Page 48 of Beautiful Vengeance

The fury on Trinity’s face was something to behold, and Marcus approved. Kiyomi deserved to be reamed out for this stunt she’d pulled. “Well, lucky for you, Marcus figured out you were missing soon after you’d left, otherwise you’d be dead right now,” Trinity continued.

“I could have handled the others,” Kiyomi argued. “I had it under control.”

“Jesus Christ, that’s not the point,” Marcus snapped, drawing her dark stare. “You took off to go after Rahman by yourself, when you were expressly ordered not to by your team leader. You didn’t want to wait, so you lied to me, went behind our backs and did what you wanted anyway. That’s not only reckless as hell, it’s bloody selfish, yet you don’t give a shit because you got what you wanted.”

Hurt flashed in her eyes. “If I’d waited, he’d have disappeared again,” she shot back, color flooding into her cheeks. “He’d have wriggled off the hook and escaped justice yet again, and then we’d have spent God knows how long trying to track him down again—if we ever did. I couldn’t let that happen, and you of all people should understand why,” she flung at him.

Marcus shook his head, suddenly weary now that the edge of his temper had been dulled. “I told you, I didn’t kill any of the men who captured me.” Just two guards on the way out of the compound with Megan.

Her dark stare bore into his, hard, unflinching. Showing him the steely core he’d always known lay inside her. “But they’re all dead, aren’t they. You got justice. If some, or even one of them had still been alive right now in the city, you’re telling me you wouldn’t have wanted to settle the score?”

She didn’t get it. She was too blinded by hatred to see the truth. “Killing them wouldn’t change what they did to me. And no, Iwouldn’thave gone after them, because unlike you,Iwould never risk my team to settle a personal score,” he finished with a pointed look.

She wrenched her gaze away, a muscle flexing in her jaw as she folded her arms. “I wasn’t risking any of you. Just myself. That’s why I took off on my own. None of you were supposed to know what happened until it was all over.”

“From where I’m sitting, you’re damn lucky wedidknow and got there when we did.”

He was well aware that she was highly skilled and deadly in a lot of ways. But taking on that many armed and highly trained security personnel alone, then Rahman, and making it out of the fortified compound while she ran through the neighborhood looking for a vehicle to steal?

It still made his blood run cold to remember her standing there covered in Rahman’s blood and not knowing if they were too late. Wondering if that bastard had touched her again.

A few minutes later, the van in front of them turned left and drove off. “Where are they going?” Kiyomi asked as Eden kept driving straight.

“To a different location,” Trinity snapped, not having softened her stance even a little. “Amber’s trying to access Rahman’s security system remotely to scrub it of all evidence of us being there, but it might be too late. Now we have to split into two teams until we can get out of the country.”

Kiyomi was silent a moment, then released a hard sigh. “All right. I’m sorry you guys were dragged into this. But I’m not sorry for going out on my own and killing Rahman. I had to.”

Nobody said anything else for the rest of the drive to the original safehouse. The brittle tension between Kiyomi and the rest of them remained as everyone went inside.

“Here’s his cell,” she said, handing it to Trinity. “Hopefully Amber can find a way to get the whole conversation with the Architect from it. Oh, and tell her he used a particular word that stood out during our short conversation. Untenable.”

“So?”

“So, it was out of place. English is his third language. And the Architect used it in the recorded clip between them earlier. Amber’s using linguistic forensics as a tool in the investigation. Thought it might be significant.” She shrugged.

Trinity walked past her without another word and dialed someone on her mobile.

Eden started to follow, then stopped and faced Kiyomi with her hands on her hips. “I get why you did it. I really do. But we’re not just your backup, Kiyomi. We’re your family.” She shook her head, a pained frown drawing her eyebrows together. “What if you hadn’t made it? What if we’d all gotten there and found you dead?”

Kiyomi’s cheeks flushed again. “Then you would have moved on and finished the mission to expose the Architect without me.” Eden gaped at her in astonishment but Kiyomi stalked past her, her shoulder brushing Marcus’s on the way down the hall.

Shaking her head, Eden met his gaze. “She talks like she doesn’t think she matters to us at all.”

That’s exactly how it sounded.

He stood there a moment after Eden went into the next room with Trinity, gathering his thoughts. What a shit show.

He ran a hand over his face, unsure what to do. What was done was done, no one on the team had been injured, and they were dealing with the aftermath as best they could. They’d have to get out of this place by morning at the latest, and with luck they might get some actionable intel from the electronics or the captured bodyguard that would lead them to the Architect.

For now, Marcus’s hip was killing him, and he wanted a hot shower. His shirt and hands had Rahman’s blood all over them.

In the bathroom attached to his room upstairs, he stripped and stood under the hot spray for a few minutes, letting the heat of the water ease the tension in his neck and shoulders.

After scrubbing himself down, he got out, toweled off, and wrapped it around his waist. He brushed his teeth, took a couple anti-inflammatories and paused to run a hand over his beard, contemplating at least trimming it.

The door behind him opened. He watched, unmoving as Kiyomi slipped inside and locked the door behind her. She wore that plum-colored satin robe, her hair wet from a recent shower.

She met his gaze in the mirror, and there was a surprising amount of hesitancy in her expression. As if she was assessing him. Trying to figure out how angry he still was.

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