Page 13 of At Your Mercy
They didn’t sit, and I knew better than to expect them actually to listen to me.
The rest of my team kept their eyes down, their keystrokes sounding too loud, their movements too forced. No one wanted to catch their gaze.
I couldn’t blame them.
“Enough,” I said, steel under the word. My gaze locked with Hayes’s first, then Hudson’s. “Were you two listening through the door or something like little fucking gremlins? Why are you even here? You haven’t graced us with your presence in person for weeks.”
Hayes smiled, seemingly ignoring the insult. “It’s fun to scare your little worker bees.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose and exhaled. “They’re not here to be your playthings. They work for me. Same as you.”
“Not the same,” Hudson said smoothly, circling the edge of my desk. “They tap keys. We kill.”
“And if they don’t tap keys, you don’t get your targets,” I shot back. My tone snapped like a whip. Both men stilled for a beat, just long enough for me to see it—that flicker of recognition that my authority was absolute, at least for now.
I tapped the broker’s file with two fingers, pushing it across the desk toward them. “If you’re so eager to be useful, congratulations. He’s yours.”
Hayes’s grin spread slowly and cruelly, but Hudson tilted his head, frowning at the file. “Hold up. Observation only? Did we do something to make you mad?”
“Observation only,” I repeated, rolling my eyes. “You step outside those orders, you’ll answer to me. And no, although yourexistence never fails to annoy me, I just don’t have anything requiring an immediate dispatch right now.”
“Boring,” Hayes muttered, dragging a chair half a foot across the concrete. “But fine. If dear old Uncle insists.”
Hudson leaned on the back of my chair, far too close, speaking low so only I heard: “You’ll let us off the leash soon, won’t you? We need one we can really play with.”
My jaw tightened. “Go. Get the groundwork laid. I want updates in forty-eight hours, and then we’ll see. But I highly doubt he won’t end up in your basement, so just be patient.”
Hayes smiled brightly at that, while Hudson had the look of a cat that got the canary.Freaks. I’d raised insufferable goddamn freaks.
They finally moved, striding out of the office with all the restless energy of hungry predators. The room seemed to exhale with their absence, shoulders lowering, breaths releasing.
I stayed still, fingers drumming against the desk.
Raising them had been like holding fire in my bare hands—necessary, consuming, and impossible to let go of without burning everything down around us. My eldest nephew Greyson had thought that killing their parents would save them, and it did, but then they ended up in the hands of a young bachelor who never wanted children and killed people for a living.
A truly excellent environment for childhood development.
My goal for the past however many years since they’d been dropped on my doorstep like murderous abandoned kittens was solely to keep them out of prison.
Somehow, I was still going strong on that goal.
The doors hadn’t even clicked shut before Lena muttered under her breath, “Christ, they give me the creeps.”
Several heads lifted just enough to catch my expression. I didn’t bother glaring—one look was enough. Lena paled andredirected her attention to the notes in her hand, though her jaw worked like she wanted to chew the words back in.
“Keep your opinions to yourself, Ms. Ford,” I said, voice calm but cold. The scrape of keyboards picked up again, jittery and uneven.
Ichabod appeared at my desk a moment later, his long umber fingers worrying the strap of his messenger bag. He always looked like a man perpetually caught between sleep and a panic attack. “Boss,” he said quietly, “are you sure about letting them handle the observation? You usually have Falcon or Yaz do this part.”
I leaned back in my chair, folding my arms across my chest. “They’ll be fine. They just need to map the broker’s habits, and if anything goes sideways, I’ll pull them out.”
Ichabod’s gaze flicked toward the door where the twins had exited, then back to me. His mouth pressed into a thin line, but he didn’t argue. Not out loud.
“They’re good at what they do,” I added, sharper than I intended. “Don’t mistake your discomfort for incompetence on their part.”
Lena risked another glance up. “With all due respect, sir… they like the job too much.”
I let the silence stretch. The kind that prickled on the skin and made people sweat. It was the only way to remind them that in this room, my word was final.
