Also by Ella Sheridan
Assassins
The Assassin
Assassin's Mark
Assassin's Prey
Assassin's Heart
Assassin's Game
If Only
Only for the Weekend
Only for the Night
Only for the Moment
Secrets To Hide
Unavailable
Undisclosed
Unshakable
Southern Nights
Teach Me
Trust Me
Take Me
Southern Nights Box Set
Southern Nights: Enigma
Come For Me
Deceive Me
Destroy Me
Deny Me
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Table of Contents
Also By Ella Sheridan
Assassin's Game (Assassins, #4)
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Epilogue
About the Author
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Also By Ella Sheridan
Assassin’s Game
Assassins 4
Ella Sheridan
Praise for the ASSASSINS Series
“I inhaled this sexy, gritty, thrilling new series and I can’t wait for more! I have added a new autobuy author to my list and her name is Ella Sheridan!”
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“With danger and steam and family and scheming, Assassin's Mark was pretty addictive. Ella Sheridan is onto the start of something good with this series.”
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Copyright
Assassins: Assassin’s Game
© 2020 Ella Sheridan
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this e-book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from the author. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Cover Art Design by Brynna Curry
Image Copyright: www.TheStockAlchemist.com
Published in the United States.
Dedication
To Eli. You might be the “baby” of the family, but your light is the blessing that holds you all together.
Acknowledgment
To Erika – You are such a blessing. Thank you for your friendship, your encouragement, and your sweet, sweet spirit.
To Dani – Thank you for putting up with my whining. I love you, Sis!
To Gina and Kelly – You both are lifesavers! Thank you for being my brain when my brain just won’t think anymore.
To Julia – Your help and encouragement are so greatly appreciated, even when I feel like an idiot for missing things you find. Thank you!
Chapter One
Eli —
Good evening, Assassin.
I’ve been an admirer of your work for some time. The problem, of course, is exposure—you don’t want it, but I have the means to make it happen. The tie between Hacr Technologies and the Assassin might be well-hidden, but for someone like me, with my connections, they are both easily uncovered and easily exposed.
Neither of us want that, I’m sure. A partnership would easily solve the issue.
Your target is Bram Sullivan, CEO of BSGA Holdings International, headquartered in Atlanta. Natural causes are imperative. Contact me within two weeks when the job is done, and the information I have will remain between the two of us.
I look forward to working with you.
X
“Son of a bitch! You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
I reread the e-mail one more time, as if the contents might change between one second and the next. I wished they would.
I wished a lot of things, but apparently they weren’t going to fucking come true.
I mean, I’m the contact for a well-known—and feared if not respected—killer. I’d received some freaky e-mails in my time. Most crazies aren’t savvy enough to find the site on the dark Web, much less brave enough to actually make contact with the boogeyman of the US criminal world. But this particular crazy, X?
He’d not only made contact; he’d threatened to expose everything we were if we didn’t work for him.
Assuming he was a “he.” He or she, the fucker had signed their own death warrant.
The bat cave was dark, the thump of old-school Metallica reverberating off the concrete walls. I shoved back from the computer, spinning as the chair moved, and pushed to my feet seconds later. Ignoring the bang of the chair as it hit the edge of the desk, I stalked toward the elevator and access to my brothers. Some things I wrote off on my own, but this required a family meeting.
The first floor was quiet as I exited. Dark. The mansion our parents had raised us in until their deaths had become a home, the walls drawing me in instead of keeping me out. Sometimes I didn’t think I deserved it. After all, I’d been nine when our uncle murdered our parents in cold blood, right upstairs. I had memories of them, sure, but as the years passed, they became more and more fuzzy. Sometimes I couldn’t remember my mother’s face.
No, I definitely didn’t deserve to be here. But these walls accepted me anyway, just like they accepted my brothers.
These days Remi was in bed early, and not only because his woman was now shari
ng it. Between his new day job at Hacr, preparing to take over security, and the fact that he and Leah were managing an almost seven-year-old still in school and Leah’s nursing position at Fulton County Memorial, late nights weren’t even on their radar. And a new baby in six months. All that shit had my head spinning, and I wasn’t in the middle of it. Remi had gone from stone-cold killer to slavishly devoted family man (with the stone-cold still there, just on the side) the minute the opportunity had presented itself. I couldn’t blame him, either. He and Leah belonged—there was no other word for it.
