I don’t move, but shock pins me to the wall all the same like a dissected frog splayed wide with all its organs and guts on morbid display.
“Hired assassin Derrick Trudell took you under his wing at thirteen, and you started killing for money. You don’t need me to tell you the reputation you’ve earned since then.” She tilts her head, and that feeling of being studied, examined, increases. But I remain still under her scrutiny, refusing to give anything away. Anything more, that is. “You like to read; your home library is really impressive.” A small smile tugs at the corner of her mouth, and just how the fuck she knows that is worrisome. Oh right. I have video of her breaking into my shit and walking around like my place was hers. Don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out it wasn’t the first time she’d been there. “You don’t watch a lot of TV, but when you do, your go-tos are the old black-and-white classics. Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson. Your favorite snack is apples. Your favorite drink is Glenlivet18—not to be a snob, but that’s shockingly highbrow. I would’ve pegged you for a Corona man, myself.”
Shut up. Shut the fuck up.
The guttural words reverberate off my skull like a desperate mantra, growing in volume until it fills my head like a deafening storm.
But underneath the growled winds… I swallow hard. A part of me I hadn’t even been aware existed until this woman chained me to her bed and took her knife to my skin, brought my body to life with her mouth, shudders with each detail she drops. That part craves each point. It’s been so long since I’ve been seen. Since someone knew me. Saw, knew Malachi, not the Huntsman.
Not since Miriam.
And until this moment, I didn’t understand that the hungry, gnawing emptiness inside me was…
Loneliness.
“Apples were…” I rasp, the words slipping out of me of their own volition. Horror sizzles inside me, and despite being a whole-ass grown man of thirty-three, embarrassment scorches my face. And yet, I can’t stop the rest of the words from escaping. “Apples were my sister’s favorite food. I hate them but eat them for her.”
“I missed that detail somehow,” she murmurs, as if talking to herself, her gaze dropping to the untouched bottle of water. After a moment, that startling sharp focus shifts back to me. “Tell me something: Is that why children are off-limits? And why people who order those hits have been known to disappear? Oh, you’re a killer, same as me. And you make no apologies about it. But you have a code of honor that’s all your own. And fuck anyone who doesn’t get it. But I do. I have a theory. I think it’s your way of honoring your sister. Of protecting her from the monster you weren’t—”
I shove away from the wall and stalk to the window, fists hanging by my sides. Tension rides me harder than a whore with a forty-dollar trick. My first inclination? Hurt her. It’s what I’d do to anyone else who dared speak to me like that. They wouldn’tbe able to talk without a throat. And God knows I want to put my hands around hers. But only to squeeze tight while I beat that pussy up like it offended me.
I drag a hand down my face.
The desire to find out how she knows all this seethes inside me. But that would require asking her questions, and I… can’t. I can’t open myself up more to her than I already have. Exposing more of my underbelly will drive me closer to insanity, and no one wants that. This world won’t be able to handle that.
Shit.
Eshe has me betraying myself, the very values and codes that have kept me alive for the last twenty-three years.
It was a mistake bringing her here.
I knew it when I tossed those bodies off her.
I knew it when I carried her out of that tomb of a warehouse.
I knew it when I brought her here, washed her, and bandaged her wounds.
Time to bring this back to business. I need to keep her alive long enough so I can kill her.
Turning back to her, I, of course, find her gaze on me. Whenever I’m in her vicinity, Eshe’s always studying me as if I’m this specimen that either amuses or fascinates her. Like a toy she delights in playing with before she tears it apart limb by limb.
I resist reaching down and adjusting my dick in my black joggers.
“You realize that bomb was meant for you, right? Not a message for your aunt or the Mwua—”
“Abena.”
I frown. “What? Isn’t that what I said?”
“No, you called her my aunt. Don’t refer to that bitch that way. She ceased being family the day she had my mother gunned down in the street like a dog.”
I nod. Okay, yeah. I get that.
“You were the target of that bomb.” When she doesn’t speak again, I cross the room and pick up the chair, turn it around,and drop into it. Leaning forward, I prop my elbows on my thighs, linking my fingers together between my spread legs. “Seems I’m not the only person after you anymore. I took out another assassin tonight who was there for you. Another contract has been put out on your life. And I have no doubt Abena is behind it.”
“Not that I’m questioning your reasoning or your information, but why do you say that?”
“Because of the reward. Three million—two less than she paid me. But the promise that whoever kills you can take your place as olori sweetens the deal. The power and earnings that brings in more than makes up for that two million.”
