Ignoring the lure of his apartment, I continue on to mine, and as I push my key into the lock and twist, I hear my phone from deep within my apartment, and I hurry to finish unlocking the door before rushing inside and scrambling for the phone.
I don’t bother checking the caller ID before accepting the call andpressing the phone to my ear. “I know, I know,” I start, only to be shamelessly cut off.
“What the fuck is going on?” Milan demands, her tone suggesting that I better start spilling details before she figures out a way to bitch-slap me through the phone. “Why did I get an alert that you were in a hospital in Austin? What the hell happened last night, and why the fuck are you only just now answering my call? I’ve been trying to get through to you for God knows how long.”
My face twists with a cringe, guilt soaring through my chest. “I’m sorry, it’s been . . . fuck, Milan. It’s been a really shitty twenty-four hours.”
“What’s going on, Crims?”
I let out a heavy sigh. “That job I went on last night—”
“What job?” she questions. “You weren’t assigned anything.”
Fuck. I’ve already said too much.
“Umm . . . okay. You’re going to be really pissed, but I need you to trust that I know what I’m doing.”
There’s a heavy silence before she lets out a breath. “Does this have something to do with the abundance of bullshit jobs you’ve been accepting, and the jobs you’ve been completing that haven’t been on your roster?”
“You noticed that, huh?”
“How could I not? It’s literally my job to track your contracts and make sure you get paid.”
I blow out my cheeks and crash down onto my couch as I tell herexactly what happened, minus a few key details, of course. “Okay, I’d tracked the target to his penthouse apartment in Austin, and when I was entering the building, the assassin who’d accepted the contract showed up, and I suppose he didn’t take well to me being there.”
Milan sighs. “And let me guess, you were too freakin’ stubborn to apologize for stomping all over his turf and bow out respectfully.”
I cringe again. “Something like that,” I say. “We ended up getting into it, trading blows, and it got messy.”
“How messy?”
“Target got away, and I ended up in a fiery explosion. I had to jump through the fifth-story window and crash land on a car. But it’sfine. I’m not hurt or anything like that. Well, I mean, I have a pretty serious concussion, but apart from that, I’m okay.”
“Fuck, Crimson. There’s absolutely nothingfineabout this,” she says, her tone full of rage. “Shit like this is how you get yourself killed. What the hell were you thinking?”
My chest aches for a whole new reason, and I lean forward, feeling sorry for myself as I brace my elbows against my knees. “I know. I guess . . . I don’t know. I guess I’ve just been trying to prove something to myself.”
Or to someone else.
“Girl,” she groans. “You are the top-ranking female assassin in the country. World, maybe. There’s nothing left to prove. You’re already there.”
“I know, it’sjust—”
“Your neighbor.”
Ice sails down my spine, and I sit up straight, my heart immediately kicking into gear. How the hell does she know he had something to do with this? “What? What about him?”
“You’ve been sleeping with him, right? That guy . . . What was his name again? Red—Raiden. That’s it,” she says. “It’s him, isn’t it? He’s the only thing that has changed in your life recently, and now suddenly you’re having some kind of existential crisis. Is he putting ideas in your head? Making you feel like you’re somehow not good enough?”
I let out a shaky breath, relief pounding through my veins. She doesn’t know. But she thinks she knows something.
“It’s got nothing to do with Raiden. He’s . . . okay, so he’s not exactly as annoying as I’d first thought. He’s actually kinda . . . amazing. But it doesn’t matter anymore. Whatever was going on there is over.”
Milan scoffs. “Well, shit. Somebody’s been holding out on me. You have three seconds to start from the beginning, and don’t even think about holding back. I need all the details.”
A stupid smile pulls at my lips, and I lie back against the couch before kicking my feet up on the coffee table where Spikezilla has waited so patiently for her momma to return.
“Alright,” I say, starting from the beginning, only making sure not to mention a single detail about any of the jobs we’ve been on together. I don’t want to give anything away. As far as she knows, Raiden is still just an international sales rep. “So, you already know about that first night where he was driving me crazy with his loud fuckfest through thedoor, but the very next morning—”
