Page 24 of The Ghost Assassin

“I was. There was a reason you ran from me. You knew. But I was never going to stay away. You were going to be mine. There was no question.”

“And now you protect me from me way too often for me to want to admit.”

His hands come down on my arms. “You’re missing the point. I was never going to let his world become your world, Lilah.”

“Or yours.”

“Or mine,” he concedes. “I was never going to be my father’s son, but I can’t escape that destiny. You can.”

Anger spikes hard and fast. “And how exactly do you suggest I do that, Kane? And be careful how you answer. Both of us have to live with the consequences.”

Chapter Fifteen

I’ve stood in front of a killer, waiting for a showdown, and my heart didn’t beat with the intensity it does now as I wait on Kane’s answer.

“If you’re with me—” he starts.

“Don’t say the rest, Kane.” Anger snaps and crackles inside me with some other, darker, painful emotion I don’t want to feel. I duck under his arm, or try to, fully intending to walk away before I completely lose my shit.

Kane cages me between him and the window, leaving me two options: stay where I’m at or fight to get away. “I’m trying to protect you.”

“Fuck you, Kane. I don’t need your protection.”

“You just said—”

“That you keep me from killing everyone who pisses me off, but since you’ve stepped out of that role, I think I’ll kill everyone who pisses me off, starting with your father.”

“Then I’m a kingpin, Lilah. You still aren’t following. You’re an agent with a badge. That would destroy you.”

Anger and something much more vulnerable and raw rips through me, controlling me now. “No, it won’t, because we won’t be together. You solved all my problems, Kane. Now let me go.”

“You’re being a bitch.”

“Fuck you.” I reach up to slap him.

He catches my wrist. “Are we really doing this again?”

“Next is my knee. Let me go.”

His jaw tics. “I should. That’s the problem…I should.”

“Fucking do it, Kane. Walk away. Go be a fucking kingpin if that’s what you believe to be your destiny. Maybe that’s what you want. Maybe you want my badge to get out of the way.”

“You think this is what I want, Lilah? Do you really think that is what I want?” His voice is lower now, but no less intense. A storm in the depth of his dark eyes speaks to emotions he rarely allows to exist.

“You had two choices, Kane. Let me crawl into the black hole you’re drowning in right now or let me go. Let me help you survive it or push me away. You chose the latter.”

“You left me, Lilah. You went to another state to get away from the monster you thought I made you.”

“But I was never okay until I found you again. Never. And you know what, Kane? If you want me to just say that I’m a monster all on my own, fine. I am.”

“I’m not even beginning to suggest I will ever be okay in this lifetime without you, Lilah. Because I won’t. I’m just trying to be the man you need me to be.”

“Your father’s in your head. You’re letting him win. He’s mind fucking you, and you’re doing the same to me, and I don’t like it. What you should be saying to me right now is that when I married you, it meant until death do us part. If that means his death, so be it. We live with the consequences together. But it seems we have a different point of view on what comes next.”

He stares at me, his jaw ticking, a storm in his dark eyes before his hand is on my face and he’s urging my gaze to his. “I’ve known I should walk away from you since the moment we met, Lilah. Do you really think I’m going to start now?”

“I don’t know. Are you?”

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