I wouldn’t wake them if I didn’t have to. Remi could declare war on the asshole targeting us tomorrow just as well as tonight.
After scanning the living room and kitchen just in case my oldest brother was skulking around, I took the front stairs two at a time up to the second floor where Levi and Abby lived. They’d talked about trading their floor for Remi’s given that he would soon have four people in his half of the third floor, but Remi had refused. Said they would probably be filling up their floor with kids soon anyway. Levi had actually turned green at the thought, a fact I gave him shit for, for a solid week.
Levi could be an ass. No matter how much I loved him, I was always looking for something to rag him about.
Tonight his floor of the house was dark too. Down the hall I saw a flicker of light coming from the living room doorway, and headed that direction. Looked like the TV was on. Bracing myself in case Levi and Abby were gettin’ freaky on the couch—not unlikely, but I’d rather not be exposed to my brother’s hairy ass—I stepped inside.
The TV hanging on the wall was running some movie with Sandra Bullock on silent. Hot chick. I checked out the rest of the room, but it wasn’t until I gave up and turned to leave that I caught sight of the huddled figure in the wide recliner to one side. Levi’s recliner. I never thought my badass assassin brother would have a favorite recliner, like some creaky gramps who had to steal little blue pills just to get it up, for fuck’s sake. But damn if he hadn’t claimed that thing in a hot second. I tried not to think about what he’d said he’d do with Abby in that chair. There was a reason I was cautious when entering.
Right now it wasn’t Levi sprawled in the recliner; Abby was curled up in it, the sound of her crying reaching me as I crossed the room.
What was that line from Stephen King’s It? “Your hair is winter fire, January embers.” I thought of it every time I caught a glimpse of Abby’s auburn hair. Even now, in the dim light of the flickering TV, it shone. It wasn’t just her hair that sparked warmth, though; she wrapped anyone in her vicinity up in that shit the minute she got close. She’d made us a real family instead of a collection of dickheads who didn’t really know how to love. How to settle. We might’ve wanted it, but it was Abby who showed us the way.
She’d earned my loyalty before my brother had ever gotten his shit together and gone after her, just by loving him. Us.
My sister. Always.
Yeah, she tended to make me maudlin. It was embarrassing and I tried to hide it, but really, who gave a fuck?
“Hey.” I knelt in front of the chair, my heart contracting at the sight of her flushed face and the liquid pain in her eyes. Those eyes flared as they settled on me. “What’s going on? Where’s Levi?”
Abby’s lips twisted. “Who the hell knows anymore?”
Shit shit shit. I’d hoped she hadn’t noticed the nightly exits. I didn’t know what was up with my brother, but I knew it was something. And the only way Levi knew how to deal with worry riding his ass was to run from it. Literally. He’d stalk the night until he couldn’t go a step farther, then come home and collapse. Usually after Abby was asleep, or so I’d thought.
Guess that plan went down the toilet.
“Abby—”
“Don’t!” She put up a fragile hand, ignoring me as I plucked it from the air to warm between mine. “Don’t make excuses for the bastard.”
When Abby cussed, things were bad. Apparently things were bad.
“He’s my brother; making excuses for each other is what we do.” I ducked my head until I could meet her eyes under the curtain of her hair. Cocked the corner of my mouth up in that way I hoped would draw a smile. Apparently I’d lost my touch, because Abby closed her eyes and released more tears.
There was only one thing left to do when words didn’t work and tears wouldn’t stop: avoid all possibility of putting your foot in your mouth.
“Come here.” I clamped my mouth shut and, with a tug on her hand, led Abby to the couch, then sat beside her as she curled into the arm. She didn’t need words, and I didn’t give any, just held her hand and let her cry it out.
“I don’t get it,” she finally sniffled. “He has everything. We have everything.” Fisting the sleeve of her pajama top, she swiped it across her nose. I’d have offered her a tissue if I had a clue where one was. “Why does it feel like, with all of this”—she gestured around—“we’re going right back to where we started?”
How the hell did I know? Levi did what he did; for too many years it could’ve cost me my life to question his commands. He’d kept me safe, trained me, loved me, even if it meant knocking me around a bit to get my head on straight. We’d been on the streets, grown up hard, and that sometimes came out in Levi in ways I didn’t understand. In ways I was sure he didn’t always understand.
