Page 23 of Ruthless Touch

The front door opens on the other side of the apartment and Pricilla’s excited squeak echoes as she greets KD.

I push aside the thoughts about Gun and what happened last night and head out to greet my partner.

KD and I might be exes, but we’ve been sent by the agency to get this mission done together. We don’t have any more room for misses.

I walk into the living room to find Priscilla’s arms wrapped around his neck and KD holding her off the ground. Their height difference is almost comical.

I clear my throat. “Sorry to interrupt. I know it’s been a whopping seven hours since you’ve seen each other, but we’ve got to get a move on. KD, the meeting?”

His lips spread into a shameless grin. “Right… yeah, we better get a move on or the director will tear us a new asshole. Baby, I’ve got to go.”

“Be safe!” Priscilla calls after us as we walk toward the door. “And, Eli, I wasn’t kidding about those bruises! Take care of them. You know what? I’ll put together some remedies for you!”

Fuck!

I almost cringe as she says it. Mostly because I already know what happens next.

We’re not even at the elevator before KD is hounding me.

“Bruises,” he repeats, cutting me a suspicious sidelong glance. “What bruises?”

I press the down button and stare at the digitized floor numbers as they climb. “Not sure. I think your girlfriend is confused.”

“Confused or concerned?”

“Take your pick. Either way it’s unnecessary.”

The elevator arrives and I step on, once again ignoring the pointed look KD gives me. He falls into dissatisfied silence for the rest of the ride.

Any attempt to censor himself ends by the time we’re on the ground floor and entering the brisk spring air.

We start the short trek to the subway station a couple streets over.

“You fought one of them, didn’t you?” he accuses.

“Might want to keep your voice down. We’re supposed to be assassins, remember?” I mutter back, barely moving my lips.

“Exactly,” he says. “And we can’t do that if you go and get yourself killed. I knew I should’ve gone with you last night.”

“On a seduction kill? Are you serious right now? How would that have worked exactly, KD? Hate to break it to you, but no man wants some other man cock-blocking him all night.”

He swings a fist at the air, startling some of the other pedestrians on the sidewalk. “I knew that’s what you were up to! EQ, what the fuck were you thinking? You tried two hits in one night? Tell me it wasn’t the same lieutenant.”

“Shhhh,” I say as we turn onto the next block and the sign for the underground emerges. “And no, of course not. I wouldn’t be so reckless as to try to off the guy twice in one night. It was… uh, one of the other lieutenant’s sons.”

“So that’s what the director wants!” he exclaims. “She wants to chew your ass out.”

“Probably yours too. Youaremy partner.”

No less than forty minutes later, we discover that is exactly what Director Camille Hart had in mind.

We both sit in the conference room on a video call with the Director of the Vanguard Agency—our boss—and play obedient while she chews us out on camera.

Because the assassin agency is based in the United States but has missions all over the world, there’s a number of “front companies” we use to disguise our work.

Whenever we’re in another country pulling off a mission, the location of those front companies becomes our base of operations.

In some countries, they’re innocuous things like a PR firm. In others, they’re an import or export business.