Page 17 of Scarlet Mark

She licked her bottom lip. “Having me nearly naked in your lap wasn’t intimate enough for you?”

I grinned. “Well, it certainly left me craving more.” Her little seductive game climaxed in her obtaining the upper hand, intriguing me all the more. “Give me something, Amara.”

“I owe you nothing.”

“I let you live.”

“You say that as if it’s a mercy, but if you knew the hell I was returning to, you’d realize that’s not the case at all.”

Interesting. “Then why choose him as your mark?”

“Who says I chose him?”

I scoffed. “So, what, someone else put you up to it?”

“Again, you’re making assumptions about intentions you don’t understand.” Her gaze held mine. “I’m not a con woman, Killian. Consider that my truth.”

She spoke with such confidence, such certainty. If I hadn’t seen the financial proof of what she’d done to Senator Jenkins, I’d almost believe her. “You ran off with half his bank account, Amara.”

She snorted. “One bank account of several. And trust me, it hardly made a dent in his net worth.”

That explained how he was paying the Tabella Della Morte so handsomely for this job. I’d wondered how he could afford our rates with a diminished account.

“Regardless, you still stole money from him. After leaving him at the altar.” The public embarrassment alone was enough to tarnish the good senator’s reputation. Of course, his publicist spun it in his favor by proclaiming him to be brokenhearted and single again.

Which meant he didn’t intend to take Amara back.

So what did he have planned for her?

I shook my head. It wasn’t for me to worry about. This was a job, and she deserved her fate. End of discussion.

Amara seemed to agree, as she remained quiet, her hands curled into fists as we approached our final destination in Berlin. I could practically hear the wheels turning inside that delicious mind of hers, plotting her escape. Alas, she had no chance. Not with that device on her wrist. And I also knew this city forward and backward. She had nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.

The announcement of our arrival had Amara stiffening beside me.

“You’ll follow me,” I told her. “Or I’ll show you what that device around your wrist can do.”

“You need me alive,” she reminded me, a smirk in her voice.

“That I do.” I leaned into her, pressing my lips to her ear. “I didn’t say the device would kill you, did I?” I suppose I had used the termlethal, which was true. But it had varying degrees of electrical therapy tied to it.

A shock wrist cuff designed for humans.

Brilliant.

She didn’t seem nearly as amused, her gaze falling. Poor thing. I almost pitied her.

“Shouldn’t have fucked with the senator, darling,” I murmured, using my thumb to tug her bottom lip from between her teeth. “The price of betrayal can be steep.”

“You have no idea,” she whispered, shaking her head and knocking my hand away in the process. “No fucking idea.”

“Ah, but I do.” I’d seen a lot in my twenty-eight years. Typically, I was hired to deliver justice, but this wasn’t my first time retrieving a mark for the client’s brand of punishment.

However, this was my first time feeling a niggling of regret for having to hand over a target to the customer.

Only because I enjoyed this task so much.

I’d have to ask Arthur for another.