Page 40 of Surrender

You’re mine, I want to say. I’ve never been this obsessed over someone before, and I don’t know how to express that without scaring him.

“Talented assassin? I failed to kill you.” Fox chuckles and buries his head in my shoulder. “I can’t fail again. He said I have another six days. Five days?”

I start to speak, but then his words reach me. My mouth goes dry. How is Fox getting orders? “Who told you that?” I demand, my grip tightening on him. “When?”

Is he really planning on killing me? After all of this?

Then again, after last night, he might be more eager than ever to get rid of me.

“Guess you can have my social security number after all.” Fox digs his fingers into my chest, his nails catching over my heart. “Corbin. He doesn’t like it when I fail.”

Corbin.

He’s been in contact with Corbin.

I grab his wrist, ignoring the sting of his nails but not wanting him to be distracted. “When did you see him?” I demand.

Fox stares at my hand around his wrist and flexes his fingers. “At the museum. It’s where we usually meet if we’ve been forced to lay low for a while. I figured he’d be watching somehow.”

I can’t help the betrayal that sweeps over me, the way an ache starts to eat away at me and threatens to overwhelm me. I shove those feelings aside, trying instead to remember all I’ve heard about Corbin. One of my informants has been able to find out a little more, though not much. I know he had a reputation for being scarily good. I only know he’s alive because Fox mentioned him.

And for some reason, Corbin wants me dead.

A contract, probably, though from who… I doubt Fox knows the details. A third party probably contacted Corbin, who then gave orders to Fox. “Do you really want to go back to him?” I ask quietly. “Because if you kill me, that’s what you’ve decided.”

“At least he only beats me,” Fox says, tugging at his hand in an attempt to escape my grasp. “He doesn’t make me cry like you do.”

I release his wrist, but I pull him in close to me. Mindful of his back, which is somehow healing despite the constant abuse he keeps putting his body through, I still hold him tight. “Sometimes crying can be cathartic.”

Especially in battered and beaten boys, who weren’t brought to love the pain but instead to fear it and crave it out of some misguided sense of needing to be punished

Fox shakes his head. “Crying is for pathetic, weak little shits.” He drops his hand down to my lap. “I think I’ll use a kitchen knife and stab you in the shower.”

My father had told me something similar. Crying is for babies. Crying isn’t for me.

But when I’d lost Max, I had cried and cried, and I hadn’t felt weak because of it. The tears had washed away my blurred vision and left me clear-sighted at the end, sure of what I needed to do.

“I think I’ll keep you away from the kitchen knives, then,” I say a bit dryly. “But thanks for the warning.”

Five days.

“What happens after five days?” I ask, not quite wanting to know the answer to the question but needing it regardless. “Another assassin will come for me? You’ll get beaten senseless for not managing to get the job done yourself?”

“He’ll step in himself, probably.” Fox sighs and tugs on the hair on my belly. “And he’ll punish me because there’s no place for mistakes in this world.”

I brush some hair out of his eyes. It’s hard to tell in the dim light, but his eyes are still a bit red from the crying.

Corbin has to be a fucking coward.

I’ve beaten men who made simple mistakes before, men who failed to get the job done, but not when they were children—and I’m almost certain Fox was a child when he landed in Corbin’s tender care. To continue to abuse him physically when it’s clear only a few words can shatter him…

I’m not going to be a sitting duck. I’m not going to wait for Fox to take a lucky shot at me when he thinks I’m not paying attention. I’m not going to let Corbin take me out either. I’m going to use every bit of information I’ve gained from Fox to hunt the fucker down and make sure he never sees me coming even when I’m on his doorstep.

“You know you could escape that,” I say, my voice sober. “You know where he is. You could make this easy.” Why I think Fox would choose me over Corbin, when I’m someone he barely knows, is beyond even me. But I have to try—and this time, I won’t go in without sufficient backup.

“Yeah. Sure. Because I’m such a…” His voice hitches, “... such a good person that I can just fit right in with normal society. Not to mention how I’m probably on a lot of people’s most wanted list.”

“Fuck society,” I tell him, tilting his head up to look at me. “You’d come and work for me, for Silvano. How many people know what you look like? How many people know you as Fox? I could offer you a new life, little fox. One without beatings you don’t want.”

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