Page 108 of Passion and Payback

“There’s enough blood all over the place without you adding it to my comforter and mattress,” I told him, taking the warm, wet rag he handed me and trying to clean him off as best as I could. “Sorry.”

“For what?”

“Pulling you into all this. For getting you hurt.”

“I signed up for it. I knew it could go badly. And as far as things going bad, this is actually a fairly decent ending.”

“It’s not over yet.”

“I know.”

I grew quiet as I steadily tried to clean his face and arms. He had washed the worst of it off, but his wounds were still adding to the mess. I was able to get some of them bandaged, but themark on his face and the black eye were going to take time to heal. He’d probably have to look at whatever I did to make sure the job was done, but it was enough for me to find my center again.

Here was a man who’d had my back the entire time we’d known one another, and he’d done it again. I didn’t know how or when, but he’d taken a beating before I’d woken up, and despite that, he’d leaped into action the moment he had the chance. He’d taken down two armed men with only a knife and had been rushing to my defense despite probably being in great pain and worn down.

I had always known I was blessed to have Kai in my life, and for all the horrors that happened tonight and still awaited us, I had him. This wonderful man who sometimes looked so fierce and angry but would leap to my defense and let me use him as a teddy bear at night. As good as finally ending the killing was nothing compared to loving him and knowing I was loved in return.

“He’s gone,” Kai said, interrupting my thoughts. “I need to make a call.”

“What?” I asked, staring at Callum and realizing Kai hadn’t been lying. For several minutes, I had been so distracted with taking care of Kai I had forgotten to watch Callum. His head lolled on his shoulder, hands in his lap, and sightless eyes locked onto the floor. Disappointment and frustration shot through me as I tried to understand. “What call?”

“Just...don’t do anything, okay? I need to make a call,” Kai said, leaning forward to kiss my forehead. “Sit tight and trust me.”

“I’ve always trusted you,” I said with a smile as he left the room.

I stared at Callum’s body, and for a moment, I was furious. I had been so distracted I’d missed his last moments, missedseeing whether he had been the coward his friends had been or if he had been a ball of spite and hatred until the end. That moment had been taken from me, and he had passed without a word and without me getting to have my one last goodbye.

And then...I remembered seeing the gentle way Kai had tried not to wince when I cleaned his wounds a little rougher than I intended, the way his hand had rested on my knee, probably thinking I wasn’t doing my first aid correctly but letting me do it anyway. I remembered the gentle kiss he’d given my hand when I tried to clean his bruised neck and the way I’d chuckled softly at the gentle smile his broken lips wanted to give me.

The last thing in this world Callum had seen hadn’t been my smirking face but something I would have previously said he wasn’t good enough to see. Yes, he had witnessed an intimate, vulnerable moment between Kai and me, and vulnerability was something I swore I would never let Callum see from me again. The very idea had been horrific, and I’d wanted him to see me in complete control and with power over him.

Instead, he saw something he would never have in his life, a loving, compassionate relationship. And he had seen me, not lording over him, but having a gentle moment with the man I love, able to be close to someone again and proving my life had not ended the day he and his friends had stolen so much from me. I had gotten back so much of what they had taken, and that couldn’t have been more obvious to him as he slipped from this life and into the pits of hell.

It seemed better that way.

KAI

The last time I felt this tired, I’d just come off a mission that had seen me trying to survive a week of constant walking, climbing, and fighting. Even returning to the extraction point made me want to drop on the spot and let the desert take me. If it weren’t for the fact that I had been responsible for the surviving members of the squad, where they needed me to keep pushing them to get back home, I probably would have.

Again, I needed to keep pushing forward for the sake of someone other than myself. Hunter had done his part, but mine was only just reaching its last leg. The entire night had been an absolute disaster. I’d known, and though he hadn’t said it, I suspected Hunter had also known that going after Callum would be the hardest thing we did and probably the messiest.

Of course, I hadn’t considered the possibility that we would be attacked while we were supposed to be safe, which was downright stupid on my part. I was supposed to be the one who had experience dealing with the harshest and most ugly parts of people. Yet I had let myself get complacent and comfortable and ignored a simple tactic that worked well. Waituntil your opponent is comfortable and at their most vulnerable, somewhere they think they’re safe, and strike them there.

Now, we had a mess on our hands. Sure, Callum was done, slumped over in our bedroom, his two mercenaries a bloody mess in the hallway. Yet it hadn’t come without cost, and I wasn’t just counting the ribs I was sure were either broken or cracked. Now we had a Senator’s son dead in our apartment, two other dead men, and a woman who?—

No, I couldn’t think about watching them drag her into the room and killing her in front of me to prove they weren’t above making other people suffer for what we’d done. The way her eyes flashed to me desperately, wide and wet, begging me to do anything while I struggled against the men holding me. Or the horror on her face when Callum used one of the mercenary’s knives to open her throat.

No, that was for later.

Now was for finding the phone I’d dropped when they got the drop on me. I walked past the bodies in the hallway and staunchly refused to look at Brooke’s body in the living room. What mattered was dealing with immediate threats to the living. I could mourn and regret the dead later.

I found the phone on the floor, but it seemed like someone had stamped on it while struggling to subdue me. If it hadn’t been for the taser, they probably wouldn’t have been so effective at getting me, even though I was outnumbered and taken by surprise. The phone wasn’t a problem; the SD card was still intact. I went to the closet, grabbed one of the two burner phones I’d bought just in case, slid the card into the slot, and powered it on.

I had already gone through the setup process after buying them, so all that was left was to import my contacts. Scrolling down the list, I found the number I was looking for and hit dial,praying that wherever he was, Stitch would answer...and be able to help.

“Alpha,” came his cool greeting. Everyone considered him cold and unfeeling, which I suppose, in many ways, he was. Then again, if someone was getting you information, a sharp focus and cold demeanor were pretty helpful. But the upside was, if you spent enough time around him, you learned to read the subtleties of his tone, and that was warm for him.

“I told you not to call me that,” I said with a sigh. “Even more now people use that word to prop their egos up.”

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