Page 8 of Savage Assassin

Of course, there’s no chance that I’m going to be able to sleep again. I sit there, huddled in the middle of my bed, trying to stop the tears and the shaking as I hear her footsteps recede down the hall.

I know I should stay in my room. But when the house falls silent again, I can’t stop myself. I slip out of bed, tossing on a robe and wrapping it tightly around myself as I quietly creep out of my bedroom door, slinking down the hall to the stairs.

I’m not sure why I feel like I need to know. It’s not my fault that José attacked me; I know that much, regardless of whether or not my mother might like to paint my failure to agree to marry Diego as the cause of my being here for it. But I feel an overwhelming, morbid curiosity. I sneak downstairs and out into the courtyard, keeping to the shadows until I hear voices.

My blood runs cold as I hear my father’s voice, stern and commanding. I crouch down behind one of the large SUVs parked in the courtyard, peering around it as I see several of my father’s security dragging José out into the middle of the courtyard just before they force him to his knees in the dust.

I shouldn’t feel any sympathy for him at all. He attacked me, and I know what awful things he would have done to me, even if he hadn’t taken me to Diego. And who knows what would have happened if he’d tried to keep me for himself? He might have sold me off to another cartel when he got bored of me, or worse. There’s no telling, but none of it would have been good.

He’d wanted to hurt me. There’s no forgiveness for that, not really. But I’ve known José for years, laughed with him, been teased by him and teased back, pulled pranks on him with Isabella, and clumsily flirted with him. I thought I could trust him. Our father had always trusted him with guarding Isabella and me, with ourlives, and the thought that that trust had been misplaced makes me feel sick, betrayed.

I see my father hold out his hand, and I clap a hand over my mouth as I see one of the guards hand him a gun. He pushes the muzzle against José’s temple, and I swallow hard as I see José glare up at him defiantly. I expect him to ask for mercy, to beg my father not to kill him, but he doesn’t say a word.

“What,” my father says, his voice deadly quiet, “made you think that you could put your hands on my daughter and get away with it?”

“My brother is dead because of her and her sister,” José hisses. “He died protecting your rotten family. So fuck off, Santiago.”

“If that’s the way you feel, then I’m sure you won’t object to joining him, then.”

When the gunshot goes off, I nearly scream. I stare with wide, horrified eyes as José’s body slumps to one side, falling into the dust as my father hands the gun back, staring down at the lifeless body.

A part of me wishes I hadn’t seen it. And the other is glad that I did.

I understand now, just how dangerous the situation has become. I understand exactly how dire it is, that there’s no one I can really trust now except my own family–and after what my mother said, maybe not even that.

There’s no choice for me, except to do what my father has told me to–and maybe there never was.

I have to go to Boston.

Levin

The travel to Mexico is made slightly better by the fact that we get to take the Kings’ private jet, which all of the men going with me for Santiago’s backup find to be an excellent way to sweeten the deal they’ve been made a part of. I keep to myself for most of the flight, tucked away in a window seat with a book, trying to calm my mind before we arrive.

I don’t know how difficult it will be to get Elena out. It might be as easy as leaving with her after I meet with her father, or it might be a fight, depending on what moves the Gonzalez cartel is making.

I’ve tried not to think about Lidiya today. I don’t want to remember the night on the beach in Mexico, the waves crashing behind us as she’d kissed me standing in the sand, the way her hands had felt on me, the way we’d ended up in the sand together before we’d realized what we were doing, and gone back to my hotel.

It had been our first time, something that had been building and building, a spark that turned into a conflagration of dangerous desire. I’d known what it could cost us both, and I’d done it anyway. And if I’d known how it would end–

When I drift off to sleep on the plane, I dream of her. It’s impossible not to when she feels so close right now.

Her hands in my hair, palms smoothing over the side of my face, her lips finding mine eagerly. Her body arched against mine, the sound of her laughter in my ear as we’d tumbled into bed, feeling as if we were protected there, as if the danger only miles away was a universe away instead. As if love alone could protect us from all the evils of the world.

I should have known better. Ididknow better. Even in my dreams, I know better. I kiss her lips to stop myself from saying the words that I know I should–that she should go back to Grisha, that I can’t mix business and pleasure, that the danger loving me puts her in isn’t worth the happiness it could bring us both. That I wish more than anything that someone else had been sent to pick her up that day in the train station, and that, at the same time, I wouldn’t change it for the world–because loving her had changed me in every way, because only I would have kept her safe, even as I’ve endangered her every day since with wanting her.

I see her, beautiful and slender and, in my view, the most magical thing I’ve ever seen as she walks towards me in our quiet room in Tokyo, the scent of flowers and fresh breeze coming through the open window as her warm, damp skin presses against mine, as we tangle together in clean white sheets, sheets covered in–

–blood. So much blood. The dream darkens, twists, and I’m standing in my own house, in my own bedroom, staring down at sheets meant to be clean and white, sheets that she’d picked out because she said they reminded her of all the hotel rooms we’d ever made love in, sheets now drenched in so much blood that I don’t know how it could have all come from one body.

Her body, opened up, the dream we’d so briefly shared murdered along with her. I can’t make sense of what I’m seeing, the carnage, the horrifying sight of it all, even as a man who has seen more horrible things, more blood, more carnage than most.

Sunlight on her diamond ring, on the blood, on her face. She’s beautiful, even in death. So fucking beautiful that it hurts, and I go to her, reach for her, because I know that very soon I’ll never hold her again–

I jerk awake in my seat, jaw clenched so hard that it hurts, my chest seizing with a pain that’s years old, but still feels fresh and new. I’ve never been able to kill or drink or fuck it away, no matter how hard I’ve tried, andfuck, I’ve tried.

I can hide from it, for a little while. But it always comes back.

There’s still vodka in the glass sitting next to me, left when I fell asleep, and I reach for it, draining it in one deep drink as I close my eyes.I can’t think of you right now, Lidiya. I can’t miss you. I can’t afford to be distracted here. Not when this job is so important.

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