Page 90 of The Hitman's Prince

“You were safe there.”

“I’m safe here,” I murmured. He pulled me back into his arms. “Safe with you.”

“You’re ridiculous. You could have been killed.”

“Youcould have been killed,” Daren interjected, offering one last glance to the dying man on the floor.

“Is he alive?” Jake asked.

“Barely.”

Conflict warred across Jake’s face, and I’d never seen a man pulled in as many directions as he was in that moment.

“Can you…” He looked between me and Daren, helplessly. “Can you give me a minute?”

“Yeah.” Daren took me out of Jake’s arms and led meback out of the office. “We have to deal with my dad anyway.”

I didn’t know what Jake wanted with his father, but I was able to watch him sink to his knees in the puddle of blood before Daren closed the door between us.

“He’s fine,” Daren promised. “You’re fine.”

“Orion,” I said next, not sure why it mattered so much because I didn’t think the man cared if I lived or died. His name caught like barbs in my throat.

“I’m here,” he answered me, as if I’d magicked him out of thin air and Vince was right beside him, and they were together, the two of them, and they were in one piece, and I didn’t know which of them I wanted to run to first.

Orion, I realized, had a gun in his hand, so I went to Vince instead, realizing their hands were joined and the force of my body against Vince’s brought Orion around my back, making me into an awkward kind of sandwich between them.

“What happened?” Vince asked, kissing the side of my head and pulling away so he could check me for any signs of damage.

Daren let out a weak laugh and scrubbed a hand down his face. “What happened is, I need to go see if my dad is alive. Jacob is in the office with his, and the two of you are here. All is…well, or something.”

He stepped around us, and Vince’s expression immediately went tight around the edges.

“Tell me everything,” he said.

“Maybe it can wait,” Orion suggested, and Vince shot him a glare that quickly softened. “Do you want to go check on the priest or…”

“Can you be trusted with Caspian if I do?”

“I explained myself to you already,” Orion said.

Vince crashed his mouth against Orion’s, then against mine, then he left us in the hallway and went after Jake.

“Where did you find him?” I asked before there was time for any awkwardness to settle over us.

“The church,” Orion answered. “He’s fine, you know. He put himself there.”

The confession hit me like a ton of bricks, and I braced my hand against the wall so I didn’t fall over on the spot.

“What do you mean? We had a plan.”

Orion exhaled through his mouth, his lower lip puffing out and displacing a mess of hair from his forehead.

“Vince rarely plays by rules or plans,” he said.

“But we had aplan,” I pressed.

“Not everyone is cut out for this life.”