Surely not.
I mean, come on. Really?
“Well, I couldn’t help but notice you in the crowd,” Jonathan says. “This isn’t my usual kind of move, but…”
“But?” I ask, sensing that even a guest lecturer probably shouldn’t be asking a student out on a date, not like this.
“You’re sexy,” Jonathan says. “You heard me.Sexy. And obviously smart too. Or at least your parents were smart enough to get you into a top law school. So, how does drinks sound? Tonight?”
I can’t quite believe what I’m hearing.
This guy has total asshole energy.
Jonathan McEvoy might be hot, and he might know the law too.
But if he thinks he’s getting to know me, he’s got another thing coming…
“I’ll pass,” I say, my voice flat and uninterested. “But thank you. Good luck in finding some other impressionable student to work your game on.”
I take my order from the barista and leave Jonathan McEvoy in the dust. I feel a righteous fury build inside me. Normally I’m calm and collected when I have to deal with assholes. But something about the way McEvoy behaved with me, like he thought he could take me for a fool and patronize me.
No, that’s not gonna work for me. Far from it.
“Everything okay?” Todd asks as I place the drinks down on the table and take a seat next to him on the couch.
“Do you ever feel like you want to find the sharpest knife around and plunge it all the way inside a man’s heart?” I ask, my heart thumping and adrenaline pumping around my body.
“Oh, yeah, all the time,” Todd replies.
But I can tell that Todd doesn’t mean it. Not really. As far as Todd is concerned, it’s nothing more than a throwaway comment. It’s the kind of thing that you say when you’re peeved.
I’m not Todd though.
When I say things like that, I mean them.
Because at the end of the day, Todd might know me as Landon Lane, but I’m still one hundred percent a Galkin.
And that meanstrouble.
Chapter 2
Ivan
“Close your eyes,” I say, my voice cold, my eyes fixed on the man as his life slowly slips away in front of my eyes. “It’s over now. No more suffering. No more pain. May you rest in peace.”
The man’s eyes do indeed fall shut.
Underneath his body, a pool of blood forms and spreads out either side. I don’t know who he was, not really. Mid-forties, maybe a couple of years older than me. A businessman who decided it would be a good idea to try and screw over a Pakhan. It was never, ever going to end well for this poor soul.
Still, you step into the fire of the Russian mob and you expect to get burned.
I check the man’s pulse to be sure. He’s dead. A precision knife to the kidney and then a careful slash across the neck will do it. I wipe my knife clean and drop it down a open drainpipe.
I’ve done this a hundred times before.
Many assassins like to keep their weapon on them, figuring that leaving in the vicinity of the crime scene represents more of a risk than carrying it around. I’ve never seen it like that, andneither did my mentor. The advice I was given—and it’s advice I’ve stuck to ever since—is that police don’t like to work in the sewers. They leave that kind of work to us.
Makes sense, doesn’t it?
