Chapter 5
Quelediableemportema soeur. May the devil take my sister.
With this stunt, Alizé unknowingly fucked me and one of my businesses so thoroughly, we’d be lucky to shit copper coins after this.
I sat hunched over at our mystery guest’s bedside, my arms resting along the top of the chair’s backrest. The machines beeped rhythmically. Steady heart rate—lucky considering she went into full cardiac arrest hours after reaching my boat—and stable oxygen levels. Couldn’t be a worse mockery. After two eye surgeries, the bullet removal to her side, and a few bouts of sedation each time she roused from drug withdrawals, the woman remained comatose since she passed out on my yacht nineteen days ago, in my arms.Myarms, of all people.
Small, vulnerable, warm, she curved herself around me as if I were her salvation when I was anything but. I tapped my thumb against my lips. I should have snapped her neck the moment the guests were out of view. I should have slit her throat or tossed her overboard. Instead, I hesitated.
Bon sang, damn it, I wasn’t the type to hesitate. I never did. I learned my lesson when I was eight years old and never looked back. Hesitation only gave your enemies the time to shore up defenses and fight back. It was the difference between winning and losing, comfort and suffering.
Yet with this woman…there was something about her that stayed my hand. The way she trembled as she grabbed my vest and begged for my help, maybe. Or perhaps the way she calmed from the sound of my voice. I couldn’t very well explain it, and that was the crux of the problem.
I held her close, protected her like it was my job. Her hands were on my chest, my shoulders, even my face, yet there had been no desire to vomit from her proximity. No tremors on my part. No nausea from the lingering feel of her. Her touch had felt so right that it was messing with my damn head. I needed to fix this.
She lay there like a taunt. Long, bleached-blonde hair with the roots growing out, dainty curves to her face’s bone structure that contrasted with the almost faded bruising and swelling along her jaw and cheek. Frail and vulnerable, her forehead and eyes wrapped in thick bandages, she was practically begging me to put an end to her.
And die she would. There was no other choice. It was a matter of patience.
I considered my options. A quick shot to the head. A stab to rupture her spleen. Suffocation. A switch of her IV medications. There were several to choose from, and I had already run through a great many of them in my head. The one problem—she was in my house, under my roof, in my care after her bribed discharge from the hospital. Everyone knew it, thanks to my beloved sister.
There had been no choice but to treat the woman after Alizé promised my efforts in front of Europe’s elite. The tabloids litup with news of her miraculous swim to safety on a billionaire’s yacht. The spotlight shone on my benevolent deed, which prompted the elusive owner of the German tech company I had been trying to buy to reach out—the sole positive outlook of this mess.
As such,ma petite rescapée,my little survivor,received the best care, surgery after surgery, for her side and eyes. She’d live. For now.
An accident could easily be arranged once interest in her died down. Only a few more days. That was what I told myself, and yet I could have handled this problem—her—the moment they transferred her into a room in my home two days after the worst of her withdrawal symptoms ended.
No matter how it looked, this wasn’t hesitation. This wasn’t mercy, only a grace period twisted to my advantage.
The heart monitor picked up. She was rousing again, yet still lost to a deep sleep. She groaned, and her head jerked to one side. Any more agitation and she’d aggravate her bruised ribs.
“No,” she mumbled. “No. No. No.”
Each word was more frantic than the last.
I rubbed my chin. Should I have felt bad that she was traumatized? Yes. Did I? Now that was a complicated question.
Weeks ago, Margaux, the family doctor, pulled a 9mm full metal jacket bullet from her side. No complications, no organ damage, miraculously no infection. Lucky woman. The bullet wasn’t damning evidence, but along with the tattoo above her right ankle of a constrictor’s knot around a burning rose—Bogdani’s signature brand for a woman in his stable—it was enough to confirm my hunch. She was on Bogdani’s boat that night, and that meant the contract was incomplete, even though I’d already accepted payment.
Endgame’s reputation was on the line because she lived. I hadn’t even told Erel my suspicions yet. My subordinate, my business partner, my only trusted friend.
The hit’s instructions were simple—no survivors. The fact that a survivor landed in my lap was the world’s way of tossing me down the shitter once more. I always climbed my way out, didn’t mean I liked the effort it took.
For every hit, we were so damn careful. My teams always were. We analyzed. We planned. We executed. Except this wasn’t the team’s fault. This was my fuckup, and here it was, back to bite me in the ass. Bogdani’s killer. She stole his death from me, and I had no choice but to admire her for it. He was a big man, smaller than me, but then again, I had a head difference over most people.
I caught the tail end of her fight with the Albanian Dreq as he stabbed her in the eye and collapsed in a pool of his own blood. I shot him anyway as she toppled sideways, bleeding out. Like a rookie, when a squad member called for backup in the middle of a shoot-out, I left her for dead without checking the body.
“Please.” Her hands flailed about. The machine beeped irregularly. Tremors racked through her. She whimpered, thrashing her head from side to side. If this kept up, she’d need another round of sedation.
Her sobs were tearing at my resolve, damn it. I grabbed her hand, the same way I wished someone had held mine all those years ago.
“Don’t,” she murmured between convulses, still in the throes of her nightmare.
“You’re safe,” I told her. A lie. “You’re safe.”
Just like that night on my yacht, she calmed, and the tension fell away from her body. Her head sagged against her pillow, and her heart rate slowly tapered off. Her breathing quieted.
“A-dri-en?”
