Page 87 of The Hitman's Prince

I heard Daren’s voice in my head, prepubescent and cracking on the high notes as he jumped out from the hallway that led to my father’s office.

“Blam, blam, blam!” He’d shouted pretend gunshots at me and I pretended to be wounded, sliding down the wall until my ass hit the floor. Our dads had been holed up in the office for hours, and we’d never been allowed inside. Business, they’d said, and that had been enough, but even at that age, we knew what business meant. We got yelled at for being too loud, then we’d run off down the hallway and climbed out the window of my second story bedroom and disappeared into the woods for hours.

I heard muffled voices coming from down the hall, the office door cracked open, and I realized two things. One, I should have stopped this sooner, and two, my father was feeling bold. That door had been closed tight more hours of my life than it had ever been open. If it was open now, and he was in there talking business withanyone, that meant he wasn’t afraid of retribution. He wasn’t afraid of the Norths or the Angelinis anymore, and that was dangerous for all of us.

I looked down at the gun, one he’d taught me to use only months after Daren and I had played pretend the last time in this very hallway, praying like the priest they’d wanted me to masquerade as that I wouldn’t have to use it on him.

I made it the rest of the way down the hall to the door, the voice loud and clear through the opening.

“You said he was reliable,” my uncle, Daren’s father, said.

“I had no reason to believe otherwise,” my father countered.

“What happened?”

“Angelini’s influence goes deeper than we knew,” he said.

In other circumstances, I would have let my brain make the sex joke, but all things considered, the levity felt ill-timed.

“Vanessa said there was an order on him.”

“It’s complicated,” my father explained, undoubtedly glossing over the situation with Caspian. I didn’t know how much he knew about that, but the less the better. “Did you know Andersen had floated the idea of a marriage?”

My uncle laughed heartily at that one, and I could picture him in the chair opposite my father’s desk, head thrown back. “To whom exactly?”

“He’d thought his son Caspian to Vince,” my father said.

“How is that a fair match?”

“It’s not. That’s why it didn’t happen.”

“And now Vanessa’s out to off the both of them?” my uncle asked.

An affirmative sound, the clink of the glass stopper of a whiskey decanter being pulled out, the quiet glug of the liquor being poured.

“To patience,” he said. Glasses clinked. “Making most of our problems disappear.”

They drank, I imagined, and then my uncle said, “But your son is still a problem.”

“Just give me time,” my father said.

Chairs scuffed against the wood floor and I didn’t need to see into the office to know they were getting up. I was too close to the door to hide if one of them came out, so as quiet as I could, I backpedaled myself to the first door, which happened to be the hall closet. I twisted the knob and slipped inside, barely getting the mechanism latched closed when my uncle’s voice grew louder, drifting down the hallway as he said goodbye.

“You don’t have forever about him,” my uncle said, “just like I don’t have forever about Daren.”

“I know, Presley.”

Footsteps down the hall and down the stairs, and then silence. I waited five minutes just to be sure, then let myself out of the closet and snuck back down to the still open door to my father’s office.

“Come in, Jacob,” he said when I reached for the knob. “How much did you hear?”

“What are you talking about?”

He studied me silently, hand slowly twisting a crystal tumbler full of whiskey in a circle on his desk.

“Nothing.” He cleared his throat, stare flickering to the gun in my hand. “Is that the Glock I got you for your birthday?”

“When I turned thirteen,” I answered.