Page 73 of Power of Shadow

“Do you want to play, my Little Killer?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

This dance between us, full of jokes and seductive vibes, only shows how insane we are.

I approach a man whose name I don’t even remember. Eli picked him out from among the lower-level informants who served the senator’s career. The guy is scum, selling some of the senator’s secrets to the press for a few bucks. Of course, he didn’t do any significant harm to anyone because the senator’s management center wiped everything off the face of the earth with the force of a tsunami.

Eli dug up a dirty secret in the process. The guy is secretly fucking the senator’s longtime assistant, who also disappeared at the same time as Charles Baker. My potential father.

I can count, and I know the odds of his knowing where she might be now. Before I came here, I did my homework and dug up another skeleton from the same closet.

The man doesn’t hear my footsteps, so, standing behind him, I clear my throat. That gets his attention. Still lying in the fetal position, he turns his head toward me.

His left eye is so swollen that there’s no way he can open it. He got kicked there. The other is open and glaring with hatred, even though I’ve done nothing yet. Blood is dripping from his nose and running down his cheek.

Only his lower half is clothed. His bare chest and shoulders already bear several cuts where the Jackal introduced him to his best friend. A knife.

I look at Ryker, who smiles. That small, sweet smile makes my knees weak. His intense gaze turns my insides upside down.

God... This guy...

“Have fun, baby girl,” he whispers playfully, winking.

Squatting down, I shift my attention to this treacherous asshole.

“Can you be a good boy and tell me where Margaret is hiding?” The light tone of my voice is totally out of place.

“Fuck you,” he mutters. “I don’t know any Margaret.”

“No? Then what hole have you been spending your nights in until recently? I don’t like it when men treat me like I’m stupid and underestimate my intelligence.”

“She’s right. She doesn’t like it one bit. I don’t like it either, because when you insult my woman, you insult me too,” Ryker adds, circling around us like a hawk.

My woman?

“You know your minutes are numbered if you don’t start working with us?” I ask, pulling my knife from the holster on my pants.

The man laughs mockingly. “You think they’re not numbered anyway? I know very well who you are.” He directs his last words to Ryker and spits blood at his feet.

“Who am I? Enlighten me.” The Jackal sneers, and when he passes me, his fingers brush my neck.

Immediately, an electric jolt runs through me.

So this is how we’re going to play now?

“You think I don’t know you’re James’s son? That you’re a member of the Pact? You think I don’t know who your mother was?”

The temperature in the room drops a few degrees. A chill takes over everything, including the Jackal’s soul. He doesn’t stop for a second, still circling around us. But I know. The guy is already walking on thin ice.

Whatever happened in Ryker’s past, whatever happened to his mother, it’s a trigger for him. I can already see the fuse being lit.

“So what if you know who I am? It just means you know what to expect when the Pact comes for you.”

“That’s how I know I’m going to die anyway. I don’t have to tell you shit.”

“We’re not after you,” I interject. “We’re not even after Margaret. Where’s Charles Baker?”

The guy blinks his good eye. “What? You’re after him? I don’t know where he is, but I know who might know. Vlad! Vlad Petrowski!”