Page 28 of Lethal Torture

I flip to the objectives Mak has included in bold text.

The job has two parts:

1. Overhaul every aspect of security throughout the entire Melikov organization. Hiring, training, systems, protection. Put an impenetrable protective wall around our client and make it sustainable.

2. Find the leak in her organization. When you find it, alert us both immediately, but do NOT neutralize. We need to know who wants her dead, but more importantly, we need to know why.

My mouth twists as I read the last sentence.

I don’t need to find the bastard to know his “why.”

Follow the money.

It’s the oldest saying in the hunt-and-kill playbook, and for good reason.

Zinaida has a lot to lose, and her employees have billions of very good reasons to betray her to the right buyer.

I analyze each attack in detail, then start familiarizing myself with her organization.

It’s going to be a tricky, not to mention fucking dangerous, job.

It’s messy, with a lot of human resources issues and no clear target. There’s easier money to be made, let’s put it that way.

So tell Mak you’re not taking it.

But it’s also intriguing.

Zinaida’s entire world is intriguing.

Oh, get real, Macarthur.

It’s Zinaida who is intriguing.

And wanting the client so badly I can barely breathe is definitely the wrong damned reason to take a job.

I stare at the screen until it turns black, then check the time on my phone.

Midnight here, which makes it eight a.m. in Australia.

I call my sister Liana, smiling at the noise in the background when she picks up.

“Tommo says to tell you the surf is, and I quote, ‘fucking filthy’today,” she greets me. “Which I gather means good.”

“Bastard,” I say flatly, staring out at the freezing darkness over the Thames.

“So get your pommy arse home, then, dickhead,” yells her husband in the background.

“Yeah, Uncle Luke!” comes a chorus from my two nephews. “Get your pommy arse home, dickhead!”

“Tommo! Language!” Liana hisses. “No, Max, just because Daddy says it doesnotmean you can call your brother a dickhead. No, Mummy was just repeating what Daddy said—oh, for goodness’ sake! Ollie, stop hitting Max over the head with your boogie board. Tommo!”

She yells her husband’s name so loudly I hold the receiver away from my ear, grinning like an idiot at the familiar sounds of my sister’s domestic chaos.

“Get your sons out of here... I don’t know where to! I don’t care. Take them to the beach. Take them anywhere else but here, before I murder the lot of you. Sorry, Luke,” she says rather breathlessly into the receiver as the cacophony gradually fades. “Please tell me you’ll be back in time for summer holidays? I seriously don’t think I can handle six weeks of those two monsters, even with Tommo being so helpful.”

“How’s his business?” I dodge her question.

“Good, busy. But he’s always home for bath time, so I can’t complain.” Her voice softens, as it always does when she talks about her husband.