Page 17 of Kept in the Dark (Hitmen of Ulysses #2)

Last night in the car, I was distracted, tired and losing blood.

Now patched up and temporarily at peace, there are things we need to discuss.

It would not be such a bad idea to play with her—it may act as a useful way to split her attention and lower her guard.

I must know about her involvement with Kyle and the likelihood that she will cause a problem for me in the future—since, apparently, I have no plans to kill her.

Nicole looks almost excited as she nods, and it digs away at my misgivings about her trustworthiness. “It’s been a while, but I used to play with my friends on an app. I like games.”

I set the board on the table and begin placing the pieces on the tiles as she slides into the other side of the seat where my feet were propped. “I propose we add a rule. For every piece you take, you may ask a question of me. For every piece I take, I will ask a question of you. ”

That way, it will not seem like an interrogation.

Her eyes drop to the board, and I watch her visually do the math. 16 possible questions that I will answer for her. Unfortunately, her calculations are missing a variable—my skill level. She will get eight at most.

“Is there a grand prize for whoever wins?” she asks, a teasing smile playing at the edges of her lips.

“Yes,” I growl, fixated on her mouth. “If I win, I get you. However I want.”

She gasps, her eyes rounding. But though this answer has clearly shocked her, there is no rejection of the idea in her expression or body language.

Her face is a canvas of interest and desire, though masked by indignation.

Her nipples have hardened under the shirt and are poking and creating tiny bumps under the cotton.

The silence becomes a standoff as she searches for the truth, wearing a slight frown. I am expecting her to retreat, but she licks her lips, and I follow the movement hungrily. I can tell she is conflicted about wanting me, and I do not blame her for it.

“You’re messing with me,” she decides, though she does not sound certain.

In truth, I want these to be the terms of our game very badly. But I know this will create too much tension to get the answers I need, so I incline my head, allowing her to believe—for now—that it was the joke she wishes to think it was.

She nods, then spins the board, so she controls the white pieces to go first, which I allow. The only lingering sign of her desire is how she presses her thighs together when she sits.

“If I win, you show me how to throw one of those knives.”

Clever girl, bartering and taking whatever advantage that she can, but no one is permitted to touch my knives. There is no real reason for me to play along, other than that the idea of seeing her wield one of my instruments of death makes my body tighten in a hot, frenzied way .

“If I win, you will be learning how to fish instead.”

It is a challenge not to smile when she makes a face of disgust.

I sit. She moves a center pawn—a very common first move. I move one of my pawns into her attack zone to see what kind of player she is. She takes it. She is aggressive and prioritizes early game. Very common in western schools of chess.

“Why do you have a chessboard if you come here alone?” she asks, weighing the painted stone piece. “I’m surprised they’re even staying on the board with how the boat is rocking.”

Interesting. An aggressive player, but she has wasted her first question. “The pieces are heavy enough. It is sentimental; I brought it with me from Russia.”

“You played with someone there?”

“That is two questions.”

She rolls her eyes at me. “They’re related—I wouldn’t have asked if you weren’t so stingy with the details. And I’ll warn you now that turnabout is fair play,” she adds loftily. “If you want good answers to the questions you ask, you should do the same for me.”

My jaw ticks. She is correct, and her question is innocuous enough. “Yes, my father. We played often when I was a boy until he died.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” she says, sounding very sincere. “I’m a member of the dead dads club, too.”

“Why would you join a club for something so morose?”

Her laugh is more of an exhale through the nose and a hum of amusement.

“It’s not really a club; it’s more like a thing people say…

a way to express understanding. Everyone’s trauma around a parent dying is different, but there’s a certain bond you have with others just by living through the experience. ”

I feel my brows lift, and she notes my surprise with confusion. “What? ”

“That was a very good explanation,” I offer, thinking of how others often react to the language barrier with poorly concealed condescension. “I understand your meaning and do not feel as if you spoke down to me.”

“You mean I didn’t talk down to you?”

I scoff. “That is what I said. It is a ridiculous saying anyway. Who could talk down to me? I am too tall.”

“That’s a good point.” She rolls her lips inward to hide a smile. “Your turn, I think.”

