His jaw locks, but within that stubborn irritation is a fleck of tenderness. “I was thinking I would do anything necessary to protect my wife. What don’t you understand, Zara?Youare my family, and the rest of them wouldn’t expect anything less from me. I’d rather die than have you lost and alone. Just the thought of something happening to you … You are the only life I want to wake up to.”
A choked sob lodges itself in my throat. I’m not worth that. No one has ever believed I was worth that. The thought of Remy not having his Uncle Axel, Rena not lighting up at the sight of Papaw throwing her babies around, or his brothers brokenwithout Papa Axe to harass is too much. Even Mercy and Tessa feel a sense of serenity with Axel at the helm.
He allots me a minute to process before resuming his scratches on my back. “They would want me to choose you. We would all fight for you, like you’ve been away, fighting for us. I guarantee when Jax heard from you, he felt like he could finally breathe because the entire family, including Bernard, was a mess. But maybe a more important takeaway is that you need to fight for you, darling.”
Contacting Jax was strategic. I sent him a message on his direct booking form for his tattoo service. I worded it like it was a design I wanted with a few keywords sprinkled in—calling him Blue, referring to myself as a circus girl, and mentioning Singapore coins as a symbol, along with other coded ways of hiding the address. He responded with an appointment date for Axel’s approximate arrival. Ryker had told me I could turn to any of them. They really are a unit.
Not sure what to do with Axel’s insistence that I need to fight for myself, I wipe my tear-streaked cheeks and turn toward him. “So, if I’m not working for KORT and my father didn’t have anything to do with Shep or Beck, then it was Claudia, but I’m at a loss for who I was hired by and whether that makes her a double agent or not. And the double hit on Gage and Leigh really throws me off. Who would want them dead more than her family, who were hunting her?”
“No one.”
“Then Kratos must’ve been behind it all because that’s who the Morellis and Vittoris were in bed with. And Claudia wasn’t a double agent. She just went rogue with some of their resources.” I grunt as my hands dive into my hair. “How could my father have done that? He might’ve softened at you offering your life for mine, but he was doing business with an organization that funded traffickers. He always said that was a hard line.”
He shimmies up to the headboard, realizing sleep is a long way off. “You said Claudia had access to your report-outs. Could she have manipulated the orders and fed the wrong target names to your dad? When I told him about Shep and Beck, something clicked for him. Maybe it was about her.”
“Maybe,” I muse. “I still feel like we’re missing something though. Let me tell you what else I found. Kratos is an organization of established businessmen. Once I had Claudia’s phone, I got information from several others involved in Kratos—a guy I lured to the Morelli and Vittori headquarters and a couple of others that I tracked down and killed after that. I figured out their pattern.”
“Their pattern?” he parrots.
“They’re like a web. They use code names so you don’t know who they are in real life. And they only have access to one or two people, so even if they were tortured, they couldn’t give you answers. You have to get to each of them. So far, all are ultra-rich-tycoon types with the kind of funds to wreak utter havoc on the entire world. They have their hands in human trafficking, arms dealing, drugs, technology, and”—I slow for this because I know it will hit the hardest—“manipulating the media. That’s what they think Rena’s family has, right? Access to the media conglomerate they want to control.”
“Yes,” he says, not hesitating to fill me in, and the realization that he still trusts me unravels so many insecurities. “KORT does have access to the media conglomerate. This is huge, Zar. So, Kratos is who has been after Rena’s family. Even with only a few identities, it’s something to work with.” He rubs his hand over his mouth, his thoughts plainly chaotic. “We need to turn ourselves into KORT.”
My spine snaps straight. “Absolutely not.”
“Gage is KORT’s lead enforcer,” he begins, and since I considered the possibility of a connection, the rest of hisexplanation is less shocking. “Wells and Ivy are KORT chairs. Ty and Liam are their seconds-in-command. That hit out on Gage and Leigh is a hit against KORT and against Rena’s family, and this shit on Kratos is the answer to a hell of a lot of sleepless nights.” He grazes his knuckles down my cheek. “You did good, baby. So good.”
His praise sinks its claws into me, like it always does, but I’m still not sold.
“I’m not thrilled with my father, but KORT will kill him and my brother. Tripp probably wasn’t even aware of what we were doing. They’ll be lumped in with Kratos. I might be too.”
He lifts me by my hips and drags me onto his lap. “There’s no way to prove who you were hired by. And when you neutralized the original Kratos members ten years ago, that was on behalf of KORT, so there’s a positive history with them.”
I didn’t realize I’d been working for KORT back then. All I’d cared about was getting out of the contract that Keller had chained me to. But it makes sense why my father was so flipped out over it back then and why he viewed my involvement with the La Lune Noire job to be catastrophic. It wasn’t just about my mom. My past involvement with KORT would paint my current allegiance as shady from any angle.
Anxiety unfurls inside me. Something still feels amiss. “I don’t know.”
He kisses the corner of my scrunched lips, sweetening his reasoning. “We can’t outrun KORT, Kratos, and your father without anyone backing us. Our luck and resources will run dry.”
“What about my father and Tripp?”
“I’ll handle it,” he promises, and the fact that I believe him poses another issue.
“Don’t do anything stupid.”
“I won’t need to.” He gestures to the forensic extraction device on the dresser. “This will be enough.”
“Just in case, can we make one more stop tomorrow? I can’t leave Singapore without it.”
And because the man who is my greatest gift can’t deny me anything, he rolls us to a lying position, covers us up, and pecks my nose. “Consider it done, darling.”
AXEL
Most women probably charm their husbands into all types of gifts—candy, roses, vacations, dresses, dinner and dancing. There are countless ways I intend to spoil Zara, and those are only a few. But that’s not what my gorgeous, emerald-eyed Thorn vies for.
What does my wife request? Assistance with a hit. Not because she needs it, but because it would bea shame to leave this asshole pimp alive in Singapore,and she’d miss me if she went alone. I’d quote her directly, but I’m preoccupied by the chaos ensuing in this nightclub and the seductive catsuit Zara is wearing, which matches her jet-black wig. She’s stunning and utterly captivating when she’s on a job.
Her brilliance is nothing short of astounding. Using the phone from a Kratos contact that she neutralized a few days ago, she sent an order to the next one connected in this web. She told him to leave a weapon behind the third toilet in the women’s restroom on the second floor so that a hit could be carried out. Since she knew he’d be in the area because of a recent text thread, the directive likely made sense to him. He has thefinancial resources to bribe the right people to get past the metal detectors in the club, so she essentially asked this guy to supply the weapon to end his life.
