Page 138 of The Kingpin's Call Girl

“Too bad you’re not a good cop.”

He laughs. “True enough, but I’ll be an amazing kyre. But I know what you’re thinking. That that part of the plan is pretty weak. Are you really that good of a piece of ass? Will he come for you? Or will he look at the fingers I send and toss them on his way to hashtag beach life? We’ll see about that.”

“Yeah, we’ll see,” I say.

I have this strange sense right then that’s hard to describe. It’s something good, like the feeling of peace and hope coming over me.

Like Luka might be near.

Wishful thinking, no doubt. After all, Luka has the DNA hairtest to deal with, which is a matter of life and death. My last text was just that we needed to talk.

Still, I have the uncanny feeling that he’s near.

Bender rakes his gaze over my body. “Maybe I’ll even take a taste for myself before I kill you. Or we can have some hot sister action in exchange for a merciful end.” He draws near. “Maybe we do a twist on Scheherazade where you two can cook up increasingly exciting thrills for me in exchange for extra days.”

“Gross.” Mary goes back and sits against the wall.

“Personally, I’ll go with death,” I say.

He snorts and checks his phone once more.

Just then, I catch movement on the basement stairway—one black shoe silently alighting on the edge of a step and then the next.

He came.

My pulse races in my ears.

I hop up and go right up to the bars, determined to distract Bender. “Can I tell you again that you absolutely don’t look like your supposed father? I’ve seen pictures of the patriarch, and it’s like night and day with you two.”

“Are you on crack?” Bender says. “I look exactly like him.”

“I know what I see.”

“Have you even seen a picture of my father when he was young? There’s no question we’re related. And if you really think about it, it’s obvious that the prophecy was about me, being that Luka was never truly a son. I’m the true son who will kill the king and ascend to the throne.”

Bender’s back on his phone, sauntering toward me. He’s really invested in showing the world he’s a Zogaj.

Luka creeps down. I can see enough of him now to see his gun.

“Thinking about side-by-side images of you and Luka’s father reminds me of those memes where people supposedly look like their dogs, except one is human and the other is an actual dog, and nobody in their right mind would think they were related.”

Bender glares at me and looks back down. He’s near enough now that I can see an alert flash up on his phone.

He furrows his brow.

“That’s how much you don’t look like that old geezer—not even the same?—”

He moves like lightning, grabbing my hair through the bars. A gun barrel presses into my cheek.

“Drop it or she dies,” Bender says.

Chapter Forty-Eight

LUKA

Edie is in a fucking cage with a gun in her face. My worst nightmare.

Her eyes rivet to mine. I love this woman. I fucking love her. And this guy’s dead.