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I don't answer.

“Does she know how many people you've killed?”

Callie goes still.

There it is. The thing I've known was coming since the night she found me bleeding in an alley.

The real me.

Not the man who makes pancakes because she likes them.

Not the man whose bed she invaded.

Not Hot Lips.

The hitman.

Mercer smiles at my silence.

“No,” he says. “She doesn't.”

“Roman?”

I don't look at her. I can't.

Mercer's hand moves toward his waistband.

“Don't.”

He stops.

I raise my gun.

His eyes remain on mine.

“You shoot me and she gets to see exactly what you are.”

There it is.

The choice.

For eleven years, there hasn't been one.

Only target. Weapon. Opportunity. Done.

But Callie is pressed against my side.

The woman who chased me.

The woman who found me every time I disappeared.

The woman who told me she loved me before walking into a restaurant because I asked her to stay inside.

The badass woman who apparently spent the last hour beating the shit out of a professional killer with anything she could get her hands on.

I look at her. She's already looking at me.

There’s no fear in her eyes. Not of me.