Page 59 of To Curse A Knight

Guilt pricked the back of my neck that Aaron was exchanging one cage for another, but it was all we could do for the moment.

I made a vow to the universe I would get my Knight his life back. He would return to the company he’d built, the home he cherished, and the mantle he had been born and bred to lead.

We just had to kill Alvarez, destroy his parents, and go after Antonio, and then everything in our lives would go back to normal.

But most urgent—that call. Someone, somewhere, knew Sandra had been taken, and we had to find them before they found us. Or everything I’d worked so hard for to avenge Isabella’s death, the sacrifices I’ve made, the stains on my soul…

Would all have been for nothing.

What a feckin’ day.

Working for Marco Alvarez, even fake-working for him, was a soul-sucking lot of drivel. After successfully completing the app assignment, he’d sold me to Xandy Analo, and now he wanted to send me off on another special assignment to California for a few weeks.

Blondie’s Blackbird had almost completed the final steps to break into Marco’s most incriminating files—or at least, what we suspected were his most incriminating files—so I was just twiddling my thumbs waiting for the last shoe to drop to unleash chaos into little Marky Mark’s world.

I was working on the FBI angle, too. My software couldn’t unravel the e-signature, so I took a different approach. Something ludicrous, with a two percent chance of coming through, but it was worth a shot. I was trolling the FBI employee database; siphoning through all active agents in Sequoia and the ones who were on assignment within 200 miles of Carlisle. It was a complete goose chase—there wasn’t a clear connection that the FBI had requested Hillary as their target, and the likelihood the request came through someone local? Almost batshit crazy.

Been called worse, and it was a good excuse to use my latest creation. The software was so illegal I’d be sent to prison for a much harder sentence than I would for stealing Hillary’s naked chick, so I was taking a risk to use it. But I was a dog with a T-bone with loose ends, and this one was one puzzle I was determined to chew the marrow out of.

Especially since the whole nature of my assignment was giving me heartburn.

Younger me had loved the chase of a good con. Pulling the wool over arseholes’ eyes, taking something from right out under their noses—the game was a good bit of fun and I always walked away with a pile of loot for my troubles.

I wasn’t used to this odd crisis of conscience. After Hillary Lane’s monumental confession in the dungeon, I could admit I was feeling a little… hesitant about stealing her painting and never seeing her again.

Fat chance of that happening, really. She’d hunt me down to the ends of the earth; I was sure of it. Theft surely wasn’t up there on the same scale as raping and murdering your best friend right in front of you, but I’d just witnessed what lengths the woman would go to get revenge on the men who’d wronged her; I wasn’t eager to stick my neck out just so she could plunge a knife into it.

Still, I had a job to do—The Six had spared Ma for failing her con with the Cascade Falls bloke because of extenuating circumstances, but they wouldn’t spare me if I fuckedthis one up. Too much lay on the line—for the pot of cash at the end of the rainbow, and for the high-value client who’d hired us. Reputation was all one had in this business; I wouldn’t be getting a free pass on account of myfeelings.

Wasn’t sure what those were exactly. My dick knew it liked her, and my head enjoyed that snappy wit and sharp mind even more. She was fucking terrifying in an exhilarating sort of way, and now I knew she was capable of murder—well, I was a lot less afraid and a whole lot more intrigued by my Billionaire Blondie.

As long as I wasn’t the one she was murdering, of course. Stealing a painting might put me in that category, though…

My life was a hell of a lot easier without an angel on my shoulder. My pal, the Devil, seemed to have disappeared from his comfortable perch, leaving me with annoying chatter from the ‘good guy.’

And I was about to get more annoying chatter; Ma was insistent she needed to see me—Today.

I flashed the electronic card on the keypad and the elevator took me up to her suite. “Family chat”, she said, always code for ‘we need to talk.’

What about, I hadn’t a clue. My job was progressing. She was working an angle with some rich guy in town, since she no longer did any work for The Six, and we still had dinner once a week to check in. I hadn’t lived most of my life near my mother, so she was still a bit of a mystery.

When I walked into the apartment, she stood in front of the floor to ceiling windows, looking down, sipping on a glass of wine.

“Oy, Ma,” I said in greeting, and leaned in to kiss her cheek before settling myself on the couch. “I can’t stay long. I’ve got a few meetings today with the cover job. What’s the craic?”

She shifted her weight and slowly turned around to face me, a pinched look of distaste on her lips.

“How are you getting on with the Lane assignment?”

Okay, no preamble. I stared up at her, furrowing my brows. “Good, Ma. You know this. I’ve found the painting and—”

Her eyes—blue, not green like mine—lit up, and I didn’t miss the greedy glint in them.

“You found it!” she screeched. A drop of wine sloshed out of the goblet and onto my cheek, she was so giddy. “Locke, when are you taking it?”

I shrugged a disinterested shoulder, but I was, in fact, very interested in the level of interest this woman was giving off.

“Dunno. The time isn’t right yet. I don’t have my exit plan in place, and I’m going to need—”

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