Page 48 of The Hitman's Prince
“No.”
“You and Luca can go,” Vince said, the hand in Orion’s hair going still. “I appreciate you coming by, Daren. I appreciate your friendship…your loyalty.”
“I…appreciate a lot about you, Vince,” Daren said.
He led Luca past us, to the front door, and out of the house. With the two of them gone, the house fell silent, save for the battering of my heart against my ribs and the quiet lull of Orion’s breathing. Slowly, I pushed up onto my ass, pressing my back against the wall and bending my legs at the knee. I propped my forearms up and let my head fall back with a sigh.
“Thanks for dropping the charade,” Vince said to me, taking a drink of his wine. “I don’t think you’re as helpless as you just pretended to be.”
“He’s strong,” I rasped, jerking my chin toward Orion, who had opened his eyes to glare daggers in my direction.
“He is.” Vince stroked his hand down the side of Orion’s face. “My barely restrained guard dog. Always ready to attack.”
The last sentence sounded like a warning, and I took it as such.
“So.” Vince smiled and turned his attention to the priest. “I know who you are and I may not know the course you’re on, but I know the destination. Why shouldn’t I fucking kill you right here and now?”
Jacob let out a weak sound, dropping onto his knees and raising his hands in surrender…in supplication.
“I wasn’t pretending with you,” he said. He looked at Orion next. “Or you. And you’re not alone. I don’t know the course either, and I don’t even really know the end goal.”
“You know the end involves a mutiny,” Vince shot back. “Either once or twice over.”
The conversation was veering into unfamiliar territory for me.
Growing up I’d always known there were power struggles for men like my father and his father. I knew money exchanged hands; it was often laundered. I knew people went missing, and questions never got asked. But I also knew I went to a private high school with boys richer than I’d ever be. I knew if there was a ladder, I was at the bottom of it, but I had a strong grip and a need to persevere.
I’d never planned to make much of myself. We had a family business, but not in the way Vince did, not in the way the Moore cousins seemed to. My parents owned a fish restaurant by the coast, and one day it was meant to be mine. It would have been if my father hadn’t made the wrong bet on a bad man and lost all the money meant to keep the place afloat. It was his shitty decisions that had led me to Vanessa, to an opportunity that would have paid enough money to solve all my problems and then some.
And better than that, it would have gotten me close to Vince, a man I’d obsessed over from afar since those long-lost days of high school, back when he didn’t even know I was alive. He still didn’t remember me from classes, and I wasn’t going to remind him. The connection wasn’t important. It was nothing compared to the connection we shared now.
He felt it too. He had to. Because why else would he have taken me into the alley that night and let me suck on his dick? Why would he have bought me coffee and walked me back to his house if not to give me a chance to do it again with more padding under my knees? Instead, we’d walked into the middle of a war where no man was innocent. And with my stare flickering from Jacob, to Orion, to Vince, and back again, I knew there were…complications.
“I don’t want a part in it,” Jacob said. “I wantyou.”
“It’s not that easy,” Vince said, chasing the words with another swallow of wine. “You’re a lesson for me to learnabout loose ends, and this one…” He jerked his chin in my direction. “Is another problem altogether.”
“Vince, please,” Jacob pleaded, and Vince was on him fast, the back of his hand connecting so hard with Jacob’s cheek it drew blood. Vince crouched down over the priest, lifting him off the ground by his hair and spilling wine down the front of his shirt.
“You haven’t earned the right to call me that so fucking casually, Priest,” he warned, throwing Jacob back onto the floor. He lay in a heap, much like I had after Orion got his hands on me earlier. Vince straightened and scratched the side of his nose, inhaling deeply and turning his gaze skyward.
I remembered the night he almost died, searching the stars for the man who now knelt at his feet.
“You said you owed me a life,” Jacob rasped.
Something in Vince’s eyes flared like white hot rage, and he clenched his jaw tight.
“Put them in the guest room,” he finally said, pointing the order at the only one of us he trusted. He completely ignored Jacob’s last comment. “If they fight you, they can leave, but if they leave, they are never welcome back. Does everyone understand?”
I nodded, and Jacob managed a low and rumbling, “Yes.”
“Come to the office when you’re finished, pet. And bring me more wine.”
Chapter 36
Orion
Iput Jacob and Caspian in a guest room, hoping they might kill each other before Vince decided what to do with them. The priest was enough on his own, but I’d seen the way Vince was looking at Caspian when they walked into the house, before they realized anything was wrong. Caspian was the stranger he’d told me about in the alley, the other man he said he wanted for his own.