Page 60 of Agent vs. Assassin

Adrenaline surges but I feel no fear. “Ghost. What are you doing?”

“You know him?” my father snaps. “What the fuck, Lilah?”

Ghost ignores him. “I told you I’d do this for you, Lilah,” he says. “I owe you.”

“Do what?” my father demands.

“I didn’t ask you to do this,” I say, and because I want my father to feel the pain of this, I add, “I didn’taskyou to kill him.”

“Kill me?! What the hell?!”

Ghost yanks his hair back and says, “Scream and I stop asking Lilah what she wants and end you. You sent someone to rape and kill her.”

“That’s not what happened,” my father objects. “I didn’t do it.”

Ghostssquats to his ear level and growls. “Then who did?”

“I can’t tell you.”

Because it was him. AndPocher. I hate him, but I still say, “This is unlike you, Ghost. You can’t get away with this here.”

“You still underestimate me. Why?”

“Don’t do this.” My voice is steady. I’m steady.

He narrows eyes on me,blue eyes, I believe this time. “Ever? Or now?”

I consider that a moment and let the truth, my truth, form my response. “He’s mine. When the time is right, he’s mine.”

Ghost studies me, really looks at me, and says, “You have a reason to keep him alive now.” It’s not a question.

To take down the Society, I think, but I don’t speakit. Isimply say, “Yes.”

“All right then. He needs to know that if he touches you again, if he speaks against you about this tonight, he’ll meet me again. And he won’t live to meet me a third time. He needs to know some of the pain he caused you or I can’t walk out of here.”

He waits, as if waiting for my approval. “Okay.”

“Leave the room.”

“He has to go on camera in a few minutes.”

“He will.”

“I’m staying.”

He shrugs and before I know his intent, he grabs my father’s hand and then leans to his ear again, whispers something I don’t understand before speaking to me again. “Until next time, Lilah.” He breaks my father’s finger and then just like that, he’s out a back exit, and if I’m right, he won’t look like the same person he does now when he leaves.

My father doesn’t scream as if Ghost hasforbiddenit. He cries, like a baby.

And just like that, Ghost is gone.

And Junior is back.

The End…for now

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