Page 59 of Five

This makes me smile. Because the princess is tough. Tougher than most men, that’s for sure. She learned from the best.

“She’ll handle herself just fine without you.”

“I know,” I say again. And I even sorta believe it. “But I don’t want her to handle it alone. You don’t understand, Chen. I should be the one to keep her safe. She shouldn’t have to handle anything on her own. And the fact that this is happening now and I’m so far away… Well, it’s fucking killing me, man. It’s killing me not to be with her.”

Chen frowns. “Maybe one day it will work out.”

“Yeah, thanks,” I say. “That doesn’t make me feel any better, ya know.”

“I’m just being… pragmatic. I’m not the most optimistic person so that’s the best I can do.”

“No, you’re the most paranoid motherfucker I know.” Chen… optimist? Never. But his pessimism has served my grandfather almost his whole life.

But Damian Li is dead.

“I didn’t see it coming,” Chen adds, reading my thoughts.

“Poison,” I say. “You never see it coming.”

“Which is why they use it.”

“Yeah.” They. But I don’t ask who “they” is.

I already know.

These are the same people who went after my sister Sasha. The same people who had my uncle James on the run for more than a decade before they took them down. Down but not out, right? They never really go away, do they? They just have a different name these days. They have a pretty new logo. And a brand-new group of delusional motherfuckers willing to do whatever it takes to preserve the status quo and call it global stabilization.

“I’m gonna get them for this,” I say.

Chen shakes his head. “No, Five. We’re gonna get them for this.”

Right. Me and my people.

Fuck ’em. They remade themselves over the years into something new. But I’ve remade myself into something new as well. They knew me once. They knew who I was and what I could do. They sent their emissaries to recruit me into their delusional fantasy under that assumption.

But I walked away from Rory Shrike six years ago for a reason. I gave her up, followed my grandfather’s lead, and became this man I am now.

I remade myself, too. And I don’t need a fancy new logo or a pretty new name to get that point across.

They’re gonna see what kind of retribution I’m capable of.

But…

There’s always a fucking but, right?

But what if they get to Rory first? Then what do I do?

I look at Chen and read his mind just like he did mine a few seconds ago.

Your job, Five Aston. You do your job.

What does that even mean?

Chapter Eighteen - Rory

I take a deep breath and pull into the Palladium House parking lot, whispering my mantra under my breath. “I can do this. I can do this. I can do this.”

Five Aston became something new to me when he walked out of my childhood bedroom and every single thing I was sure of in this life became a lie.