Page 172 of Taming Seraphine

“Leroi’s my hero,” Miko says, his voice choked with emotion. “I never had a real dad until I met him.”

“He isn’t old enough to be your dad,” I reply.

He grins. “He’s thirty-four and I’m nineteen. Technically, he could have had me when he was fifteen.”

“Did you live with him, too?”

“For the first few months, I stayed in his spare room. Leroi got me a therapist, took me out jogging, and taught me how to meditate.” He shakes his head and sighs. “He paid for all my online courses, got me whatever I wanted. He’s my fucking idol.”

“But you work for him, right?”

“I’m a freelancer, but yeah, I do a few jobs for Leroi.” He pulls in outside a low-rise apartment building and parks. “If it wasn’t for Leroi, I don’t think I would have survived my teens.”

My throat thickens. All evidence so far points that Leroi found me by coincidence while helping out his cousins. I’ve even seen one of the Montesano brothers up close. Leroi is a hitman with a heart, he can’t be connected to my handler.

Miko leans across to the glove box where a pair of pistols sit amongst a short-blade knife and a computer tablet. “Take one. We could be walking into anything.”

I select a gun, and while Miko is distracted, I slip the knife in my pocket and exit the car. My heart hammers in double time to my footsteps as we walk across the lawn that surrounds the building. Gabriel might be inside one of these units, tied to a chair in that darkened room.

For the first six months of my captivity, Samson and Gregor only allowed me to watch him sit there, battered, emaciated, and struggling for breath. The backs of my eyes sting at the thought of how he’s going to look after being forced to donate his liver twice.

“Are you alright?” Miko asks.

“Y-yeah.” I nod.

He opens the front door. “This has to be nerve-racking. How long has it been since you last saw Gabriel?”

“Five years,” I mumble. “Which one is it?”

He points at a unit on the left.

“Hide the gun,” he whispers.

My lips tighten. Did Leroi ever tell him that I spent those five years killing dangerous men? Step one of being an assassin is to make sure they don’t see you coming. I brush off the annoyance. Miko probably thinks he’s being helpful.

We knock on the door, and an auburn-haired woman answers, wearing long pigtails with an even longer, flowing dress. My heart sinks. She doesn’t even remotely look capable of holding a man hostage.

“Does Gabe Jenkins live here?” Miko asks.

She smiles. “Gabe moved out a year ago. Do you want his new address?”

Miko and I exchange shocked glances.

New address?

Wait a minute. I thought Gabriel was a prisoner.

SIXTY-SEVEN

LEROI

The doorbell rings and rings, but the deafening pounding of my pulse muffles the sound. My breaths are so shallow that oxygen stops reaching my lungs. My throat thickens as I stare down at Anton’s unmoving form.

I linger on his lifeless eyes, my chest constricting with an overwhelming sense of grief and regret.

Grief for the man who saved me from death row and taught me everything he knew about the art of killing. Regret because if he hadn’t reached for his gun, I could have waited until he fell unconscious and offered him up to Seraphine as a gift.

I pause, waiting for something else to rise to the surface, but there’s nothing more for Anton. Everything I have left is devoted to protecting Seraphine. There’s no guilt for the murder of my mentor, but some of the unease I felt about not being able to save Seraphine from her past fades into a sense of satisfaction.

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