Sure enough, her name popped up on the screen. I clicked to accept the call so fast I almost fumbled the phone. “What’s wrong?”
Maris chuckled. “Hello to you too, sis.”
Even as tangled as I felt, the sound of her voice tempted me to smile. “It’s one in the fucking morning—or thereabouts. You wouldn’t be calling me if something wasn’t up.”
She didn’t answer me directly, just asked, “Everything went okay tonight?”
“Of course.”
Maybe the millisecond of hesitation clued her in, I don’t know. But the long silence that met my answer had me squeezing my eyes shut. This was why I hadn’t called earlier. I was as skilled as the guys at controlling the intonations in my voice, but that didn’t matter with Maris. A pause, break, some change in my tone not audible to the normal human ear—whatever it was, my sister could sense a lie a mile away when it came to me, by intention as well as omission.
“What happened?” she asked finally.
“Everything really is fine.” Now.
“Mikaela”—her sigh hit my heart through the phone speaker—“am I part of this team or not?”
“You know you are.”
My answer was fierce, but not enough. “Then lying to me shouldn’t happen.”
If one of the men were stuck miles from an op with no way to get to us, I’d skimp on details too. But this wasn’t just details—and she was right; I shouldn’t hold it back. “Rhys and Monty were hit at Sullivan’s house.”
Her “What?” nearly blew my eardrum.
“They’re okay now, but...” I cringed, knowing I had to go all the way but dreading the reaction I’d get.
“But what?”
“But Rhys was hit with a dose of ketamine. Monty took care of him,” I rushed to say, “and we’ve got him back at the warehouse. He’s breathing fine, sleeping it off.”
Maris’s deep breath hurt. She didn’t allow herself to cry anymore—it made her weak, she said. Or weaker. In a team built on strength as much as love, at least at first, she’d always seen being emotional as a fragility she had to bury. But I could sense the emotion she refused to release, in only her breath.
“Are you absolutely sure he’ll be okay?”
I wished I was there to wrap her in my arms. “He already is. I promise. Monty took good care of him.”
We were quiet for a minute. Finally, sensing she’d accepted my answer, I asked, “Why did you call, Maris?” It wasn’t to see how the op went, or not only for that. I heard fabric shifting—sheets. “They are treating you nice, right?”
“They are.” But the hesitation in her voice told me something wasn’t right. “I like them a lot, Mikaela. The women—you’ve always told me I didn’t have to be a badass warrior, but I’ve never seen what that might look like. Leah is a nurse; her skills are valuable even if they aren’t fighting. And Abby...”
Levi’s face as he’d raced from the room sprang into my mind. “How is she doing?”
Maris made a noise in her throat—doubt, uncertainty, worry. “I have a bad feeling about things.”
Damn. I couldn’t imagine facing that kind of loss, much less now, when an enemy had set their sights on your family.
“I like them, Mikaela,” she said again. “But...”
“But what?”
Another long silence. Then, “But I think I found something you should know about.”
I squeezed the bridge of my nose, wishing I’d had that hot shower already. Maybe then my head wouldn’t feel like it was in a damn vise. “Tell me.”
“Okay.” More shifting, then I heard a creek. Maris had her laptop with her; picking it up, maybe? “So, a couple of hours ago, Abby started...feeling bad...so Leah showed me to a room.”
Where she’d have privacy. I got it.
“By then the little bug I’d set found the frequencies the jammer was letting through.”
Of course. I was an idiot. I’d known our phones were blocked while at the mansion, but it had been Maris’s cell number on my phone, not another line. If the Agozis even had one of those available to her.
“Good work, Maris.”
“Yeah.” Somehow she didn’t sound enthused. “So I went back over what we’d found about the brothers, and nothing new was popping up—dead end. So I took a different tack and began digging into Abby’s background.”
I could hear a tinge of guilt in her voice, because Maris knew we needed all the intel we could get. It couldn’t have been easy for her, especially with the things Abby was facing, but she’d done it anyway. For her team, her family. “What did you find?”
“We know she was already with Levi when he re-emerged last year to claim his inheritance. About the same time, her house was firebombed.”
Her car had been bombed as well; I remembered reading that. The culprit had never been found. “That’s about the time of that problem at Hacr, right? The lawyer was implicated both in the deaths at the office and the attacks against Abby.” At least that was the official story.
“Right. But a little over a year before, Abby was in an altercation with her father, Derrick Roslyn. The man was supposedly abusive. At first he filed a missing person’s report on his daughter. Her fiancé at the time, from a prominent political family in Atlanta, even held a press conference with her father begging for her return.” The tapping of keys came through the phone, then, “There’s some confusion after that, differing stories, but about a week later Abby was found in Roslyn’s mansion with her dead father. She claimed she’d been forced to kill him because he tried to kill her.”
Talk about a messed-up family. “Sounds convenient, but okay.” We’d probably never uncover the truth of that situation without Abby’s cooperation, not if Abby and her father had been the only ones in the room.
Assuming they had been...
“You’ve met her, Maris,” I said. “Do you think she’s capable of killing her own father?”
