Page 86 of The Kingpin's Call Girl

“Friday late shift. Let’s do it!” Her eyes shine. She loves eighties rom-com movie nights. “Meanwhile...” She goes back to her studies.

So we’ll have a rom-com movie night... unless Bender makes me go to the restaurant.

I pull out my iPad. Getting started on schoolwork right away after class is my secret to success, and hopefully, it’s the secret to getting my mind off the vortex of danger that is my life right now.

Odetta opens a bag of corn nuts and positions them under a folder. You’re not supposed to eat or drink in here, but the powers that be look the other way if you don’t make a mess.

“Barbecue,” she whispers.

Gratefully, I take one.

Chapter Thirty-Two

LUKA

Orton and I lurk beneath some scaffolding while we wait for Killian, who should be returning from his frozen yogurt run any minute.

“I get that he’s retired, but vary your fucking schedule,” Orton says.

“No shit.”

I should be hungry for this kill. When I took down my brother, I was vibrating with energy and bloodlust. The catharsis was off the charts.

And this man is as responsible for Sara’s death as my brother was.

But now it’s like I can’t get it up, metaphorically. I touch my St. Michael medallion.

Focus.

“There he is,” Orton says.

I follow his gaze to Killian Arthur Shaw, a lanky fifty-something walking toward his building. He’s wearing wire-rim glasses and a Yankees cap, but I’d know him anywhere.

We watch in silence as he heads inside.

I thought I was avenging Sara’s death all those years ago when Ikilled the schoolmasters. That’s why the kills felt amazing; I wasn’t bullshitting Edie about that.

But it was my fucking brother and his hired Irish hitters. Seven years older than me, rich as a king, next in line to rule the Ghost Hound Clan, and he still had to go after what was mine.

Death was too good for him.

And now this one will pay, too.

I nod to Orton, who moves to cover the fire escape. I cross the street and use the key my soldiers acquired. Positioning myself at the L-shaped corner near his door, I listen for the elevator. The whine of the motor. The ding. Footfalls on the carpet. A key sliding into a lock.

I fly around the corner and push him into his place, knife at his throat. He tries to fight. I flip him around, twisting his arm and smashing his chin against the wall. The dead look in his eyes tells me he knows he’s done.

“Twenty years ago, you and Declan O’Malley killed a girl in Tucumayo, but you messed her up before you killed her.”

“Those were the orders,” he pleads.

“And now my blade’s making the orders.”

I try to summon the rage by thinking of Sara’s face, but the image that flashes is Edie in Vegas, men’s eyes following her, men’s hands reaching for her. The thought of another man’s hands on her makes something primal surface inside me—something I can’t control. She’s mine. I’ll kill any man who tries to take what was mine. I end him with one brutal slice.

He drops, clawing at his throat.

Orton comes in and lights his match, letting it burn down, before dropping it in a glass of water on the guy’s bureau.

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