Page 34 of Captured Onyx

She tilts her head to the side, and by the puzzled expression on her face, I can tell that she’s trying to understand where I'm going with this line of thinking. "Unwanted attention?"

"From the police," I clarify. "A huge investigation will be launched after a bloodbath of that magnitude. It will put us on the radar and stop anybody from wanting to work with us. No one wants to have ties to the group with an X painted on their backs."

She nods in understanding, pressing her lips into a thin line.

She throws me a cautious look. "So instead you use a woman to infiltrate them, going for a silent kill," she says in a low voice. "But why? Why do you want to kill them?"

I sigh, shaking my head. "The less you know, the better it will be for you."

"No!" she protests furiously, jumping up from the bed and positioning herself in front of me, her hands planted on her hips. "No. I won't let you shut me out again with that dumb excuse! I want to know. I need to know."

I frown, rising to my feet as well. Towering over her is simply a physical reminder of her inferiority, a way for me to put her in her place.

And it works like a charm. She lowers her arms, sighing tiredly.

"Please," she utters, now looking at me with a defeated expression. "I hate to be kept in the dark. It never bodes well for me and the decisions I make."

I hesitate, trying to come up with the perfect middle ground. I didn't lie when I said that ignorance is in her own interest, but I understand why she feels that she must know the truth.

I would demand the same if I was in her position.

"Does it suffice to say that we're working for someone else?" I ask. "For another family."

"Another mafia family?"

"Yes."

"They hired you to do this?" she wants to know.

"Not exactly. We presented them with an offer to do something about the Scivolas for them. The families have been rivals for ages, and eliminating the Scivolas would put them at an advantage in this never ending war between families within the New England mafia—and grant us protection."

Her lips move as if she wanted to ask another question, but something stops her and she furrows her eyebrows instead.

This is all she needs to know. She doesn't need to know anything more about the other family, the Lato family. They run one of the largest crime syndicates in the Boston area, and there's a chance that even this innocent girl is familiar with their name. It won‘t do her any good to be associated with them in any way, especially if she wants to get out of this mission alive and return to her regular life.

If she ever does. This may be the one detail in which I stretched the truth.

No, the second detail. But the first is buried so deep that even Daveed and Mike don't know about it, and neither does our boss. No one does.

No one but me, because I’m the one pulling the strings all by myself.

And it will be best if it remains that way. For now.

"I don't know if I can do this," she says simply, a contemplative expression gracing her pretty face as she turns to look out the window. "I'm not a murderer."

"It won't feel that way. It's a soft kill." I say in an effort to reassure her.

She huffs again at the sound of those words, her eyes trailing over her shoulder to look at me. "You keep saying that, but what does that even mean?"

"A soft kill—you will be the reason why they die, but it won't be because you had to stab or shoot them."

"I still don’t understand what you mean. How will they die?"

"Poisoning," I reveal. "You'll poison them. It's clean, simple, and untraceable."

Raising an eyebrow in disbelief, she shakes her head at me. "That sounds almost too easy. Why would you need to concoct a fake marriage to pull that off?"

"Because we need to establish a way to get them to trust us, and the way to do that is to have them come to trust you," I say, closing in on her. She jerks back when I lift my hand, my index finger tracing along the outline of her cheeks.

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