“I haven’t done that in a long time,” he says behind gritted teeth.
Chuckling, I jerk the arm. He moans, and a sick part of me laps up the agony.
“Now, now,Appa,” I taunt, “I don’t like liars. You think I’m not aware of what you’ve been up to?” Lowering my face close to his, I blow smoke into his wide eyes. “I’ve been watching. You think our meet at the warehouse was the first time we’ve seen each other? That’s cute.” I twist his arm, putting pressure on his shoulder. “Why are you here?”
“Contract.”
Figured. Briar was finding all the players in the city that would answer the Board’s request for a hit. Kwan sells kids on the black market, but his specialty is assassinations. He thought he’d come here, get a target, make quick money, and be gone.
My mother never wanted me to be like him. But the sins of the father run too deep to ignore.
Snapping his arm, I grin as I hear the bone slide from the socket and his gruff shout. I drop him, letting him fall to his knees, and stain those perfect dress slacks.
Holding his arm, he glares up at me, glasses skewed. It’s fucking unnerving looking at him—I might share traits of my mother, and I hunt for them whenever I look in the mirror—but I am fully my father’s son.
“You would condemn me to death?” he shouts in Korean. I roll my eyes—he’s too dramatic.
“We all die, Appa,” I reply, words smooth. “No use in being afraid.”
He made sure growing up, my culture—hisculture—was branded into me with private tutors and only allowing the Korean language at home. The words still don’t hit my ear right—because I gave it up. I gave up that part of myself—that part that was him.
I fully embraced my mother’s heritage—taking the English name she whispered to me after my father was finished with her. Killian Ambrose Linwood—named after her grandfather.
“I owe money,” he pleads, crawling to lean against the brick wall. “This hit was supposed to settle all debts.”
Something he and Ferguson had in common—neither could balance a checkbook.
“Sounds like a personal problem.” I flick the spent cigarette at him. “How did you make this meet?”
His lips twist, and I smile, the part that’s wholly him rising to the surface. Pulling the knife from my pocket, I wave it in front of his face. “I don’t give second chances, so answer the question, Appa. How did you set this up?”
I level the knife at his nose, and he swallows. “Through an outside party.”
“Who?” I growl.
Shaking his head, I touch the tip to his cheek.
“Did you know I have more confirmed kills than you?” I grin, tongue running over my teeth. “Quite remarkable, given how long I’ve been active. You have what, decades on me?” Glancing up, I wink. “I guess I’m more my father’s son than my mother’s.”
I follow along his jaw, resting the blade to his pulse. My father doesn’t move, just stares at me, emotionless.
This? This is the face of the man who would drag my mother from me. Day, night, public or private. He would take her away, use her, then leave her to clean up the mess.
He did it so many times in front of me; I started interfering. Fighting, clawing, beating him to leave her alone. It got so bad,he threw me into a closet, locking the door before assaulting her. I was forced to listen—to hear everything—and never be able to stop it.
“Give me the name,” I murmur, voice full of all the darkest promises. Promises of his death, of his torture, at my hands if he doesn’t cooperate.
“Murray,” he grumbles. A bead of sweat drops from his brow.
Murray.That fat fucking piece of shit…
“Where do you find him?”
Kwan gestures with his chin. “Bar downtown. Irish pub. The Black Skull.”
It’s a little place, off our radar. It’s run by innocent people—but I’m going to paint the walls red with Murray’s blood.
Staring at my father, I remember every horrid thing that he did to us. What he made my mother endure before she escaped with me. We spent months on the streets, hiding from him, until she died. All the money he had, and she chose the rats over his brutality.