Oh, yes. The game. I reach down and move another pawn. We go back and forth, expanding into the middle of the board for a few turns, and I take the next piece.

“Why were you at the wedding?”

Her eyes stay locked on the board as she answers. “I think I told you that Jenny’s a distant cousin. I was honestly surprised when she asked me to be in the wedding. I guess her friend had to have surgery, and she ran out of other options.”

So, it is not a close family tie—this is likely why she was attacked.

If Kyle had tried to assault someone more important to the bride, he would have faced terrible repercussions.

But not with Nicole. He thought she would be without the extended Bratva protection.

She was alone and vulnerable, and not one of the powerful, rich guests.

I place the piece in my hand on the edge of the table so I will not damage it in the fist that forms. “And Kyle was your date? Did you know him well?”

A shake of her head brings her hair into her face. “Met him at the rehearsal dinner. Wasn’t impressed.”

This pleases me, despite how much more difficult it makes it to discover details about him and his potential connection to Felix. “Your turn.”

We continue moving pieces. I take the next. “Why were you in the garden when we met? ”

“I told you then. I was avoiding Kyle. He’d…

” she trails off, searching for the description she wants, and I study her as she does.

Does she search for a lie or a euphemism?

“He’d somehow managed to hit on me and make me feel terrible about myself at the same time.

Though… I guess he wasn’t really hitting on me, he was trying to…

” She trails off, swallows thickly, and shakes her head.

“I was just getting air and running from confrontation.”

Before I can ask a follow-up, she takes a piece of mine and smiles at me. “Why were you in the garden when we met?”

“I was also running from confrontation.”

“What happened?”

“That is a bigger question,” I say, shaking my head. “You must earn it by taking another piece.”

She huffs a frustrated sigh, then repeats the question when she is next to take a piece. I glance at the board for a moment, ensuring that my plan is still valid despite her somewhat erratic playing style.

“You noticed the guards and security?”

She nods.

“They noticed me, too,” I say. The line between her brows deepens at that, and I hold a hand up in a conciliatory gesture. She clearly will not suffer incomplete answers. “I was being followed.”

“Why? Wait, let me guess. That’s a bigger question.”

I lift a brow, and she grins.

“So…” her eyes narrow, but they dance in amusement. “You saw me sitting there, and you thought I’d save you from the big, bad security guard?”

That one nearly gets me. I almost smile at her joke. “You did,” I reply simply. “It was very convenient. We appeared to be lovers meeting. I believe this ruse is why he left me alone.”

Her demeanor shifts, eyes dropping to her lap and her spine straightening. “The ruse. Right. Okay, your turn. ”

I am left scowling, with a curious sense of loss. Did I ruin that moment? What did I say?

We trade a few more moves without casualties, and I put her queen into retreat to regain power on the board. She tries to take back some of her positioning in the middle, and I narrow my eyes at the placement of the pieces—she has made a move that makes no sense—sacrificing a knight to take a pawn?

Her smile is half self-satisfaction and half childish glee. “Earlier you said that you have some people helping you?”

I know this is not her question, but a request for clarification, so I will give her this one. “ Da. My team.”

“A team. What is it you do with your team?”

She has decided, then, that she wants to know. It is not exactly disappointment that fills me, but it is close—I had hoped to keep her from this. My voice lowers. “No longer asking the simple questions, I see.”

“I had to up the stakes eventually,” she returns, the mirth slowly dissolving in her expression at the serious tone of my voice.

“We do bad things to bad people.”

Her eyes drop back to the board, but this time I can see that she is retreating from the truth instead of plotting her next move. “I think I knew that,” she confesses softly after she processes the information. “What you said could mean a lot of different things, but… I think I know.”

I nod. “I also think you know.”

She inhales sharply, letting it blow out slowly.

I observe her face, looking for signs of panic or fear.

Because she will not meet my eye, it is difficult to tell how she is taking this information, so I lean forward and sacrifice part of my plan in order to take her knight now.

“What would you say if I told you I was at the wedding to kill someone?”

“Kyle?” she asks softly .

“Someone worse. Someone with infinitely more innocent blood on his hands.” Even more than my own, perhaps.

