Page 154 of Prey

I stood up, brushed the dirt off my jeans, and turned around to return to my car when I froze.

A familiar figure stood there, watching me. I didn’t know how long he had been standing there.

Another memory niggled at my brain.

“W-What are you doing here?”

28

ROMAN

I came hometo an empty apartment.

Not surprising, since Ryleigh texted this morning saying she was going to see her mom. But I had been feeling restless since I read her text, and I didn’t know why that was.

I ran a hand up and down my beard, taking in the emptiness of the apartment without her in it.

I had lived by myself since I was twenty.

I should be used to the silence by now, and for a while, I had been.

I had fucking thrived in the silence, especially whenever it felt like the world was getting too loud, but now, this silence was… deafening.

Ryleigh brought life to the place, and it just didn’t feel right that I was here and she wasn’t.

It had felt like this when she spent the week at her parent’s house after the funeral, and I still didn’t know what to do with myself or all the space.

I fucking hated it then, and even though I knew she would be back soon, I fucking hated it now.

My phone rang inside my pocket, and I pulled it out to see Dominic’s name flashing on the screen.

I had left early when I realized my mind wasn’t focused on the work, but perhaps I should have stayed a little while longer.

I picked up and held the phone against my ear, hoping he would have something for me to do.

“Hey.”

There was a moment of silence. Then Dominic said, “I just got an interesting phone call from Julian.”

“What did he want?” I asked, sitting down as I took note of the seriousness in his tone.

Julian Levine was one of our best and oldest clients. He was part of a group known as the Four Horsemen. Him and three other men resided in Chicago, and they headed and managed FHM Capital, a commercial banking business that was only getting bigger and more powerful with each year that passed.

He usually trusted the King’s Men to do our job and rarely contacted us unless it was absolutely necessary.

He wouldn’t want anything to taint his image, not when he was publicly known as nothing more than a brilliant,upstandingbusinessman.

People didn’t know just how dirty his hands were.

“He wants to know if he should be worried about the Mansen Brotherhood encroaching on the King’s Men’s territory and how it might affect his business.”

“Why would he think that? We cut off the head. The Brotherhood is dead.”

“Did we?” Dominic asked in a low voice. “Did we cut off the head? Or did we just mark up the face and never check to make sure it was dead?”

I shook my head. “Stephen and Samuel Mansen are dead. I fucking shot the fucker at point-blank, and unless they’re Jesus fucking Christ, they wouldn’t be able to come back from that.”

“But what if they’re not the head?”

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