exactly. It was Quinn who first brought it up.”
“Why does that not surprise me?” We both laugh.
“We had this teacher, Mr. Ambrose. Charismatic, enigmatic. He approached Beckett first, and—just like now—if you take one, you take all.
Don’t I know it.
That’s how he pulled us into what he called ‘leadership training.’ Except the training was less academic than physical. He taught us how to prepare for any situation, master survival techniques, strategize for battle, and turn anything—even our own bodies—into a weapon.”
“Well, that’s a bit more than your average history or mathematics.” I can’t help but feel that this Mr. Ambrose wasn’t much different from the adults I had around me growing up. They molded us to become what they wanted.
“You could definitely say that,” Whit says with a laugh. “We made this old greenhouse on the school grounds our little getaway. It was falling apart—cracked glass, vines everywhere—it was clearly long forgotten, but we didn’t care, it was ours,” he says, his voice thick with nostalgia. “We’d go there to escape. Talk. Plan.”
“What kind of plans?” I ask.
“At first? Nothing serious. Just dreams about getting out, doing something different. We were painfully bored, but then Quinn got it into his head that we could turn everything we were learning—strategy, combat, manipulation—into something real.”
I blink. “He just… suggested it like he was suggesting pizza for dinner? Like it was nothing?”
Whit laughs. “Quinn’s good at making wild ideas sound reasonable. Said we could use our skills to take out bad people—arms dealers, human traffickers, you name it. Said it’d be better than wasting our lives pretending to care about stock portfolios and charity galas.”
“And Beckett?” I ask, fairly certain I already know the answer.
“He was the first to take it seriously,” Whit admits. “He said we’d been groomed for something our whole lives, and if this was it, at least it would be on our terms.”
“What about you?” I press. “Did you think it was a good idea?”
Whit hesitates, his gaze dropping to the floor. “Not at first. The idea of killing people didn’t sit right with me. But the way Beckett talked about it made it sound like… control. Like we were taking back our lives while making the world a better place. And you know how Quinn is—makes everything seem like an adventure.”
“And you couldn’t say no,” I murmur.
“No,” he agrees softly. “They were my family, even then. I didn’t want to lose them.”
“We made a pact in that greenhouse,” Whit continues. “Beckett said if we were going to do it, we had to be all in—no second-guessing, no turning back.”
“And obviously, each of you agreed.”
He nods. “We approached Ambrose, somehow knowing that he would point us in the right direction. Turns out, he’d been conditioning us for something like this all along. He got us started, and… the rest is history.”
I sit back, trying to process what he’s told me. “So… you became assassins because you were bored and angry at your parents?”
“Sounds ridiculous when you say it like that,” Whit says, his lips twitching into a faint smile. “But yeah. That’s how it started.”
I hesitate, then ask, “And what does it mean to you now?”
“Now, it’s about getting paid to take out the scum of the earth. It’s given us purpose.” He holds my gaze, his expression unreadable. “And now, you’re part of it.”
My smile lingers as I glance down, heat warming my cheeks. “Okay.” I meet his eyes again, softer this time. “Let’s keep going.”
Whit smiles, standing and holding out a hand to pull me up. “Good. Let’s see if you can actually land a punch with passable form this time.”
The tension breaks, and I roll my eyes as I take his hand. “Don’t hold your breath.”
Now, lying in the quiet shadows of his room, the day’s tension begins to melt away. His arm is draped loosely over my waist, his warmth grounding me as my mind drifts—not toward sleep, but to tomorrow. The mission lingers at the edge of my thoughts, a quiet weight settling in my chest.
Before I can get too lost in it, he speaks.
“You know,” he begins, his words carrying something heavier, something personal, “when I was a kid, I always wanted a family—a real family.”
I tilt my head toward him, caught off guard by the vulnerability in his tone. “Didn’t you have one?”
He sighs, his chest rising and falling beneath my cheek. “Not really. I had parents, sure, but they were… distant. Cold. They cared more about appearances than anything else. To them, I was just another thing to polish and display. It wasn’t a family—it was more of a performance than anything.”
That ache in his voice tugs at something deep inside me. I know what it’s like to be seen as an object rather than a person, to have your worth measured by how well you play a role.
