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CHAPTER22
Gray
Using the hem of my shirt, I wipe the splattered blood off my face, glowering at the pile of gutted flesh bound to his bedpost. Although I worked him over good, I’m still unsatisfied. This piece of trash wasn’t able to give me any more intel than Master had.
“Useless. Fucking useless.”
This is my third kill tonight, and I’m left with the same unanswered questions as when I started.
Disgruntled, I spit on the dead man’s corpse before stepping away from the bed and sitting on the single chair in the corner of his room. With my knife still clutched in my hand, I run my fingers frustratedly through my hair, uncaring that his blood will undoubtedly mat my strands.
Fuck.
I just need a second to get my shit together, but it’s no use. No matter how much time passes, my world insists on being one chaotic fuck up. Between my lifelong mission and Zoey, I’m not sure which one is causing the massive migraine I have right now.
It’s all my goddamn fault. I shouldn’t have gone to her house like that. It was stupid and impulsive—two qualities I thought were lost on me—but when it comes to my little doe, shit, all logic and restraint go out the window.
I may want to make excuses for my behavior, but deep down I know full well why I had been so gung-ho in showing up at Alaric’s last night. I wanted to him to know that Zoey was mine now, and that he, or any other motherfucker out there, could never take her away from me. I want to blame my possessiveness as the culprit for my unexpected visit, but it was my insecurity that led me to her family’s front door, fearing that somehow her father would say something that would make her love me less.
It was an idiotic move, yet I did it anyway.
Now, while I’m assured that Zoey won’t leave me if her father tells her to, in the end, she’s the one who’s left hurting. She tried not to show how bruised she was after the fucking fiasco that took place with her father, holding her head high when she left his house and came with me back to mine, but I saw it in her perfect green eyes. It hurt her to confront her father that way, to step out of the shadows and show him her truth—that she had been death’s mistress long before I ever came into her life. I tried to ease her suffering by loving her the whole night through and most of today, in the spare room, of course, a distraction she desperately needed to make sense of what she did, but when I offered for her to come with me on myerrandsthis evening,she refused, explaining that she needed some alone time to think.
Think.
Like thinking will make her loss more bearable.
It might hurt her now, but she knows that the painful conversation she had with her father couldn’t have been avoided. Sooner or later, Zoey would have needed to step into her power, and Alaric would have been forced to dryly swallow his fears and worries and let his eldest daughter live her life as she wanted.
But still… It didn’t have to be the shit show it was, and I only have myself to blame for how everything went down.
It’s not like I didn’t know how protective Alaric is of my little doe. Long before he ever introduced me to his family last year, I knew Zoey had her adoptive father wrapped around her tiny little finger. Right from the get-go, when Alaric had started training me to fill his spot at the agency, he would sometimes try to make small talk with me—as small a talk as a man like him is capable of anyway—and every time he did it, all roads would lead back to the two women he treasured most in his life, his wife and eldest daughter. Sure, he would coo and chuckle over something his twins had done, but anytime Layla’s or Zoey’s names would pop up, there was a tinge of admiration in his tone, almost as if they could do no wrong in his eyes. To him, both women had the strength of steel that many hitmen would foam at the mouth to have just a sliver of. They were his pride and joy, and now, in his mind, I corrupted one of them.
And worse still, I ripped that pride and awe of Zoey’s father away from her.
Pissed, I spring up to my feet, jump on the bed, and start stabbing the corpse’s face over and over again until he’s fucking unrecognizable. It’s only when my phone starts blowing up that I stop. Thinking it could be Zoey, I leap off the bed and rush to my discarded leather jacket to pull my phone out. When I verify that it’s Hale calling and not my little doe, I drop the bloody knife on the shag carpeting and sit back down on the small chair.
“What?” I blurt out, aggravated.
“Well, hello to you too, asshole. One of those nights, I take it?” He chuckles.
“I’m busy. What do you want?” I spit.
“By busy, I assume you’re eliminating one name at a time from that ledger your girl found at the home.”
“Hmm.” I grunt and nod, even though he can’t see me.
“How many have you crossed out so far?” he asks, sounding intrigued.
“Four.”
“Four? What are you doing? Napping between kills?” he jokes. “I would have thought you’d be halfway done by how enthusiastic you were to get started.”
“Shit came up,” I reply stoically.
Hale’s right though.
If I wasn’t so consumed with Zoey, I might have already had twenty of these pedo fuckers in the grave by now. What he doesn’t know, though, is that it’s not about the kill. It’s about making them suffer until they give me what I want, and what I want are two things—the name of the person who is the head of this revolting ring and General’s whereabouts. The little black book Zoey retrieved for me only had the client list, except for one name—the monster who still visits my nightmares every night. The only intel I’ve been able to glean from the clients who frequented the group home have been low-level guards, but the person who is controlling all the strings is still a ghost. Ironic, really, that it will take a ghost to find one, but find him I will, even if it’s the last thing I do. There must be a client important enough to merit meeting the boss. All I have to do is cross each name out until I find them.
