“With aggressive rest, a few days.” Endo sits at the foot of my bed and scrubs his jaw.
“The mission was accomplished,” I say. “What’s bugging you?” Besides Scarlett Pembroke. That woman crawled under Endo’s armor, and because he’s so closed off, now that she’s lodged there, she remains protected from everyone and everything. Even from his good reason that says she’s better off without him.
Those damn civilians, I tell you. They’re living their normal lives, and then they cross paths with people like me and Endo, and then their normalcy hits us like the third shot of tequila at midnight. It floors us with how simple and pleasant civilian life is.
I’m a professional assassin. That’s pretty far from the norm, I’d say.
“Ivan Holloway declared war on us,” Endo says.
My father’s cousin on his mother’s side, since my dad is related to Uncle Endo through his father’s side. Endo’s mother never allowed my dad or us to take the Macarley surname. She was adamant about her sons being the only heirs to the Macarleyfortune. I don’t blame her. My dad was a sociopath at best, a dark triad at worst.
Ivan is a native-born Selnoan and one of the men my dad might’ve considered his successor. Connor and I were logical choices for succession, but we hated him, and he knew it. He violated our mother, and because of him, she couldn’t bond with us. Con and I were forced upon her. She had moments when she loved us as much as a violated woman could while also being reminded of her powerlessness every time she looked at my brother and me.
Connor explains. “Last night, he rounded up all our assets and executed them.”
Dina.
She’s not my asset.
Forget her. I run a hand over my head, catching the gauze I forgot they put there. “How did he know who the assets were?” The government operates with assets. So do we.
Silence.
My brother stares at the floor.
Was it because of something Connor did? Did he leak data?
“I tried to find the person who called me to pick you up,” he says, gaze on the floor. “I thought I would get ahead of Ivan or the police. That day, I thought you were dead, I was coming for them all. I was going to burn the city down.”
“Oh no.” Connor lost his shit.
“I’m sorry, Dec,” Connor says, looking up. “I’m sorry. I told you I wouldn’t. I told you I would listen to you and follow the plan you laid out, but I felt sick to my stomach, and I couldn’t tell if it was because I ate something bad or because you were dying. And I breached their systems, set the computers inside the offices ablaze, but while I was doing that, I wasn’t paying attention to their viruses. One of them snuck in, and they shut me down. They also got the names of all our assets.”
“But I told you I would hole up if I thought I couldn’t survive otherwise!”
Connor closes his ears and rocks on his heels.
“Damn it!”
Endo shakes his head. “They tagged his probe and used it to sneak into our network, but they stripped only three names before he fried their computers and buildings and…well, you know how it is when Connor gets carried away.” Endo sighs. “One of the three assets kept a damn list of contacts. For insurance against us, I’m sure. Ivan gave the list to his men, and they executed them all in one night.”
“We have nobody in Selnoa now? Not a single soul?”
Endo shakes his head. “Not one, and even if there was one, I wouldn’t want to risk contacting them.”
Essentially, we’re at war without spies amid the enemy. We have no idea what Ivan’s plans are for us or when he plans to execute his missions.
“Would any of Massio’s rivals report to us?” I ask.
“Maybe the Townsteads, but Cass made those connections, and they hate me.”
“Why?”
“Reasons.”
When I keep staring, Endo rolls his eyes. “I sank Townstead’s billion-dollar yacht.”
I scrub my face. “Fuuuuuck.”