“He’s just trying to clear his head.”
Abby sighed hard, letting her head fall back onto the couch arm. “Of what? Of me?”
“No, of course not!”
Her head jerked up, the glare in her eyes shouting that there was no of course about it. If she could see how much things had changed since Levi had committed to her, she wouldn’t question it any more than I did.
“Tell me the truth,” she finally said. “Is it me? Really, Eli, is he doing this because of me?”
“Abby.” I laced our fingers together, tugging her until she turned in her corner to face me. “This is not about you. This is the same dumbass shit he pulled before you came into our lives. Just Levi being Levi, trying to handle some problem the way he always handles things.” I grinned. “He’s got a harder head than most. He hasn’t gotten the message that the way he always handles things doesn’t work anymore.”
“Isn’t that the truth?” she muttered under her breath.
That tight feeling in my chest eased the slightest bit. I squeezed her hand. “You’re our glue; don’t you know that? When are you going to trust it? There’s no ‘one foot out the door’ here. He’s not trying to get away from you. This probably has nothing to do with you, whatever this is.”
“Yeah”—she sucked in a deep breath—“whatever this is.”
Whatever... Well shit. My eyes went wide as I realized what she might be crying over. “You know he’s not with another woman, right?” I mean, Levi committing to Abby had been a miracle. One thing about my brother, he was loyal to a fault. He was with Abby for the long haul. Whatever was bothering him, it wasn’t another woman.
“No.” She shook her head, and suddenly fatigue swamped her face, slumped her shoulders. “No, I know he’d never do that. I just...” A small, sad smile tugged at her lips. “I guess we all grow up with patterns, don’t we? I grew up thinking every little thing was my fault.”
And assumed this was too. “Levi grew up solving his problems on his own,” I pointed out. “On the streets, where every decision could kill you. I don’t know what’s on his mind, but he’s trying to protect you from it.”
Abby nodded, but I couldn’t tell in the dim light if she believed me.
“Want me to kick his ass?”
That got the laugh I’d been trying to get for fifteen minutes. With the sound, the muscles in my chest fully relaxed. Things might not be fine, but I’d lifted her burden a little. That was my job.
She stood, and her glance back at me was soft as she turned to leave. “I’m going to bed, but hold that thought. I might take you up on it.”
I shot her a wink.
“Anytime.”
It wasn’t till Abby had left me at the stairs and headed toward her and Levi’s bedroom that I remembered my whole purpose in coming upstairs. Someone needed to know about the bastard threatening to out us. I glanced up the staircase toward Remi’s rooms, but the image of Leah this morning, dark circles under her eyes after throwing up her breakfast—of course Remi’s baby would make things difficult—decided me against going up. Save it for Levi...after he fixed his fuckup with Abby.
Instead of making my way up to my wing of the house—third floor left—I turned toward the elevator and headed back to the basement. Maybe I could dig up some dirt on this X before Levi got home. Better to present him with facts than speculations.
Looked like I had a long night carved out for me.
Chapter Two
Nix —
“So fucking glorious.”
I took a deep breath, sucking back the scent of deep-fried everything, and had to agree with Titus: it was so fucking glorious. McDonald’s had restaurants all over the world—and we’d been to many of them—but they didn’t taste like American McDonald’s. They didn’t smell like this, somehow. It might be because it was what I’d grown up with and not an actual difference, but McDonald’s in the US was just...different. Better.
Glorious.
Not that I’d say it out loud. Titus Webster used words like glorious; I didn’t. Titus could get away with it. The thirty-six-year-old former soldier got away with a lot, with his long golden-brown hair, tattooed body, and laid-back surfer vibe. A thirty-eight-year-old woman with gray in her long black hair and worn army fatigues on her compact body just got odd looks when she said fancy shit like that.
Or maybe it was just my team that gave me odd looks when I said fancy shit. Not like I spent much time with anyone else.
The area in front of the cash registers held several lines. I joined one right behind a guy about my height who gave me a once-over and a wink before facing forward. I rolled my eyes and tried to ignore Titus’s snicker beside me.
“I think he’s available,” Titus whispered in my ear, ignoring me ignoring him. “What do you think?”
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