Page 51 of The Hitman's Prince

“I don’t expect you to understand,” he said to the floor.

“I don’t think I ever will, but you’re going to have to make sure he does if you want to get out of here alive.”

“I don’tcareif I get out alive!” Caspian raised his voice, very nearly yelling. He sat up straight, fingers twisted into angry claws on top of his thighs. “If I can’t have him, I don’t care if I get out alive. But even if I do, it doesn’t matter, I’ll be dead anyway.”

“What?”

He let out a self-deprecating laugh. “You heard me.”

“I think you can at least make me understand that part,” I said.

“Vanessa will take me off the roster if I don’t come through for her,” he muttered. “I had one job to get the money I needed for my family’s debt. The job being Vince was just a bonus. I thought...”

I sighed, fully understanding what that feeling was like. I definitely didn’t know the details of what my father was planning, but he’d thrown me into hiding to keep me safe until he was ready to use me to his own gain. I don’t think he’d expected the man he was trying to hide me from would walk straight into my bed, but he was only a man after all. There were only so many possibilities he could have planned for.

“Is taking you off the roster a euphemism?”

“She’ll kill me.”

I hummed an affirmative noise. “In a perfect world, Caspian, what would you want?”

He glanced at me, mouth pulled up at the corner in a tight and sad kind of half-smile. “Oblivion.”

I bent my arm behind me, pressing my fingers against the still-healing wounds from the night Orion had flogged me until I bled. Shivering, I let my hand fall away, wondering if Caspian meant the word in the same way I’d interpreted it. Whereas I wanted Vince and Orion to the point of self-destruction, I was rather sure Caspian meant he wanted to disappear and never be heard from—or looked for—again.

“What else?” I asked.

“Peace.”

The things he wanted were things I’d already found.

If his arrival took them away from me, Caspian would have more to worry about than whether Vanessa or Vince was going to kill him. I might very well be the one to do it myself.

“How long is he going to keep us here, do you think?” Caspian asked, going limp again on the edge of the bed. He looked like he wanted to lie down, but we were strangers, maybe even enemies.

“As long as he wants.” I reached over and curled my fingers around his wrist, pulling him down beside me onto the bed. He rolled onto his side, tucking up into the fetal position and staring toward the wall. I didn’t know how it was possible, but somehow he managed to make himself look even smaller and younger.

I patted Caspian’s shoulder awkwardly because I didn’t know what else to do. I wasn’t particularly interested in making him feel better, but there was a very real possibility that if we survived the night, and if I still wanted Vince—and Orion—Caspian would be part of that deal. There had to be some interest for Vince to have brought him back home in the first place, but it wasn’t my place to understand his desires that deeply. At least, not yet.

Maybe one day.

But until then, just like with my father, all I could do about Vince was wait…and see.

Chapter 38

Vince

Iwent to bed without seeing Caspian and Jacob, taking Orion and his still-hungry cock with me. He was insatiable, and it was the need to sate his hunger that so often drove me. Watching him undress at the foot of my bed, I was surprised to find myself nostalgic for the way things had been before I got shot. It wasn’t a long run we had, him and I, but it was enough to give me a taste of the power and control that had turned my father into the man he was when I’d ended his life. With Orion, it would be easy to get carried away, and I wondered if that was what had happened the night I walked in on him tied to the bed and covered in blood.

We’d still never spoken about that night.

One day we would have to.

“How does this go?” Orion asked, turning to face me, naked except for his underwear.

“What part?”

He licked his lips, helpless. “All of it. Do I get in bed with you as equals? Am I truly forgiven? Where is my place? Who aretheyto you? To us.”