Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 46450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 232(@200wpm)___ 186(@250wpm)___ 155(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 232(@200wpm)___ 186(@250wpm)___ 155(@300wpm)
“Enough,” Felix snaps, his voice rising. There’s this compelling quality in it that makes the men stop.
Finally, the bouncers arrive, giving Felix a chance to step back. I’m going to walk over to him – the urge to be close to him is almost too difficult to accept – when somebody touches my arm.
It’s Lexi, gawking. “What happened?”
I fill her in as quickly as I can. I have to focus, so I don’t start talking about the chemistry Felix, and I have…or the chemistry I think we have since it’s difficult to know without anything to compare it to.
When I turn back, Felix is gone.
I try not to panic.
It’s silly… he’s a stranger at a party. There’s no reason to panic.
Or I could tell myself I’m worried because it means I may lose the job opportunity. But it’s not that. It’s Felix, what we shared. It was special, even if it was brief and even if it clearly meant nothing to him.
“Are you looking for somebody?” Lexi asks when she sees me looking around.
“Felix,” I say.
“Felix?” Lexi pauses, looking around, shaking her head. “Maybe he’s on the dance floor?”
“Maybe,” I murmur, but I can’t think about that.
Felix, on the dance floor with a woman, grinding their bodies together?
I don’t know her. She’s make-believe.
And yet the thought of Felix with anybody other than me makes me want to scream.
Where is he?
CHAPTER
FOUR
Felix
“Why her?” I snap back in my car, squeezing my cell phone so hard it’s a wonder it doesn’t simply shatter in my hand. “Give me one good reason why that woman has to die.”
That woman.
It’s the only way I can refer to her if I don’t want Mr. Red to sense the need hammering through me. After the fight, I almost ran from the bar, taking my chance to get away before the spell of Freya pulled me back in.
I could’ve stayed there all night, getting to know her, growing more and more obsessed.
In a different life, if I were a different man.
If it wasn’t my job to kill her.
“Red,” I growl. “I asked you a fucking question.”
“They didn’t give me a reason,” Mr. Red says, his voice trembling just a little, enough to tell me my swearing has taken him by surprise.
Which is a joke. He hired me to kill a woman.
“Who’s they?”
“You know I can’t answer that,” he says.
“So you expect me to murder a woman who is probably innocent?”
“How do you know she’s innocent?”
I spoke to her, stared into her young eyes…eyes belonging to a beautiful, sexy, enthusiastic woman who is way too damn innocent to be involved in this life.
There’s something else going on here, something truly twisted if Mr. Red thinks there’s even a chance I’d go through with this.
“I’m a good judge of character,” I say since I’m not going to answer him honestly.
“I’m sorry, Felix,” Mr. Red says. “I know this isn’t how we usually do things.”
“Are you comfortable with it? Killing a young woman and not knowing the reason. Would that sit well with you?”
“My job is to connect you with the client and to keep you both secret from each other. That’s all. It’s not my place to have an opinion.”
“I’m asking you,” I say gruffly.
He sighs. “No, but there’s nothing I can do now. I took the contract. If it’s not you, Felix, it’ll be another operator.”
“Don’t forget killing me,” I snarl. “That’s part of the bargain, too, isn’t it?”
“There’s no reason to go down this road.”
“Red, you must’ve known I was going to tell you to go fuck yourself. Not telling me who the target was was nothing more than a delaying tactic. You must’ve known that I’d tell you I won’t do it the second I laid eyes on her.”
Taking out the other targets was grim, but at least I knew they deserved it.
At least I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life with them.
“Your last job,” Mr. Red says. “And you’ll throw it all away.”
For her, for Freya.
Yes, I will.
“I’m not killing her. You’re not killing her. Nobody is. Be prepared to lose any operators you send after her.”
“I don’t want to go down this road with you, Felix….”
Mr. Red’s voice is trembling more now than in the entire two-plus years we’ve been working together.
I cringe at the thought. Working together. As though this has been a willing partnership the whole way.
He clearly knows I won’t go down easily.
“I don’t want this either,” I say, my voice getting fierce as I think of Freya, her easy laugh, the glint in her eyes that draws me to her, that makes me want to charge into the party now and claim her.
Grab her, kiss her, tell her she’s mine and will be from here on out.
“But you’ve left me no choice,” I go on. “There’s nothing you could say or do that would make me go through with this.”