Page 19 of The Mafia Assassin's Redemption-

She still died.

Harry’s family, too.

I could have stopped the brutal assault on her mother. I might have been able to intercept the shooter who took her father’s life. If I’d have just done what I was contracted to do, he might be here. Her mother, too.

I don’t know for sure, but I could have given them a chance to survive.

I held their lives in my hands, and I chose their deaths to stop that Reaper coming for Shiv.

It took her anyway.

And finding Harry afterward had been nothing more than a fucking fluke, a living light to highlight my failures. I bring a hand to the back of my neck and squeeze the stress knot lodged at the base.

“What the fuck is going on, Tor?” Cal hisses. “She knows you?”

I ignore him. The moment is between me and the girl. Well, she’s a woman now. Harry, Harriet, Hazel to those who know her, a tiny group of names I could count on one hand.

The air beats and throbs with awareness.

“Yeah, me. And this is how it’s gotta be.”

Her eyes narrow, nostrils flare, and the mousy aura she’s cultivated crumbles faster than a stale cookie. That’s when I get a glimpse of the warrior within, the spark of the ten-year-old girl I remember.

“I’d rather try my chances,” she snarls through clenched teeth.

“Hazel, please,” her uncle says. “I know you’re independent, but?—”

“This has nothing to do with independence. I’ll take my chances with the church. This… monster isn’t touching me.”

She turns and races off, leaving me to stare after her.

Harry needs to be brought to fucking heel. My reaction’s instantaneous, visceral.

And completely uncalled for.

No one but she and I know the truth. Of who and what I am. A failure. She only knows I cost the two lives most precious to her, not why I was there and what I was tasked to do.

I ignore Cal and Anthony and stalk after her. I findher in the hallway and push her against the wall. A small hiss of air slips from her lips as I press against her.

Harriet raises her head, eyes glaring, electricity crackling in the air around us.

“What?” she says. “Are you here to finish the job you started years ago?”

I swallow hard, the buzz between us growing. Her hate is hot like a furnace against my flesh. “If I’d have told you I came to save you, would you have believed me?”

“Not in a million fucking years. I know the truth. You just didn’t get to finish the job.”

“And you think that’s what I’m doing now?”

Color streaks along her cheeks and she trembles from hate more than fear. She waits, biding her time so she can run.

“No,” she says, “I don’t. I think my family was a for-hire assassination. I heard Da say a hired gun would be coming to the house. But it was about him, not my mother, not me. Not that you cared. And my mother got away.”

The pain of her words slashes me. She wants to believe that but deep down, I know she’s lying to herself. The flicker of doubt in her gaze says it, too, so I just drop it.

Harry doesn’t need the truth. She needs to understand her current reality. And it ain’t good. “This isn’t about the past.”

“Just because you aren’t after me doesn’t make us good. It doesn’t make me want to walk down the aisle to marry you.”