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I blinked at him slowly. "What kind of active role? I'm already guarding Nissa.”
"Yes, but I'm going to make some changes and additions to that. I need you to do a job."
A flicker of warning and awareness made the hairs on my neck stand up. "What kind of job?"
He slid a folder to me. "You're going to eliminate a target."
My mouth went dry. I knew what Julian did. I wasn't stupid. I knew the kind of people he had working for him. But he didn't really expect me to work for him doing that, did he?
"I-I never killed anyone before. This is not usually what you have me do."
"Well, look at it like a promotion. If you do well on this one, you'll get others."
"And if I don't want to do this?"
"You are part of this family. You will follow my orders, Westin St. James. This is the job. You're going to do it for me, and you're going to keep your mouth shut. The secrecy is really for your benefit, honestly, because once Nissa finds out what you've done, she'll never forgive you."
I shook my head. "What?"
"Open the folder."
My heart started to race and my hands started to shake. What the fuck was this?
I opened the folder and there was an older version of Nissa staring back at me. She looked exactly like her sister. There were some differences. There was an upturn to Nissa's lips that always made it look like she was on the verge of a smile. Hell, the woman in the photograph was missing a smile completely. But they had the same dark eyes. The same massive thick curls. "What? You want me to kill her?"
Julian nodded. "Yes. I had hoped it wouldn't come to this, but she's shockingly persistent. She wants her sister. She'd been writing to her every month for six bloody years. I've got the letters locked away in the safe, so they're secure. But it needs to stop because Nissa is starting to push back and ask questions about why we haven't found her sister yet. You're going to eliminate my little problem, because with her sister in play, Nissa will be a whole lot more difficult to control."
"Why don't you just send her away?"
"You think I haven't already thought of that? Taking care of her is a nice permanent solution. I need Nissa here. She's my family. She's my daughter."
I closed the folder and pushed it back at him. "I can't do this."
"You will do this. Mrs. Pembry has about outlived her usefulness, and I will kill her if you don’t. But before I do that, I'll boot her from the only home she's known for the past twenty years. I will wait until she's destitute and desperate, and then I will have someone that you know go and kill her, in a painful, slow kind of way. So, son, you want to do this job and make this headache go away. If you think of running, don't bother. I will find you. But if you take care of Lenora and then come on back to the fold, any indiscretions you've had before now, I'll overlook. You're doing this."
I shook my head. "No, I'm not."
He shrugged. "That's fine. I can send someone else. I'll just tell Nissa that you did it anyway. And I'll make sure it's very, very public."
"I'll tell her I didn't."
"Oh, you misunderstand. If you don't do this, Mrs. Pembry dies, and you die. And you’ll die with Lenora, with Nissa thinking that you killed her sister. So those are your choices. Choose wisely."
Last night had been the most important night of my life. One that would never be matched. But Julian was shattering it. No matter what I chose to do, it was going to hurt Nissa. Not just hurt her, it would break her.
I stared at the photo of the girl, knowing that Nissa had been searching for her for the past six years. Knowing that Nissa needed her sister, needed her family. And I made my decision. The problem was I had no idea how on earth I was going to pull it off.
16
Westin
Present Day…
I had been summoned…again.
Something was going on. Julian had requested that I come to the house. Not Nissa, just me.
Last time you did this, things went bad.
