Page 51 of Assassin's Heart

She’s brave. I can see the flicker of fear in her eyes, but it’s well-disguised. She’s tough, and willing to die instead of giving up information, which means that someone important sent her. Someone able to pay for the best.

Vladimir will be pissed if he finds out about this, and knows that I didn’t interrogate her more thoroughly.Iknow I should interrogate her more thoroughly. The questions I have for her are ones that need to be answered, because whoever sent her will undoubtedly send someone else to finish her job.

But I draw the line at torturing women.

“One more chance.” I tighten my grip on her throat just a little, to let her know just how serious I am. “If you won’t tell me anything, then I don’t have a choice, Ayva.”

“You know that’s not my name.” Her eyes flash angrily at me. “I’m not telling you shit, Volkov.”

I don’t have a choice, just as I’d said to her. A bitter sickness fills my gut and burns the back of my throat as I shove her beneath the water, holding her against the bottom of the tub as she writhes and bucks, her body’s defenses making her unable to go to her death entirely with dignity.

When she stops thrashing and I feel her go limp under my hands, I step back, gritting my teeth against the gut-wrenching wave of sickness that I feel. It shouldn’t feel any different than any other kill, I know that—she was a spy, an assassin, someone sent to hurt me…and almost undoubtedly, to get to Lidiya. I protected one woman by killing another. But it feels terrible.

Just clean up and get out of here. Lidiya is still at Grisha’s.

I’m seized by a sudden awful need to see her, to touch her with my own two hands and know that she’s alright—not because I need her for the job, but becauseIwant to know she’s safe. Tonight’s attack has rattled me more than anything has in a very long time, and I know that’s a problem—for both of us.

I go into autopilot, cleaning up the scene, making it look as if the woman’s death isn’t a murder at all, but a suicide. A quick slash of the knife down both wrists, the tub filling with blood, and the knife dropped into the water after I wipe it clean of fingerprints, and the scene is set. The gun I take with me along with my own, shoving them into the back of my jeans once I’m dressed.

All of this because you needed to get laid. Not a smart move, Volkov.

But it’s not as if a night with a beautiful escort has ever landed me in this kind of trouble before. Once, I’d been suspicious, but she’d just turned out to be a woman with averydangerous air about her. I hadn’t had any reason to think that anything was out of the ordinary—

Except that you’re supposed to know. That’s your entire job.

I know that I should ask to be taken off this mission and accept the consequences. I’m clearly compromised, my judgement not what it should be, and itwillmake a difference. But I can’t bring myself to do it. It’s not only for my own sake—for the fact that I know I’ll face censure from Vladimir and possibly even punishment.

It’s that I can’t bear to leave Lidiya to the mercies of whoever would take my place. I can’t bear the thought of one of Vladimir’s other men hurting her, touching her, so much aslookingat her—and so the same reason that I know I should walk away has become the same reason that I know I can’t.

I grit my teeth, nails biting into my palms as I do one last scan of the bathroom and quickly exit the hotel room, making sure that no one sees me as I leave. Someone might have seen me go up, but I doubt anyone will remember. In a place like this, the staff know not to talk about who leaves with the escorts, and no one else will have bothered to pay attention.

I need to talk to Lidiya.

I glance at my watch. A couple more hours, and it should be safe to call her without alerting Grisha. It’s an impulse that I know I should resist, but I can’t help thinking that someone could have come after her, too–that I could have sent her into a trap.

Just wait. Go back to the hotel and wait.

In the moment, I want to go to Grisha’s and take her out of there myself. But I force myself instead to call a cab, and go back to the hotel.

I force myself to do the job.

It’s never been so difficult.

Lidiya

Afterwards, lying next to Grisha, I feel numb.

I’d never had to fake it with him before tonight. When we were together before–before I knew everything, the infidelity and the lies and the truth about who he is as a person–it had been sogood. Or at least I’d thought it had. It had been some of the best sex I’d ever had then.

Now, after what Levin and I did together, it can’t compare. We didn’t even actually havesex, and the chemistry was still so explosive that even if I didn’t know all the terrible things about Grisha, I don’t think it would have been the same.

He didn’t have any clue, though. I realized that about halfway through, when I faked an orgasm from him going down on me just to move things along, just because I didn’t want toactuallycome with him, and thinking about Levin was getting me close. I realized that Grisha had actually never known me as well as I’d thought he had, because he hadn’t had the slightest fucking idea. He’d thought he’d rocked my entire world, all the way until he shuddered inside of me, coming into the condom I’d insisted he put on, and then staggered to the bathroom to clean up and throw it away before falling into bed next to me.

“Stay,” he’d said, pulling me into his arms. “Stay, and you can leave in the morning. I missed sleeping with you in my arms.”

I hadn’t had any reason to say no. I’d never left before, and insisting on it now would have raised all kinds of red flags. So I lay there with his arm draped over my stomach, listening to him snore quietly in the darkness, wishing for the silence and empty bed in Levin’s hotel room. Even Levin’s presence there, and all the uncomfortable feelings it rouses in me, can’t overcome the lure of a bed that I can sprawl out in, in all the heavenly warm softness of a five-star hotel.

There’s no chance that I’m sleeping anytime soon. I stare up at the ceiling above the bed, trying not to wonder what Levin’s doing. If I think about it too hard, I’ll start to wonder if he’s out with another woman, and I know I have no right to feel the prickly sensation of jealousy that sweeps over me. Not when I’m lying in bed with another man.

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