“If the man killed her biological mother and buried her in concrete like the papers claimed? I think anyone would be capable of that.”
I considered the scenario a minute. “But you think Levi was with her, don’t you?”
“Alone or with his brothers, yes.”
“Why?” Maris would have a reason.
“I started looking for events occurring around the same time in this area, looking for connections. Earlier that week, in an abandoned warehouse downtown, shots and an explosion were heard. When authorities arrived, they discovered the bodies of a well-known merc team from DC. All dead. The place was bare of any evidence, but a witness later reported seeing a couple running down a nearby alley not long after the explosion. He only saw them from the back, in the dark, but the woman was petite with dark hair, and the man was, and I quote, ‘a dark-haired, big mofo I wouldn’t want to mess with.’”
That sounded like Levi, all right.
I did believe Levi could take out a merc team, but none of this was really any cause for concern. “We know Levi’s deadly. What about it?”
“No one has ever officially been identified, but unofficially, sources I was able to dig into tied the incident at the warehouse to the Assassin.”
A chill skittered down my spine. Like a target moving right into my sights, the pieces of the puzzle that was Levi Agozi fell into clear shape for the first time since I’d heard his name. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
She wasn’t, I knew that, but... Holy shit.
The Assassin was a killer for hire, one with a long reputation for being both lethal and unstoppable. In the underground, he was known as the best, not just in the South, where many thought he might focus his hits, but in the entire US. The few hits that had been connected to him had seemed impossible, but the man—if that’s who he was—had been a ghost for over a decade. Better than any assassin I’d ever heard of. Maybe as good as my team.
Even though we focused on working overseas, we’d heard of him. There were plenty of killers out there. The Assassin was sp
ecial.
“You think Levi Agozi is the Assassin?”
“No,” Maris said. “I think Levi and his brothers are the Assassin.”
It made so much fucking sense. X had targeted an elite killing team—and we were elite; that wasn’t ego talking—and...a family of private individuals. We’d known there had to be a reason, something they were hiding, but this?
“If their connection to the Assassin came out...” Maris hesitated. “They wouldn’t just be ruined, Mikaela. They’d end up dead. All of them.”
She was right. Too many people wanted a piece of the man that had bested them. Not to mention that the family was now in control of the number one tech research facility in the States, maybe the world. All that power in the hands of the killer that even other killers feared?
“I need you to get me everything you can on the Assassin, Maris. By morning.” A sleepless night for her, but necessary. When I faced Eli and Remi tomorrow morning, I needed every weapon I could get to protect us.
They’re not that different from us.
Was that true? Or was the thought a product of the heat I could still feel low in my belly, the ache in my clit from the rough treatment Eli had given it?
“Mikaela—”
“We can’t risk it, Maris. Not until we know for certain. Get me what I need by six. I’ll take it to the others.” Together we’d make the decision: continue to trust the Agozi brothers, or take them out without mercy. Even as ex–Delta Force fighters, we’d only get one shot.
I would only get one shot, because no one would have a better chance at Eli Agozi than me. And I’d do anything for my team, even killing the first man to ever make me wish I wouldn’t have to.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Eli —
Remi was disconnecting a call when I entered the long kitchen area just after dawn. The gray cast to his face had nothing to do with the rain-soaked light barely peeking into the room. That look was a kick to the chest. The nuts.
Fuck, no. It took me out harder than both of those combined.
“Abby?”
Remi shook his head. His eyes met mine, devastation dark on his face. “The bleeding got worse overnight. Leah said there was nothing they could do.”
Levi’s baby was dead. Oh, I knew what people said, that it was just a fetus, a group of cells that would someday be a baby. But in my mind, my niece or nephew had been just as alive as the baby growing inside Leah’s body—and now it was gone.
My hand swept out without permission. The cup sitting on the nearby counter didn’t stand a chance; it flew across the kitchen. The sound of it shattering against the wall brought shouts from the other room.
By the time Mikaela’s team—or most of it, it sounded like—crowded into the kitchen, I had my fists planted on the opposite counter next to Remi, my back to the door. I didn’t care if they saw my pain, but this moment was private. Family only. I couldn’t deal with the intrusion of a bunch of strangers right now. “Give us a minute, please,” I said over my shoulder.
“What the hell, man?” Titus growled.
Remi went rigid next to me, and I knew his face went mean by the small sound Titus made. “A minute.” His growl was far deeper and far more menacing than Titus’s annoyed one. “Now.”
Footsteps shuffled out of the kitchen. Remi leaned back against the counter, and from the corner of my eye, I watched him drop his face into his hands.
“I can’t believe this. Can’t...” I stared down at the cheap laminate, wishing I could smash it. Smash something. Anything. “There should’ve been something we could do.” We were men. Assassins. We fixed things, made wrongs things right. Protected the innocent—but we hadn’t been able to protect two people we cared about most, Abby and her child.
“Some things,” Remi said quietly, his voice gravel rough with grief, “only God can do.”
“Well the fucker fucked that up, didn’t he?” The spark of anger became a knot, a ball, a boulder that threatened to crush me. I slammed my fists down on the counter. “He fucked that up.”
