Page 54 of Assassin's Game
“You think Levi Agozi is the Assassin?”
“No,” Maris said. “I think Levi and his brothers are the Assassin.”
It made so much fucking sense. X had targeted an elite killing team—and we were elite; that wasn’t ego talking—and…a family of private individuals. We’d known there had to be a reason, something they were hiding, but this?
“If their connection to the Assassin came out…” Maris hesitated. “They wouldn’t just be ruined, Mikaela. They’d end up dead. All of them.”
She was right. Too many people wanted a piece of the man that had bested them. Not to mention that the family was now in control of the number one tech research facility in the States, maybe the world. All that power in the hands of the killer that even other killers feared?
“I need you to get me everything you can on the Assassin, Maris. By morning.” A sleepless night for her, but necessary. When I faced Eli and Remi tomorrow morning, I needed every weapon I could get to protect us.
They’re not that different from us.
Was that true? Or was the thought a product of the heat I could still feel low in my belly, the ache in my clit from the rough treatment Eli had given it?
“Mikaela—”
“We can’t risk it, Maris. Not until we know for certain. Get me what I need by six. I’ll take it to the others.” Together we’d make the decision: continue to trust the Agozi brothers, or take them out without mercy. Even as ex–Delta Force fighters, we’d only get one shot.
I would only get one shot, because no one would have a better chance at Eli Agozi than me. And I’d do anything for my team, even killing the first man to ever make me wish I wouldn’t have to.
OceanofPDF.com
Chapter Twenty-Three
Eli —
Remi was disconnecting a call when I entered the long kitchen area just after dawn. The gray cast to his face had nothing to do with the rain-soaked light barely peeking into the room. That look was a kick to the chest. The nuts.
Fuck, no. It took me out harder than both of those combined.
“Abby?”
Remi shook his head. His eyes met mine, devastation dark on his face. “The bleeding got worse overnight. Leah said there was nothing they could do.”
Levi’s baby was dead. Oh, I knew what people said, that it was just a fetus, a group of cells that would someday be a baby. But in my mind, my niece or nephew had been just as alive as the baby growing inside Leah’s body—and now it was gone.
My hand swept out without permission. The cup sitting on the nearby counter didn’t stand a chance; it flew across the kitchen. The sound of it shattering against the wall brought shouts from the other room.
By the time Mikaela’s team—or most of it, it sounded like—crowded into the kitchen, I had my fists planted on the opposite counter next to Remi, my back to the door. I didn’t care if they saw my pain, but this moment was private. Family only. I couldn’t deal with the intrusion of a bunch of strangers right now. “Give us a minute, please,” I said over my shoulder.
“What the hell, man?” Titus growled.
Remi went rigid next to me, and I knew his face went mean by the small sound Titus made. “A minute.” His growl was far deeper and far more menacing than Titus’s annoyed one. “Now.”
Footsteps shuffled out of the kitchen. Remi leaned back against the counter, and from the corner of my eye, I watched him drop his face into his hands.
“I can’t believe this. Can’t…” I stared down at the cheap laminate, wishing I could smash it. Smash something. Anything. “There should’ve been something we could do.” We were men. Assassins. We fixed things, made wrongs things right. Protected the innocent—but we hadn’t been able to protect two people we cared about most, Abby and her child.
“Some things,” Remi said quietly, his voice gravel rough with grief, “only God can do.”
“Well the fucker fucked that up, didn’t he?” The spark of anger became a knot, a ball, a boulder that threatened to crush me. I slammed my fists down on the counter. “He fucked that up.”
One of Remi’s hands landed on my shoulder, squeezing down. He choked, then cleared his throat. “It is what it is, bro. Which is a shitty thing to say, but we don’t know why. We can’t change it or stop it. It just…is.”
I knew he was right. As if we hadn’t encountered situations that screamed injustice far more often than anyone should have to—the innocent dead, taken advantage of, devastated and destroyed by men (and sometimes women) whose power made them gods.
Until we found them. Balanced the scales.
