Page 47 of The Hitman's Prince

“He was there the night you were shot,” Jacob said.

This wasn’t news. I’d put it together after Caspian had blurted the confession to me over coffee. Jacob didn’t need to know that, though, so I said to him, “I thoughtyouwere there the night I was shot.”

“I was. But you were in his arms when I found you.”

I looked at Caspian, who was paler than Luca, which gave me the suspicion he hadn’t been entirely honest with me. “Did you see who shot me?”

He licked his lips and gave me one sharp nod.

“Heshot you,” Jacob said simply.

Orion closed the space between us and them, kicking Caspian’s gun across the room and grabbing him by the front of his shirt. He lifted Caspian onto his toes and slammed him so hard into a wall it mademyteeth chatter.

“How do you know?”

“He confessed.”

“Confessing an attempted murder to a fake priest?” I huffed out an amused breath. “He must be the luckiest man alive.”

“He was,” Orion growled.

God, he was obscenely hot like this. Angry and unhinged, defending me like the feral fucking street dog he was.

“Maybe now you are,” I suggested, coming up behindhim and placing my hand in the middle of his back. I leaned in, lips brushing against his temple. “It was your call he answered. Your order he failed. It’s his shaky hand that’s insured you still have a cock to suck at night.”

Caspian sputtered, and Orion showed no signs of breaking down.

My house was in chaos, drowning with liars and cheats, and I was tired of it.

“Heel,” I warned, voice low in his ear.

Orion let out a grunt of protest, then slammed Caspian so hard into the wall again I worried he cracked the drywall, or worse, Caspian’s shoulder blades. Caspian fell to the floor in a heap at my feet, and Orion stepped away from the mess, sinking down to his knees beside me. My dick throbbed at the way he obeyed, and I petted my fingers through his hair as a reward.

“Now, Daren…tell me what you know about your uncle…and your cousin.”

Chapter 35

Caspian

It hurt to breathe, and I was terrified to open my eyes. I stayed on the floor, curled into a ball, cold from the loss of Orion’s fists against my chest.

“I’ve just heard rumblings,” Daren said. “And Jake was missing.”

“Hiding,” Vince corrected. “Why have you been hiding, Priest?”

“I’m not a…” the priest trailed off with a sigh. “I don’t know what they’re planning. I don’t even know what they want. They told me Daren was a lost cause, threw me underground, and told me to wait it out.”

“Are you a lost cause?” Vince asked.

I opened my eyes, rocking onto my side so I could get a look at the men scattered across the room. Vince was the closest, the tips of his shoes less than a foot from my face. Orion, kneeling at Vince’s feet, his head tipped back and his eyes closed while Vince slowly carded fingersthrough his hair. The priest—Daren’s cousin, apparently—was in the middle of the room, and Daren and another man were against the far wall. Orion groaned and my stare flickered back to his face in time to watch his lashes flutter and his fingers splay out across the tops of his thighs.

Fuck, he was gorgeous. In a scary way, though.

Vince was terrifying in his own right. After what we’d walked into—the accusations, the revelations—I would have expected rage, but instead he was eerily calm. Calm and stroking another man toward an orgasm, if the look on Orion’s face was any indication of the state of things.

“For them, yes,” Daren answered.

“But not for me?”