“Yeah?”
“He’s going to look at which neighborhoods in the city are best for it. Watch him buy it for us,” I laughed.
“You enjoy this, don’t you?” she asked, and I swallowed hard.
“I do. I’m really good at it,” I replied. Her eyes searched mine for something. I wondered what she was looking for. Did she buy my story? Did she know Dean had found me once again?
Did she realize I’d been fucked in Daddy’s bed all evening?
I smiled and cocked my head to the side. I needed to distract her from whatever she was thinking about right now.
“What did you do while I was away getting to know our mark?”
“I was checking in with a few various projects of mine,” she responded.
“Are those projects secret?”
“Not really… Maybe some of them,” she answered thoughtfully. Wherever her mind was, it was far away.
I sat down at the table with her, having to do everything in the world to hide the wince that threatened to show all over my face once I pressed my sore bottom against the seat of the chair. She had a laptop open in front of her. I put my elbows on the table and my chin in my palm, watching her as she typed away at something on her screen.
“Is there one you can tell me about? I’d like to understand more about what you do, rather than just the assassination stories I’ve heard about for so long,” I pressed.
She sat back and her eyes searched mine.
“You really want to know?”
“I do. The better we know each other, the easier it will be to take down our mark. For better or for worse, we’re partners now.”
Her expression softened.
So, she was human.
I was even more relieved to know that Dean wasn’t going to kill her.
“I don’t like killing people, Willow. I do it because I have to.”
I stared at her for some time before I finally figured it out.
“The Father holds something over you too, doesn’t he?”
She was silent for a long moment. I’d hit the nail on the head.
“He’s owned me for all my life,” I began. “From the day I was left on his doorstep, he’s owned every facet of everything I’ve ever done, from my schooling, to my job, to all the things in between. I have no parents. No siblings.”
I gave her a bit of vulnerability and her eyes searched mine. In that moment, I looked at her not as my partner or someone to fear. She became a mark to me just like all the rest.
“I have no one, which makes me ideal for the work that I do.”
She turned away, but I’d caught something else in her expression at that moment.
Regret.
“What is it?” I urged gently.
“He has my daughter,” she whispered.
“I’m so sorry,” I breathed. “How old is she?”
“Fourteen. If I don’t do as I’m told, he has threatened with selling her at his brothel. He’s also warned that he’s not above hurting her if I don’t listen to him.”
“He’s good at holding things over people’s heads and making them do what he wants,” I said.
“Yeah…”
“Have you ever tried to take her away from him?”
“How? You know as well as I do that he’ll find someone to punish me for that kind of insubordination. As long as the Father exists, so will the organization. We can never be free from that,” she muttered, clearly disheartened.
“You did once, didn’t you?” I pushed.
Her gaze flashed to mine and she grasped at her collar, pulling it aside and revealing a wicked scar beneath.
“This is one of the many marks he left behind with his knife that day. He was so displeased with me that he tortured me himself,” she spat. “He told me that if there was a next time, the blade would cut into my daughter and he’d make me watch the whole thing.”
“I didn’t know,” I whispered, horrified. For a moment, I’d considered pulling her into the scheme of what Dean and I had planned, but I knew that was no longer an option. There was no fighting a mother’s love like that. She’d do anything to keep her daughter alive and that would mean that her loyalty would always be with her and never with us.
I dropped the subject. It was clearly painful for her and I didn’t want to cause her any more stress about it than she already put on herself.
“It’s okay,” she answered, and I chewed my lip. I pushed my way over to the minibar and grabbed a few small bottles of champagne.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Running up the Father’s tab,” I answered plainly.
She chuckled.
“Pour me one too,” she added.
“I’d already planned on it,” I smirked. I popped open two of them and very carefully poured them into the fancy flutes on the counter. When I was done, I returned to the table and handed one to her. I set mine down and slid a chair closer to her, grinning as I did so.
“I kind of hate him, you know,” I began.
I was going to push her, but not in a way that she’d recognize. I’d trained all my life to read people and I was going to use every last skill right now to figure out what I needed to know from her.
She laughed with genuine amusement.
“Yeah. He’s kind of a dick, isn’t he?”
“For sure. You know, I’ve never had anyone I could talk to about him before, and it’s kind of nice,” I began. I looked down at the table, playing with my hands and hesitantly looking in her direction. “I’ve never had a confidant before.”
She looked at me suspiciously.
“Don’t look at me like that. I’m telling you the truth,” I
