Page 94 of Killer Kiss

I had no doubt Riddick would compensate them handsomely if they were smart enough to report back to him. Men like them, they were driven by money and greed and position and power.

There was no doubt in my mind they’d be spilling every detail to the one person I wished would just forget I existed.

Behind me, Nash shoved one of them back onto the couch. “Shut your mouth. She said she doesn’t know the guy. You’ve got the wrong woman.”

I appreciated my brother-in-law backing me up, and I could practically feel his concern following me out of the club. We grabbed our coats, and I shrugged mine on, hastily tying it at my waist.

Augie followed silently; his questions unspoken in the tension surrounding us.

I knew I owed him answers. Nobody was falling for my, “I don’t know Riddick” act.

Not those guys inside. Not Augie.

Shit.

Scythe looked up when I shoved my way out of the club doors. He cocked his head to one side, taking in my expression.

In an instant, his fingers moved to the small of his back where I knew he always had a knife. One of probably three or four he carried religiously. I grabbed his hand before he could reach it and squeezed it.

“I’m fine. But we need to leave.”

“Just tell me who I need to kill, Ophelia. You know I’ll take care of it,” he called after me.

I spun around and glared at him. There was nobody else out there in the empty parking lot, just me and Augie and my psychopathic brother, who hadn’t at all sounded like he was joking when he’d made that threat.

Because he wasn’t.

“He’s joking,” I assured Augie as we reached my car.

Augie glanced back over his shoulder at Scythe. “Didn’t sound like it. You want to tell me what the hell just happened in there?”

My brain raced, trying to come up with a lie.

Because admitting to a man, even one as rough around the edges as Augie, that my family killed for a living was impossible. Augie might have been from the wrong side of the tracks. He might have seen things he shouldn’t have.

But the man wasn’t a killer.

His rough exterior hid how gentle he really was. There was no denying that. When he’d held Luna on his lap for hours at that hospital, soothing her with low words and comforting touches, that was all I’d been able to think about.

He was good inside.

I was anything but.

I opened my mouth, hating that I was going to have to lie to him but seeing no other way out.

“Ophelia!”

My head snapped up at my name shouted from the doorway.

Zane jogged across the parking lot toward me.

Scythe stood behind him, miming a stabbing motion then turning both palms skyward. His “Do I kill this one?” question silent but clear.

I shook my head hard.

Unsurprisingly, Scythe leaned back on the wall and crossed his arms over his chest, his disappointment clear.

Christ. Someone needed to let that man kill someone. He seemed to be desperate for any excuse. Was that how I’d feel if I removed myself from the game the way he had?

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