I grab his hand, weaving our fingers together and giving him a little squeeze. “How old were you when you went to boarding school?”
“They shipped me off to Caldwell Academy right after elementary school,” he confirms, a faint smile tugging at his lips. “I was eleven and missed the familiarity of home, even if it wasn’t the warmest. I hated it at first. It was just more of the same—rules, expectations, no room to breathe. But that’s where I met Beckett and Quinn.”
“How did you all meet?” I ask, glad to be getting to happier moments of his life.
He shifts slightly, his voice softening. “Beckett was the first. He was sitting in the library, surrounded by books and looking like he’d rather burn the place down than read another page. I think that’s what caught my attention—he looked as miserable as I felt.”
I smile faintly, picturing a younger, brooding Beckett. “And Quinn?”
Whit chuckles, warmth in his voice. “Quinn was vibrant and impossible to miss—always talking, always moving, always getting into trouble. The first time I met him, he was sweet-talking a cafeteria worker into giving him extra dessert.”
“Did it work?” I ask, failing to hide my amusement.
“Of course it worked,” Whit says with a grin. “Quinn could charm the horns off a bull, while dressed head to toe in red, if he tried hard enough.”
The warmth in his tone shifts, turning reflective. “The three of us didn’t fit in with the rest of the kids at Caldwell. We didn’t care about the things they cared about—inheritances, power, following in their parents’ footsteps. We just… found each other. And that was it. They became my family.”
My chest tightens as I imagine what it would have been like to grow up with a friend or two. “Beckett and Quinn,” I whisper. “They’re everything to you.”
“They were,” he says, meeting my gaze. “But now… now it’s different.”
“How so?” I ask.
He brushes a strand of hair from my face, his touch gentle. “Because of you. Beckett and Quinn are my family, but with you… it feels complete. Like this is what I’ve been searching for my whole life.”
My breath catches. Instinct tells me to pull away—not because I don’t want this, but because I do. Because wanting means hoping, and hoping means breaking.
But Whit doesn’t let go. His grip stays firm, his gaze locked onto mine.
“Do you really mean that?” I whisper.
Whit nods, his lips brushing lightly against my forehead. “Every word.”
I don’t know how to say exactly what I’m feeling, so I show him. I trail kisses down his bare chest, nipping along the way, drawing a hiss from him each time. I don’t have to say anything—when I get to the band on his boxers and tug, he lifts his hips for me.
He’s already hard when I wrap my hand around him and kiss the tip. I lick him from base to head before slowly wrapping my lips around him. His hand brushes my hair from my face, and I look into his eyes as I feel him hit the back of my throat.
“Fuck, your mouth feels like heaven,” he groans. I bob up and down his shaft several times before he snaps. “I need to be inside you.”
He picks me up and tosses me onto my back, quickly yanking off my tank and shorts. Draping a leg over each arm, lines himself up, his heated gaze fixating on my own, before he pushes slowly into me. We both groan once he’s fully seated inside me. His movements are slow at first, his strokes languid and gentle, but it doesn’t take long before he’s pounding into me at a punishing pace.
“Touch yourself, princess,” he demands.
I hesitate before my hand slowly slides between my legs. I’m awkward at first, but I quickly find the motion and pressure I prefer. There’s something freeing about touching myself when I’d been made to fear it—one more thing I’m taking back.
The sound of the headboard hitting the wall and our bodies colliding almost drowns out the gibberish spilling from my mouth. I feel that string within me pull taut, and I know I’m close.
“Whose cock are you about to come all over?”
“Yours.”
“That’s right, princess, mine. I want to hear you scream my name while your cunt clamps down around me.”
“Whit!” I cry as the dam bursts within me and my body floods with pleasure.
“Fuck, Celest,” he growls as he finds his release. “I love hearing my name on your lips when you come.”
He releases my legs and leans down to press his lips to mine. We kiss slowly, unhurried and tender.
When we finally part, he rolls onto his back and pulls me on top of him. We fall into sleep almost instantly. In that in-between space, where waking and dreaming blur, a sense of belonging washes over me.
Maybe I’ve found the family I’ve always needed—something real.
Something… like love.