Page 74 of The Hitman's Prince

Before getting kidnapped.

“Fuck.” I picked up his phone, the screen blinking to life behind the spider webbed screen. It was my contact page that filled his screen, and I turned in aflash, hurling the phone back into the house, straight at Caspian's face. My aim was shit, and it bounced off his chest, landing at his feet. He and Jacob both looked down at it, and I stalked back inside, leaving them in the doorway.

I couldn’t do this again.

I couldn’t survive losing him a second time.

The whole idea of playing pretend over it was bad enough, but this? Someone had acted before we’d even had the chance, and someone hadtaken himright from under our noses. From undermynose.

I ran upstairs, gun still clutched in my hand. I should have checked the house to make sure whoever had kidnapped Vince was well and truly gone, but let them try to come for me next. Let them try and they’d see what would happen.

I found my cellphone, discarded carelessly on the floor of Jacob’s bedroom. The scent of sex was still prevalent in the air, and I tried my best to ignore it while I scrolled through to find Daren Moore’s phone number.

“Orion,” he answered, my name sounding like the answer to a loaded question.

“What do you know?” I asked.

I realized my voice was shaking, my hand was shaking. I cursed all of them under my breath, then set the gun on the nightstand and sat myself down on the edge of the bed.

“I…”

“What do you know, Moore?”

“They suspected he was compromised,” Daren said.

Thehein question stepped into the doorway, but before Jacob could make it into the room I had the gun back in my hand and aimed at the middle of his chest. I put the phone on speaker and set it on the bed beside my thigh.

“What was that?”

“They suspect Jacob was compromised,” he repeated, and Jacob’s face blanched.

“Why?”

“Rumors,” Daren said.

There was a rustling behind him that led me to believe he wasn’t alone. Not that any of them in that house was ever alone.

“What do you know?” I asked him again. “And be clear about it or I’ll be on your front porch so fast you won’t even have time to arm yourself.”

“I’d like to see you try, Delmar.” Fletcher’s cool and unbothered voice filtered through the speaker. “I appreciate your concern, but threatening what’smineis not the way to get the answers you want.”

“He’s missing, Sinclair. Someone took him.”

“It wasn’t my family,” Daren said quietly. “They’re firmly in the talking stage, not the acting stage. Maybe you need to look to that tiny little assassin he brought into your house. He’s the one with everything to lose.”

“This wasn’t the plan,” I said, peering around Jacob’s chest until I caught a glimpse of Caspian’s still sleep-tangled hair peeking up over his shoulder.

“You had a plan? We should have had a plan.” Fletcherchuckled on the other end of the line. “Life is what happens when you’re making other plans. Isn’t that how the saying goes, Delmar?”

“If you hear anything, I want a call,” I said, ignoring his well-humored tease.

“As soon as I have anything to report, you’ll be the first to know.”

I hung up on the both of them, then pushed myself up off the bed. I was still shaking, finger trembling against the side of the gun as I kept it pointed at the two of them across the room. It was all their fault. The two of them had come into our lives and ruinedeverything. Before them, it was me and Vince and everything between us had been perfect. Then Caspian had put a bullet in his chest, and everything went ass-up. I couldn’t believe I’d been falling into the idea of the four of us finding a way to make something work between us.

Vince was too love-drunk on the idea of what Daren and Fletcher had with three other men who cared for each other in ways that would put all five of them into the ground. He’d looked at me after almost losing his life and found me lacking. Even after he’d saved my life back as a teenager, even though I’d been more loyal to him than I’d ever been to his father.

One fucking phone call.