Her eyes finally lift to meet mine, but it is not fear that I see. It is fire. Fury and guilt. “I would say… okay.” She huffs a laugh. “Maybe even good riddance.”

The cold intensity, the quiet fortitude, the reserved rage…

it is so unexpected. And it sets off a chain of conflicting physical reactions.

My body goes stiff and still, then a blast of heat pulses through me.

I want to reach for her, to grab her and hold on, and I want her to fight me.

I want to absorb that powerful reaction into myself and give it back even stronger.

I barely dare to breathe. “Do you think some people deserve to die, Nicole?”

“I mean…” She looks away. The intensity of the moment is perhaps a bit too overwhelming. “Yeah… but… in a decidedly more Kevorkian way than I think you mean it. Or at least I thought I did.”

“Explain.”

“Kevorkian was a doctor who believed in a patient’s right to choose their own end of life.

” She blows out a long breath, fixing her stare into the middle distance.

“Do I think the late-stage cancer patient, whose every breath is a fight through pain and whose body has become a cage, deserves to die? Yeah, especially if he has faith in some kind of heaven or afterlife. He deserves the release, the freedom from the pain, if that’s what he wants. ”

I say nothing to this because I have nothing to add. This is… not what I was expecting. I know I did not misspeak, but she has twisted my meaning in a way that is fascinating instead of irritating.

“Do I think that the man who shows no remorse after raping and murdering his wife deserves to die? Not really. It’s almost… too easy, you know? ”

“Easy?” I ask. I wish she would look at me. I want to watch her expressive eyes as she confesses these thoughts she believes are so dark.

“A quick death is… I don’t know—an easy out, somehow. He deserves to… suffer, I guess. You can’t suffer if you’re dead.”

This is not where I thought this conversation would lead. I merely wanted to understand what she would do if her problems disappeared suddenly, along with the man causing them.

Now I am very pleased that I asked.

My dick thickens, filling with need as my heart pounds out a dark call for her.

Such a macabre conversation and such a grotesque response, but this unexpected bloodthirstiness in someone who seems so gentle and giving…

it is like an aphrodisiac to me. Perhaps she will not shy away from what I do after all.

She is like the winter-toughened women of my home country, in a soft, beautiful package.

“You cannot suffer if you are dead,” I echo.

With a musical, emotional noise, she reaches under the lenses of her glasses with both hands to press on her eyelids.

“It’s all hypothetical, though. I’m the one with the bandages, not the weapons.

What I do is help the people who come to me for help.

I don’t judge. What I think someone deserves doesn’t matter, because it isn’t for me to decide. ”

“A hypothetical question, then. What if Kyle came to you near death and you had the power to determine his fate with no repercussions? What would you do?” I press.

It is one thing to rejoice in the death of an enemy; it is quite another to picture yourself holding the smoking gun.

She thinks about it for a moment and sighs. “I honestly don’t know. I want to think I would… actually, I don’t even know that. This is kind of blowing my mind. I feel like I just realized I don’t know who I am.”

“You will find it,” I assure her. “And you will be stronger for it. I can tell. ”

The moment hangs between us—tense and heavy with unvoiced possibilities—and her golden stare bores into me. If she makes even half a movement towards me, it is over. I will sweep the board to the floor and have her right on the table.

Not immune to the weight of the moment, she swallows. Her eyes flick down, and she takes my rook. It is not even a legal move; she just takes it off the board. “Why did you do what you did in the maze? Why did you attack him?”

Because he hurt you. The answer is right there, but I hold it back because it gives her all the power. She already has it, but she does not yet realize. Once she knows I cannot and will not harm her, she might become unpredictable. She may refuse to cooperate, and I still need answers from her.

And the old Bratva man in me—the one who craved control and relished in subjugation—will not allow me to hand over my power so easily.

“Because I do believe that some people deserve to die,” I reply.

I hold out my hand, palm up, and she stares at it for a second before handing the rook back to me. I place it back on its square with fingers that shake. I need to get out of here before I do or say something I should not.

What has happened to that tightly held control I consider such a point of pride?

“I need to move the boat before the wind picks up. We can finish our game later.”