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“We fought over it. I told him I’d wire him the total sum of his inheritance if he called off the wedding. He refused.” I swallowed. “That was why I wasn’t at the church at first. I couldn’t bear to see you marry him. I was on my way to stop the ceremony somehow when I received a tip that the wedding was compromised.”

A glossy sheen brightened Ayana’s eyes. “I wanted to tell you. But Jordan…”

“I know,” I said again.

A trickle of my earlier regret seeped through the cracks in the box I’d locked it in. I wished I could turn back time and do yesterday over.

Ayana inhaled a shuddering breath. I kept my arms around her as silence descended again.

Now that I knew about her arrangement, where did that leave us? She was technically still engaged to Jordan. If and when he awoke, would they carry on with the wedding like nothing had happened? His grandmother’s health slipped more and more every day, and yesterday’s attack couldn’t have helped.

Also, how fucked was I for thinking about these things when Jordan was in a coma? I really was a bastard.

“You said you received a tip.” Ayana’s voice was quiet. “Who were those people at the church? And don’t say they were part of rival gangs. Tell me the truth. I deserve that much.”

I suppressed a flinch.

My knee-jerk instinct was to give her a partial version of the truth. She didn’t know about my fucked-up past or the many lines I’d crossed, and I wanted to keep it that way. I wished I was the man she saw when she looked at me—someone who was less flawed and worthier of her trust.

But Ayana was right. She deserved the whole truth. My past affected her directly, and if I wanted to protect her, I had to let her know what we were up against.

“They were members of the Brotherhood,” I said. “It’s an organization of professional contract killers. Extremely elite, extremely secretive. They operate out of the East Coast and have been responsible for thousands of deaths over the years.”

Ayana paused as if to give me time to admit I was joking. When I didn’t, she pulled away, her face stark with disbelief. “A secret organization of hitmen? Are you messing with me?”

I shook my head. “I know it sounds unbelievable, but assassins do exist outside of Hollywood. Powerful people don’t like getting their hands dirty. They need organizations like the Brotherhood to take care of their more…delicate problems for them.”

She sat frozen for a moment. “That’s…okay. Okay. Hitmen. Got it.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them again, they were sharp with inquisitiveness. “This Brotherhood. They were after you.”

“Yes,” I said simply.

“Because you’ve hired them before, and things went wrong?”

“Because I used to be one of them.”

My admission rang with painful clarity. I hadn’t talked about my involvement with the Brotherhood in years. Besides Jordan and Lazar, Sean was the only other person who knew.

These conversations were never easy, but telling Ayana was the hardest of all. She belonged in a world where weddings were happy occasions and assassins didn’t exist. She didn’t deserve to have her innocence stripped away by my sordid past.

Her lips parted. She rocked back on the bed, seemingly too stunned to respond.

“I told you my brother hadn’t gone to college,” I said. “What I didn’t tell you was that he worked at a casino in Maryland instead. D.C. insiders went there to gamble and make backroom deals, and one of them ended up being a Brotherhood target. My brother witnessed the hit. He escaped before they killed him too, but he knew he was a loose end and they might come after him again. He told me what happened, so I tracked the Brotherhood down and offered them a deal.”

Ayana looked dazed. “You tracked them down? How?”

“I was my brother’s twin.” I smiled humorlessly at her jolt of shock. “I used myself as bait, and it worked. I didn’t know about the Brotherhood then, but based on what Lazar told me, I correctly assumed the person who carried out the hit was a professional. I was also fortunate enough to have skills that organizations like theirs find useful.”

Few people knew I had a twin. Lazar and I came into the world together, grew up together, and almost died together. He’d been the one person I trusted implicitly. Losing him had been worse than losing a limb.

That was why I didn’t talk about him or have pictures of him on display. It was painful enough looking at myself in the mirror. Every time I faced my reflection, I was reminded of my losses—my brother, and the person I used to be.

“I majored in chemistry,” I continued. “But I was interested in more practical applications outside the classroom. I was at Thayer on scholarship, and to earn money on the side, I created…substances that I then sold through intermediaries. Their effects varied. Some helped students concentrate when they had an exam; others helped them relax or feel good. They weren’t lethal or addictive, but they were highly profitable, and I developed a reputation amongst certain circles in D.C.” Those days seemed like a lifetime ago. “The Brotherhood had heard of me, and as luck would have it, they were looking for a chemist at the time.”

“To make drugs?” Ayana ventured.

“To make poisons.”

She fisted the comforter, her knuckles tightening. Her eyes were huge, dark, and unreadable.