Page 4 of Hitman

“Care to explain how the fuck that happened?” Alex asked when Grim didn’t speak and just stared me down.

I sighed. “She was hired by him to take me out,” I told him. Grim grunted, then snatched his cigarettes off the table. If this were any other situation, I’d have laughed at his need to smoke the second something stressful happened, but I knew I was treading on very thin ice with him for this fuck-up. “I don’t know how he found out about me. I didn’t have time to question her.”

“Someone like him probably had connections. I called Copper, and he did some digging with Scorpion—” Scorpion was the president of the Texas Charter of Satan’s Worshippers MC and tech savvy as fuck— “and they found out he has governmentconnections. Don’t know how deep his connections run, but he probably found out you were civilian now and did some digging on you since you lived so close to him.”

“We’re running facial recognition on the woman you brought here,” Alex continued as the smoke from Grim’s cigarette rose between us. I waved it away. “We should have a name here soon, as well as some information on her. She seem pro?”

I nodded. “The only reason I noticed her was because she accidentally stepped on a twig. It gave away her position. She had a knife at the ready. Had I not noticed her, my death would have been upon me before I was even fully aware I was dying. She’s definitely a fucking pro.”

“Fuck,” Grim swore, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. His burner phone went off before he could say anything more. He pulled it from his pocket, glanced at the screen, and answered the call. Tossing the device on the table, he said, “We’re here.”

“Your girl is Solace Dukes,” Scorpion said. Alex sighed. Grim reached for another cigarette. His first one wasn’t even completely finished yet. “She’s the daughter of Stewart Dukes—the CEO of Dukesuor. She’s twenty-seven years old. Her parents divorced when she was fourteen. He sent her off to the same institution Julian trained with in the government as soon as she graduated high school. She works solely for him, and he pays her tens of thousands of dollars for every kill. Looks like she pays a lot for care for her mother, who is mentally unwell and requires around the clock care.”

Grim pointed his unlit cigarette at me. “If you were any-fucking-one else,” he growled at me, “I’d put a bullet through your skull for this bullshit.”

“She didn’t even show up in the paperwork you gave me,” I snapped, getting agitated, too. “Had she been in that fucking paperwork, I could’ve done my homework on her.”

“He was a kill?” Scorpion asked before Grim could do something—like put a bullet through my skull. When none of us answered him, he heaved a loud sigh. “Well, the reason she doesn’t show up is the same reason Julian doesn’t. The government made her disappear.”

That made sense. Everything I had was technically under someone else’s name in this club, even if I paid for it. I didn’t have a social security number any longer. My birth certificate was absolutely worthless. Under US laws, I was here illegally, and to any government agency, I didn’t exist.

Understandable the same had happened to her.

“How did you find her?” I asked.

Scorpion snorted. “I hacked into the military’s database. How the fuck else would I find her if she didn’t exist otherwise?”

“We’ve got two options here,” Alex spoke up. “We take her out, too, or we keep her here and convince her to keep her mouth shut about Julian and this club. Scorpion, do you think there’s any love lost between her and Stewart?”

“No clue,” Scorpion told him. “That’s something you’ll have to find out on your own. But if she interfered with Julian’s kill…”

Yeah… she might have cared about him.Fuck.

I leaned back in my seat and scrubbed my hands down my face.

The pretty ones were always the most fucking trouble.

CHAPTER 5

Solace

Iwasboiling. I’d never been so angry in my life. Julian mother fucking McKenzie had destroyedeverythingtonight. Not only would my mother be at home panicking because I wasn’t going to be home on time, which would send her into a spiral that would require more medications and sedatives to keep her calm, but my paycheck to take care of her wasgone.

How thefuckwas I supposed to cover her care now that Julian had taken out my father? I didn’t have to see his body to know he was dead. There’d been no mistaking that gunshot as I laid on that fucking couch, bound and unable to escape or stop him. The bindings around my wrists and arms were inescapable.

Julian was a pro in every sense of the word, and I hadn’t been prepared nearly enough to take on someone of his magnitude. He’d known my knife was coming without even opening his eyes. Had halted me with his eyes closed, no hesitation in his movement.

I’d been set up for failure from the get-go. I didn’t know where he got that kind of training. The only time I’d seen anyonewith that level of skill had been in the training camp my father had sent me to after I graduated. Those people were top-tier assassins. The best of the best of the best. Finding someone else in the game better than them would be near impossible.

I wiggled, trying to get more comfortable on the hard, metal chair Julian had deposited me into, but it was futile. I was tired, my ass was hurting, and my arms and legs were beginning to go numb. Not to mention, the taste of the bandana in my mouth was getting really fucking old.

The door to the basement I’d been left in opened, and three pairs of feet began making their way down the stairs. A light flickered on, and I squinted, momentarily blinded. My eyeballs burned as they tried adjusting to the new lighting. Once I could see, even if my eyes were watering, I took in the three men who’d come downstairs.

Julian was easy to spot with his platinum blonde hair and dark eyes. The man standing to the left of him was wearing the president patch on his motorcycle vest. I’d already known Julian was a patched member of the Savage Crows MC from the file I’d been given on him, which meant the president was more than likely Grim.

No one operated in the field I did and hadn’tat leastheard of Grim. He was a cold-blooded man, and he wasn’t afraid to drop the bodies of anyone who got in his way. Whereas Julian and I had been trained by the military, Grim had been trained by the streets.

His presence didn’t bode well for me.

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