She gives me that cute sleepy grin that’s unraveling me piece by piece. “I love you.”
The words rip through me like a bullet. My emotions go everywhere at once. I’m stunned, wrecked, and sick to my stomach at how she can love someone like me.
Mess around with? Sure. Fuck until we’re both breathless and used? Yep. But love? Only, it doesn’t feel crazy. It goddamn completes me.
“I love you, too,” I tell her, and it’s the truest thing I’ve ever said.
Her smile deepens. “I knew it.”
“I bet you did,” I murmur to myself.
She knew what I needed before I did. Fallon tucks back into her pillow, clutching it like it’s me. I lock the image into my mind before I move, terrified I may never see it again.
I’m careful on my assignments. Now I’ll be merciless.Take the extra kill shot.
My cousin Ewan once told Lachlan O’Rourke:“When you have something to lose, the stakes are even higher. Then you’re ruthless, not reckless.”
I slip out of Fallon’s place quietly, pulling her door closed behind me, and engaging the three extra deadbolts I installed. A few steps down the corridor, my flat greets me like a stranger. Cold. Silent.
Except for the plants.Our plants, she called them. They sit on the stand she bought and put together for me. Living things, climbing, growing, reaching, she trusted me with.
Me, a murderer.
Yet, these little pieces of Fallon soften every corner of my sharp-edged world.
I strip out of my sleep pants and rebuild myself into something lethal.
Black cargo pants. Compression shirt. Kevlar vest. Tactical boots. I snap a blade into the sheath inside my jacket, load my Sig 9mm into the holster with practiced efficiency, and pack extra mags into my belt.
Ear comm. Gloves. Mask.
I complete the final step and add the tattoo, which transfers to my skin with incredible ease. But it’s Dirk’s stencil, so I’m not entirely shocked.
This thing better come off my neck just as easily.
By the time I finish, there’s nothing left of the man who wakes up smiling in a warm bed next to a gorgeous naked woman who thinks I hung the fucking moon.
Now I’m the weapon Ares Zervas needs.
With an AR slung in my hands, I stare at myself in the mirror. I now see someone I don’t recognize. The dangerous shadow I become. An echo of who I really am now.
For years,thiswas the only me I knew. In six weeks, mylittle elf next door turned me back into someone human.
Dressed in a trench coat, my AR tucked in a pocket sewn inside specifically to conceal it, I leave my building, and the lobby guards stare at the floor as I pass. There is only one reason a man dressed like me goes out at one a.m.
Frigid air bites my skin the second I step outside. For a job like this, I hail a cab. A few pass me, but eventually one stops. I slide in, and the driver’s eyes skim over my dark clothes.
“Walk of shame?” he asks, smirking.
I laugh under my breath. If he only knew.
In an American accent that will make me harder to place, I scoff, “Not at all, guy.”
I may look like I left someone I’ll never see again, but he couldn’t be more wrong. Fallon is mine. This started as fake, and now it’s the most real thing I’ve ever laid my hands on.
I give the driver the dock address where I was told to pick up the shipment, but then tell him to let me off sooner to throw him off.
I hit the street, boots crunching over salt-streaked pavement to melt an early ice storm. My breath mists into the cold as I draw closer to the waterfront, and my body pulses with the sharp focus and edge I need to be efficient and deadly.
