Page 36 of Pretty Little Assassin

I snort so hard I nearly choke on my own spit, which is humiliating in front of a man who supposedly stayed motionless for eighteen hours once. I cover it by pretending to cough.

“Are you dying?” he asks, entirely without concern.

“You’d love that. Collect your two million and go buy yourself a bigger car so your gorilla head fits.”

“I would spend it on better company.”

“There’s no better company than me, and you know it.” I fold my arms. “I’m delightful.”

He looks at me for a long, unhurried second, and something warm and irritating slides through my stomach before I can stab it. “You threatened to disembowel me twice yesterday.”

“That’s how I show affection.”

The words are out before I can catch them, and I clamp my mouth shut, but it’s too late. His grin blooms into something so smug I want to reach across the console and shove him through the driver’s side door.

At least the comment shuts us both up.

After an hour of silence and watching people come and go from the venue—a five-star hotel with a ballroom the size of a football stadium—I feel the need to force a conversation because the silence is almost as awkward and unbearable as heat clawing at my spine.

"You packed one of my books."

Okay, that was a random conversation starter that didn't come out as eloquently as I'd planned.

"The Possessed." He doesn't look away from the hotel. "One of my favourites. Though I have only ever read it in Russian, and I am told the English is a different book entirely."

"Maybe I speak six languages, too," I say. I don't. I speak Cat, and I'm proud of that. Even though my traitorous pet seems to have transferred his affections to someone illiterate in Cat. My assassin skills don't require multilingualism. I take a more chemical approach, matching the alpha target to his pheromonic susceptibility.

Viktor is immune.

I remember how he was with Alley Cat. He's unobtrusively kind.

The longer we sit in this car, the more bored I feel, and the more the comforting leather scent becomes infused with pine. Winter, frosty, evergreen. I'm losing my mind, and he's becoming more focused. I can smell it. Watching the Wraith work is boring as hell. Sniffing his ever-shifting changes in focus is exhilarating, and that pisses me off. Are my suppressants even working? I took them. I always take them, same hour, every day, because Madam's rule is the one rule I've never argued with.

"You've actually read Dostoevsky," I say.

“Does that surprise you?” He doesn’t look at me. He’s staring at the hotel.

“Honestly, yes. He doesn’t seem like your type.”

“My type?” Viktor’s left eyebrow raises, revealing yet another tiny scar.

I’m starting to wonder if there’s an inch of this guy’s body that isn’t covered in either ink or lasting imprints of past battle wounds.

“I like how he thinks about the chaos of the human soul,” he says.

Viktor’s answer is surprisingly on point.

“What about you, little assassin?”

“My friend, I've been lying all my life. Even when I was telling the truth. I never spoke for the truth, but only for myself.’”

I’m surprised those words come out of my mouth. They are a touchpoint for me as I assassinate alphahole after alphahole. They keep me motivated. Why did this alphahole, in this small car, draw this out of me?

Viktor fucking Petrov is a menace. A sneaky, dangerous, delicious-smelling threat.

“‘Perhaps I'm lying now; certainly I'm also lying now.’” Viktor fucking Petrov quotes softly back to me, his eyes glued to his target. The man can multitask. In several languages. “‘The worst of it is that I believe myself when I lie. The most difficult thing in life is to live and not lie and—and not believe one's own lie.’”

It really must be one of his favourites if he can quote on that level. Lying is second nature in our business.