Page 10 of You Only Love Twice
"You think he's abutler?" Incredible. "That's why you're down at the bottom of the list. You'd be dead before you even noticed where the threat was coming from."
"Charlie's above me!" he protested.
"Charlie's had the benefit of learning how to fight under the Devil of Whitechapel," she said with a shrug. "I've seen him with a cutthroat razor. And he's faster than you. Besides, when you fight, you fight to put a man down. You're a pugilist at heart. Not a killer."
"Hence," Malloryn said with no small amount of amusement as she decimated them, "why Gemma is at the top ofmylist. If, for some godforsaken reason, the Company of Rogues start fighting among themselves, my money's on Gemma taking you all down."
The three of them turned to look at her.
She smiled sweetly and merely sipped her flask.
"So who wins between you and Malloryn?" Byrnes’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "Hypothetically?"
"Malloryn."
"Gemma."
They spoke at the same time, and then looked at each other.
"You're right," Malloryn said to Kincaid. "I wiped the floor with both you and Charlie last month. Who do you think taught me to fight?" He gestured toward her in an extravagant hand wave. "Gemma has skills none of you can ever dream of owning. Myself included."
Which was a polite way of saying she'd spent most of her formative years training to be an assassin.
A small knot formed deep inside her. "And yet, you're my equal now in the ring."
"Tell me you haven't thought about how to take me down, if such a thing was required," he said dryly.
Have a plan to kill everyone in the room.It was the first thing Lord Balfour's Falcons had taught her as a little girl. She shrugged uneasily. Hard to break small habits. "You don't think I'm actually going to tell you how I'd go about it?"
Malloryn shared a small smile with her. "Worth a shot."
"And you don't think I presume you haven't worked out how to take me down in return? If the pair of us went to war, you win. When it comes to pulling the trigger on you, I hesitate. You don't."
Trained as an assassin or not.
She'd never truly had the gift for killing.
Especially not friends.
"I seem to recall a different story."
"Five years ago," she said pointedly, knowing he was stirring up the past to put her on edge. Malloryn simply couldn't help playing games; but she could play them too. "You're a far more ruthless man than you ever were, Auvry. Now? I think you'd pull that trigger now."
Malloryn looked vaguely uncomfortable.
"What happened five years ago?" Charlie asked.
Gemma screwed the lid back on her flask and sucked in a small breath as she steadied her sudden nerves.Russia happened. "Malloryn didn't pull the trigger. He let me live."
And then he saved my life.
"You two were on opposing sides?"
Every face in the room suddenly sharpened at Charlie's question.
"No." Her voice didn't so much as quaver as she looked up and met the duke's eyes. "I was working for Malloryn, I just wasn't following orders. I decided to protect a target he wanted dead."
"An enemy agent who was about to fracture my plans to tear down an entire alliance."
