Page 46 of The Hitman's Prince

The Retrofit

Chapter 34

Vince

How I longed to rewind time, go back to when my father was still alive and I was busy brokering deals that would undercut the business he’d spent his entire life building. Take me back to the dining room table at Thorn Hill with five men around me, all of us desperate for change but not sure how to bring it about. Even after a life of manipulation and bloodshed, that version of me was optimistic. The current version of myself was a man who’d been an inch away from dying, betrayed by a man I’d been stupid enough to fall in love with, finding myself once again staring down the barrel of a gun.

“Orion,” I warned, ready to climb over the counter and bash his skull into the fridge. “What are you doing?”

His stare darted to me, and that was when I realized he wasn’t pointing the gun at me. He aimed instead at Caspian.

“Jesus,” Jacob, also in the kitchen, beside Daren and Luca, took his Lord’s name in vain under his breath.

“You’re surrounded by traitors,” Orion warned, taking a step to the side so he had Jacob and Caspian in his field of vision. “Liars.”

“That’s business,” I reminded him.

Luca was beyond pale, cheeks turning a vibrant shade of green as he swayed into Daren’s waiting arms. I remembered the two of them were rather queasy about guns, but they weren’t in their house anymore. They were under my roof and under my rules.

“Jacob isn’t a priest,” Orion said.

“Not entirely surprising,” I murmured, my suspicions confirmed. “Then why are you aiming at Caspian and not him?”

“Is that his name?” Orion chambered a bullet and Caspian gasped, reaching to the small of his back and ripping a pistol from the waistband of his jeans. He pointed back at Orion, but his arm trembled too much for his aim to ever be true.

“Daren, Luca,” I said steadily, holding up a hand. “Out of the way.”

They both stepped to the side, as close to the corner as they could manage without melting into the wall entirely.

“Now everybody remember whose house you’re in and put your fucking. Guns. Down.” I didn’t even bother reaching for mine. I’d let them kill each other before I acted against either of them.

Orion’s lip lifted in a grimace, and Caspian lookedrelieved as he bent down slowly and set his gun on the floor. Orion watched him stand back to his full height, and then with as much reluctance as I’d ever seen, he cleared the weapon and returned his gun to its holster.

“Great.” I sighed. “Now that we have that settled, somebody start talking.”

“I’m not a priest,” Jacob said.

“We’ve covered that.”

“He’s my cousin,” Daren blurted.

Shit.

I scrubbed a hand down my face and turned to Orion. “Pour me some wine for this.”

He nodded and poured me a glass as full to the brim as manageable without spilling over, then he carried it to me, stare still wavering between the two newest men in our lives.

“Jacob Moore, then,” I said, swallowing down a mouthful of Cabernet. “And Caspian Andersen.”

“I came over to talk to you, but you weren’t here,” Daren went on, Luca half behind him and pressed against the wall. I admired the way they loved each other, that fierce sense of protection an undercurrent in everything they did. “I ran through the names you gave me and everything pointed back to my father and my uncle. They’re up to something, but I have no idea what.”

“I agree with him,” Orion added.

“I’d be disappointed if they weren’t,” I said, arching a brow. “Men like them didn’t get so close to the top from doing nothing.”

Another plot against me was a complication, but nothing I couldn’t handle.

“And this one?” I pointed at Caspian, who still shook like a leaf.