Page 77 of The Hitman's Prince
Jacob’s father hung up on him and Orion arched a brow.
“Your carelessness is what got us here,” he said simply. “Both of you.”
“Oh, so now it’s my fault?” Jacob asked.
“You knew where you should have been. What you should have been doing.” He tapped his finger against the butt of his gun. “You knew you were being watched.”
“It was your job to protect him, I thought.”
Orion’s eye twitched. “You know as well as I do there’s no controlling him when he wants something.”
“Let’s not fight,” I begged, holding up a hand toward each of them. “Please.”
Orion turned his stare toward me, thankfully shovinghis hand into his pocket instead of reaching for his gun. “Have you called Vanessa yet?”
I shook my head.
“Why not?”
I didn’t even know where my cell phone was, and I told him.
“Well, find it.” With that, he turned on his heel and stalked down the hallway. After listening to him stomp down the stairs, I sagged with relief, my arms and legs both shaking like an earthquake was rattling itself loose from the base of my spine.
“Get dressed,” Jacob said gently, reaching over and stroking his fingers through my hair. “Get dressed and we’ll figure everything out.”
I went through the motions with numb fingers, finding clean underwear and my cellphone half thrown under the bed. I dressed and did my best to untangle my hair before brushing my teeth and giving myself one long—and possibly final—look in the mirror. It was ridiculous how I’d gotten into this mess. From a misguided attempt to do what I thought was right, to try and help my father save our restaurant, to being a hired assassin who was too bad at his job to have ever been offered a contract in the first place.
There was nothing about me that would have given anyone the sense I was good at the job Vanessa had assigned me. Before Vince, I’d never even held a gun, let alone used it to shoot a person. She knew when she hiredme that I was going to fail. She must have known, which begged the question…
I replayed the conversations I’d had with her from the day she gave me the name to the last time we spoke. She’d given me a second chance, but…what had I heard in her voice? It was me or Vince, and she knew Orion was back. She had to know that he’d…
I punched the mirror, pulling back as it shattered onto the counter and into the sink. Picking shards out of my knuckles as I went to the bed, I grabbed my phone and called my brother. It had been so long since he’d answered, I wondered if he’d forgotten about me. Or worse, if he wastryingto.
I called my dad instead.
When he picked up the phone, there was so much noise and laughter in the background, I had to pull the phone away from my ear. He laughed at something someone said before offering a gruffHellointo the receiver.
He sounded nothing like a man whose son was in hiding over a botched murder attempt. Nothing like a man who was so in debt he was about to lose everything his father and his father before him had worked for.
“Dad,” I said, voice weak.
“Caspian?” Another laugh. “I’m surprised to hear from you.”
“Surprised I’m alive?” I asked.
On the other end of the call, a door slammed and the background noise quieted down.
“I’ve always been surprised at the things you survive,” he said.
“Have you talked to my bro?—”
He interrupted me, “Don’t mention him.”
I swallowed hard, past a bit of discomfort that lodged itself at the top of my throat, making it painful.
“I’m going to finish the job, Dad,” I said, doubtful if I ever would. With Vince missing—taken by someone who truly meant him harm—there was no chance for us to entertain our little game of pretend anymore. No opportunity to smoke out the people who wished him harm and take them down at the knees.
Not like I could help with any of that. That would be him and Jake and Orion. Men who were far more capable of that kind of things than me. It was a wonder, I often thought, that Vince could quite literally choke the life out of another man, then turn and handle me with such tenderness. Maybe I was an escape for him, or maybe it was the other way around.