Page 42 of The Hitman's Prince

Orion would not approve.

“I’m not stalking you,” Caspian said again, voice weak, “but I don’t hate running into you.”

“You don’t go out of your way to avoid it.”

He shook his head.

“You go out of your way to ensure it,” I said.

He nodded.

Maybe I’d had a death wish since taking a bullet to the chest, but I wanted to know more about Caspian Andersen. And not just in a sexual way either. I wanted to understand how his mind worked so I could make sense of a man who said he went out of his way to find me, but didn’t consider it stalking.

Maybe it was wholesome stalking. The kind that didn’t end with bloodshed. I could get behind that.

I deserved that, didn’t I?

“Why?” I asked.

Caspian stared down at his latte and shrugged.

“How does the priest know you?” I asked next.

I would entertain his wholesome stalking games, but I needed him to understand I was not a man to be fucked with. I was observant, and I hadseenthe way Jacob looked at him over the chalice of wine.

“What?” he rasped, shoulders giving a small quake.

“And don’t even think about lying to me,” I warned, bending at the waist to lean over the table toward him so I could speak quieter. “I know far more than you’d expect.”

Caspian didn’t have a poker face, which would only work out in my favor if we were to continue whatever little game we’d started to play. The first expression that flashed across his face was fear, a slight widening of his eyes, almost imperceptible, but there nonetheless. Then worry, confusion, and finally uncertainty.

“I’ve been to church before,” he said.

“Try again,” I warned. “But don’t worry if you don’t want to tell me. I’ll ask him later.”

“I was there!” Caspian blurted, hands flying up to cover his mouth, but it was too late.

“Where?”

“Church.”

“I know that.”

“No. I mean, I wasthere.” Caspian looked up at me, brows raised and mouth turned down like he was about to apologize for something. “The night you were shot.”

It was a good thing I’d had a lifetime of practice when it came to schooling my expressions, especially when something surprised me, because what kind of fool would I have looked like telling Caspian I knew more than I did, only to be caught so off-guard by the next words out of his mouth. I swallowed down bile, chasing it with a drink of coffee that was still too hot.

I pressed my tongue against the roof of my mouth todull the pain of the burn. I closed my eyes, pushing my fingertips against my eyelids until I saw stars, familiar constellations that always felt like home. I let my mind rewind, back past bringing Jacob home, past Orion’s revelations, back to the night I was shot.

My memories were blurry, but I remembered being on the phone, I remembered searching the sky for the namesake of a man who wouldn’t come, and then…trembling arms and frantic hands, footsteps, the scent of frankincense and sandalwood. Two sets of blood-soaked hands pressing frantically at the hole in my chest. One I knew to be Jacob, the other…

The other I’d forgotten.

But when I opened my eyes in the middle of that cafe and locked eyes on Caspian Andersen, I didn’t need to look at his hands to know they were his.

“Vince,” he rasped, swallowing hard.

“Well,” I whispered, tongue still numb from the pain. “Isn’t that a revelation.”