Page 46 of Assassin's Mark
“No.” Remi swallowed hard. His sick-bed pallor took on a green tint. “No.”
Levi flung his arms in the air. “No, what? You don’t think I savored cutting that bastard into tiny little pieces? I did. Hekilledour parents! His own flesh-and-blood. And for what? Fucking money. That sick fuck wouldn’t have stopped there, either. I hid you both for a reason. Amos Agozi deserved to die, as painfully and slowly as possible, and I didn’t care who or what I had to mow down to makesure it happened. For you. For Eli. For our family.” His steel-gray gaze glittered with ice. “I didn’t regret it then, and I still don’t.”
“If you did it for revenge, maybe you should,” Remi argued.
“No.” Levi gritted his teeth on the word, spitting it out like a bullet. “I shouldn’t.”
A second alarm sounded, this one louder than the first. The men ignored it, staring at each other like strangerswho’d never met before. And maybe they hadn’t—these parts of themselves, anyway. I could see the cold rage building in Levi’s expression, quivering through his big body like an eruption waiting to blow. Who would get caught in that blast? A glance at Leah’s worried expression had me hoping it wasn’t the brother he’d done so much to save.
“Revenge is just another word for what I do—and I do itwell, thoroughly, and without emotion. I don’t have the luxury of feeling anything,” Levi growled, his tone belying his words. “Emotion died in me a long time ago; it had to. All that matters, all I care about, is keepingmy familysafe. And I’ll do that no matter the cost.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Remi growled right back. “If you didn’t feel anything, she wouldn’t be here.” He pointed myway without looking at me. “You’re not doing an emotionless job—you’re acting on nothing but emotion. Once you took Roslyn’s child, you gave in to the need not only to kill him physically, but to tear out his heart.”
Between one breath and the next, Levi was in Remi’s face. “I’ll tell you what I feel—a burning need to keep you alive.” He shot a glance at Eli. “Both of you. Nothing and no oneelse matters. Period.”
“Of course other people matter. She’s a person. She has a life. You had no right to use her in your game against Roslyn. There’s always another way. You taught me that.”
“I lied.”
Remi’s laugh was filled with gravel. “No, what you lied about was keeping your emotions out of it. You like to play the coldhearted bastard, but the truth is, you were in a rage after I gotshot, and you took it out on her instead of the real target.”
“No! No.” Levi’s hands fisted at his sides, the palpable force of his anger thickening the muscles in his arms and neck as he tensed. “I hurt the real target by taking her.”
“Did you? At what cost? You saw how he treated her when I did the surveillance. You know what that bastard is like. She's been hurt enough.”
“What?”
The questionescaped before I could stop it. Remi had been watching me even before the shooting? I’d thought… Levi knew intimate details—my habits, my comings and going. It had never occurred to me that he’d known the exact nature of my relationship with my father. He’d known how little I mattered, and still he’d used me as a pawn.
His opening gambit. The most insignificant pawn in his arsenal. Even the moneyhad been more important.
“You didn’t tell her, did you?” Remi asked.
Levi scoffed. “Believe me, she figured it out quick enough.”
Not all of it, apparently. I wouldn’t feel this way if I had.
My gaze met Remi’s, and I knew he read the truth there, the revelations and wounds and pain. His eyes went dark.
“Like my methods or not, I am protecting you.”
Remi huffed out a breath, and for a momentI swore I saw a sheen of tears in his eyes as he stared at his brother. “Sure. Right. That song and dance is getting pretty tired there,brother.” He shifted in the bed, and a grimace twisted his mouth as he reached up to rub near the site of his gunshot wound. His breath sped up, the sound ragged in the quiet. Leah swore, her gaze on the machines beeping and humming beside the bed.
“What happenswhen Derrick Roslyn comes here?” Remi asked.
“We’ll be long gone by then.”
“And her?” He nodded in my direction.
Levi didn’t respond. Another arrow pierced my heart.
“Then fuck you,” Remi rasped.
Eli reached for his brother. “You don’t mean that, Remi.”
“Wanna bet?” Remi jerked away from his brother’s hold and shifted his legs as if he would get out of his hospital bed. Midswing, his eyesrolled back in his head and he slumped against the raised back of the bed. All eyes shot to Remi, then Leah.
The woman had been a Valkyrie fighting to get back to her daughter, but right now, standing with the port for Remi’s IV in one hand and an empty needle in the other, the fire in her eyes rivaled even that first moment I’d seen her.
“What the hell did you do?” Levi shouted.
Leah placedthe needle on a nearby table, then turned to glare at her captor. “What I had to. I said he needed to calm down, but apparently you didn’t hear me. Hear me now.” She jammed her fists onto her hips. “You can kill whomever you want, but not my patient. Get the fuck out. All of you. Right now.”