One of Remi’s hands landed on my shoulder, squeezing down. He choked, then cleared his throat. “It is what it is, bro. Which is a shitty thing to say, but we don’t know why. We can’t change it or stop it. It just...is.”
I knew he was right. As if we hadn’t encountered situations that screamed injustice far more often than anyone should have to—the innocent dead, taken advantage of, devastated and destroyed by men (and sometimes women) whose power made them gods.
Until we found them. Balanced the scales.
There was no balancing this.
Wet warmth registered on my cheeks, and only then did I realize my eyes were stinging. Tears. I hadn’t cried since the night Levi told me our mom and dad were dead. The night I realized there would be no more hugs, no more sweetly scented perfume clinging to my clothes afterward. No strong arms keeping the bogeyman away at night. And sure as hell no more safety. The thought that Levi and Abby’s child had died with no one to save them pushed the tears out harder.
“Eli, what the fuck are you two doing in here? Titus said—”
Remi’s snarl would have done a lion proud. Sensing that, despite no outward display of grief, his need to hurt someone or something, to get out his own anger—and likely fear, given that Leah was also pregnant—I jerked around to plant myself between them. Mikaela jerked to a halt halfway across the room. Confusion came and went as those brilliant green eyes studied my face, the evidence of my grief.
I didn’t turn away; I couldn’t dishonor our loss by hiding it.
Slowly comprehension, then what I swore was sorrow, crossed her face. “Abby?” she asked carefully. She rocked back on her heels as if sensing just how precarious our control might be.
She had nothing to fear from me. I nodded, holding on to her gaze like a lifeline, unable to form words.
She squeezed her eyes closed, opened them. “Is there anything we can do?”
“There’s nothing to do,” Remi snapped behind me.
In a way he was right, but in another... “You can help us keep them safe.” We’d worked together well so far, but last night could very well have change that. Would Mikaela take our...whatever it had been—sexual conflict, maybe, an emotional baring of souls—out on my family?
Mikaela’s mouth tightened, and I thought for a moment she would tell me no outright. Then, “That is something we have to discuss.”
Well, fucking A. My face went tight, and I knew she saw it by the way her eyes widened before narrowing on me. I shot a quick glance over my shoulder at my brother. “We’ll join you in just a minute.” The words weren’t a warning, but she could take them that way if she wanted.
Mikaela left—reluctantly, but she left. What, did she think I was going to climb out a window with everything that was going on, just to avoid a frank chat in front of everyone about how I’d come on to her? Why she’d want to discuss it with anyone but me was a mystery, but what else could this discussion be about? Unless something had happened with Sullivan.
But no, Remi had been with him the last few hours. If something had changed in that time, he’d know.
Sullivan wasn’t high on my priority list given the circumstances. Or Remi’s either, if the minutes he took preparing a cup of coffee for each of us was any indication. By the time we walked into the main room, my face was dry and every member of Mikaela’s team was waiting. Sullivan was nowhere to be seen.
“Did Remi rough up our guy too much while he was on watch?” I asked. I was deflecting; I knew it, and maybe everyone else did too. My MO, right? Who the fuck cared.
Mikaela didn’t look amused. “Have a seat,” she said and gestured toward the old couch in front of her. With her men on either side—including Rhys, looking fully recovered—it looked more like a trial than a friendly chat. Sitting would put us at a disadvantage, and at greater risk if it came to a fight. With the memory of Mikaela’s kiss, her climax strong in my mind, I really hoped it didn’t come to
that.
Remi and I answered at the same time. “We’ll stand.”
Mirroring their positions, we crossed our arms over our chests and planted our feet behind the couch. We’d worked and fought together since we were barely a decade old; it really did become second nature after so long. Granted, we didn’t usually talk out our issues with other people—it was much easier to go straight for the kill—but we could negotiate when we absolutely had to.
Working with another team was definitely a disadvantage that way.
“What is it, Mikaela?” I used her name deliberately, reminding her with three syllables of the intimacy that had occurred between us. The flare of her nostrils as she breathed in deep told me my message got through clearly.
“You are the Assassin.”
Shock jolted through me, though I didn’t allow it to show on my face. For twenty years, no one but the three of us had known our secret. Abby probably wouldn’t know even now had Levi’s role as the Assassin not been integral to their meeting—or her kidnapping, technically. But now X knew. Mikaela and her team knew. And the more people who knew, the harder it would be to protect our family.
I glanced at Remi. Agree or deny? Remi had more to lose than I did. It had to be his decision.
His gaze returned to Mikaela. “How did you figure that out?”
She didn’t look triumphant, just stared back. “X isn’t the only one who can make inferences. You just have to put the pieces together the right way.”
“Mikaela—” I wanted to ask what she planned to do with the information, what her intentions were. If she gave a shit about me or, if not me, my family. But I couldn’t show weakness, not right now, when strength might be our only bargaining chip. So I clamped my mouth shut.
The team stared us down just like their leader, varying degrees of displeasure on their faces. Mikaela’s gaze slid from Remi to me, unreadable. “There’s one thing that’s peculiar about the Assassin, something his enemies probably never noticed but should take to heart.”
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