“They’re Marines.Of course they fucking are.”
“Jamie Callahan is a man who inspires a shocking amount of loyalty.Most people don’t send their pet to track me down out of revenge.You are…unpredictable, to say the least.”
The flicker of irritation in his voice had Kyle filing away the cause of anger to unpack it later when he wasn’t bleeding all over a London street.
“I’m a lot of things,” Kyle said flatly.“Just not anything Oksana accused me of being.”
“And what is that?”
“I don’t see how it’s any of your business.”
“Considering I’m interested in dealing with the man whose bed you warm, I would say it is.”At Kyle’s faint, angry twitch of his mouth, Stanislav chuckled.“I always vet my business deals.Which means I know you are everything Oksana said you were, but what she didn’t understand is that men like me?Like Jamie Callahan?We can do whatever we want with the people under our command.But no one else has the right to touch them.”
Kyle wasn’t surprised to feel strong fingers grip his chin and jerk his head up.Stanislav stared at him even as Kyle dug the muzzle into the other man’s chest.
“Hands off,” Kyle growled.
“Or what?You will shoot me and ruin a business deal before it even begins?”
The smirk on Stanislav’s face said he didn’t believe Kyle would pull the trigger—and he would be right, but not for the reason he so obviously believed.Kyle didn’t have the green light to kill the bastard.They still needed to know where the Splice labs were, and the only way to get that information was to play along.
There was a reason Kyle hated spy work.The long game was never as satisfying as a bullet finding its target with brutal immediacy.
“No,” Kyle said, thumbing the safety on his gun and aiming it at the sky.“I’m not going to shoot you.”
Stanislav’s smirk widened into a smile that Kyle wiped off his face with a satisfying punch to the mouth.
“That’s for fucking with my family,” Kyle snarled, ignoring the pain from his bad leg.
Kyle hopped a little to regain his balance, trying not to keep so much weight on his injured leg.Stanislav looked absolutely furious for several seconds, spitting blood out on the asphalt, before he threw back his head and laughed.
“You are loyal.That is a trait I favor above all others.”Stanislav gripped Kyle by the lapel of his tuxedo jacket and dragged him closer.Kyle kept the gun between them as a warning, but Stanislav didn’t seem to mind.He leaned down, talking directly into Kyle’s ear.“Tell your Jamie I will be in touch,da?We will see where his loyalty to me will take him.”
Stanislav patted Kyle on the cheek hard enough to sting before walking back to the car.He got in the front passenger seat, and the driver revved the engine.The car didn’t wait for him to get out of the way, and Kyle ended up throwing himself to the side, landing hard enough to jar his leg and lose all the air in his lungs.It took him a few seconds or so to remember how to breathe, gritting his teeth against the sharp pain of the gunshot wound as he struggled to sit up.
Staring down at Stanislav’s blood on his knuckles, Kyle raised his hand and carefully rubbed the blood onto his white dress shirt.
“Got something for your lab rats, Knight,” Kyle said over the comms.
“About fucking time you checked in, Reaper.Where are you?”Liam replied.
“Outside South Kensington Station.”
“That commotion was you?”
“Yeah.”Kyle glanced at where Oksana lay, blood pooling around her body.“I’m gonna need a medic and a body bag.”
“Medic we can spare.Body bags are spoken for.”
Kyle closed his eyes, doing his best to ignore the fiery pain in his leg.“That bad?”
Liam didn’t immediately reply.When he did, his voice was tired, subdued—how they all sounded when the worst days weren’t over yet.
“Yeah.That bad.”
15
THE MESSES OF MEN
