Cold, brittle air seared her lungs as indecision chased Natalia up the sidewalk. Usually, running exhausted her body and cleared her head. Decisions and risks and consequences that felt insurmountable in mile one began to simplify at mile five, make sense at mile eight, and become manageable at mile ten. But as her parents’ home came into view and twelve miles echoed through her legs, Natalia admitted defeat.
She had a choice to make, one that even a few weeks ago would have been simple, if not regrettable.
Ethan Sullivan had lied.
Experience and the weight of her uncle’s expectations marked him for death.
She’d certainly considered it when she’d discovered his real name earlier that afternoon. Contemplated the best way to do it—quick, unexpected, merciful. A fast knife and fatal plunge. He’d have been dead before he’d closed the door behind him.
It was what her uncle had demanded of her, and she knew the cost of defiance.
But as she’d stared down at the picture she’d found, as she’d tasted his name on her tongue, as she’d wondered about the man she’d read about—the ace student, the champion crew member, the double major in finance and accounting, the man who’d pledged a fraternity, then given it up for charity work—she’d hesitated.
Nothing about Ethan felt vile. Dangerous, yes. But not evil. Determined but not ruthless. The truth was, for reasons Natalia still didn’t fully understand, she didn’t want to hurt Ethan Somerton.
And she didn’t believe he wanted to hurt her, either.
Life would have been so much simpler if he’d turned out to be everything he portrayed. Vain. Greedy. Willing to get his hands dirty for a payday. She wouldn’t give a shit about what happened to that man.
But this one . . .
Desperation and hope—an insidious weed she should have rooted out the moment it sprouted—stayed her hand.
For now.
She had time—a little, at least. She’d been careful. Discreet. It had taken less than twenty-four hours and a quick trip to Philadelphia to discover what Ethan had lied about but not why. Not yet. And though the reasons had never mattered to her before, today they did.
Because maybe, just maybe, he could help her.
Maybe there was a way out.
Maybe this could all finally end.
She turned up the drive, slowing to a walk and struggling to catch her breath, and scowled against the memory of the way Ethan had teased her. Pushed back against the way his smile had struck her. Ignored the way his gaze, watchful and alert and assessing, had felt on her skin.
She liked him, she realized as she rounded the back of the house. Or could, given the time.
But did that make him more or less dangerous? Her gut had been right about so much, but this . . . this was something else entirely.
Wishful thinking, maybe.
Dangerous, definitely.
And for now, a problem with no immediate solution.
She climbed the back porch steps, her fingers fishing for the key she’d tucked into an interior pocket. Why hadn’t the floodlight sensed her? The hair on the back of her neck stood straight up in warning, even as she took a step back, then drew up short when gravity threatened to topple her off the concrete stairs she’d just ascended.
“Damasiado lento.” The voice struck, viper fast, with large, bruising hands in place of fangs.
Shit. She’d lost focus, let herself be trapped in thoughts of problems she couldn’t solve, forgotten where she was, and blinded herself to the danger around her.
Too slow, indeed.
But the killing blow didn’t come. A knife didn’t sever her carotid, her brachial, her femoral—all arteries this man could slice with little effort and no care.
No, Natalia thought as rough hands jerked her down the steps and spun her toward the wall, this wasn’t about death. This was a test. A tease. A reminder that the student had not surpassed the teacher.
She prayed she never did.
“Carlos,” she said as he pushed her back against the wall, the force of the blow stealing her breath in a rush. There’d be a knot on the back of her skull—she hadn’t been able to brace for the whiplash—but she’d live. Today, anyway.
“Tú recuerdas?” he said, his scarred vocal cords—the product of a hit gone wrong—a tangled rasp of hissed syllables.
Of course she remembered. There were few who heard Carlos’s voice and lived to speak of it. For years after the bullet that had nearly taken his life—and permanently marred his voice—Carlos had held to silence. Refusing to speak or give voice to the only failure he carried. But with time, what had begun as shame had morphed into legend. Even now, people whispered stories of the man with no voice. The demon who came in the dark to slit their throats. The devil who, according to some, whispered goodbye in the second before he struck.
Lies, of course, though Natalia suspected Carlos encouraged them. After all, sicarios were nameless, faceless vermin. One died and another rose to take his place.
Replaceable. Forgettable. Generic.
Carlos had taught her as much. Beat it into her until it became a hardened truth that protected her. Everyone was replaceable.
But there were exceptions. Men, and even the rare woman, who lasted decades where others rose and fell in the span of months. Sicarios dealt in death and, in the end, accepted it as their due.
But sometimes, the man didn’t die—and the legend was born.
And legends lived forever.
“Did you miss me?” he asked, digging his fingers into her throat, threatening to cut off her air.
“No.”
He laughed, a hissing rasp of air that sounded like the warning rattle on her mother’s old pressure cooker. His grip tightened and black spots danced before her eyes even as he drew the fingers of his free hand along the curve of her cheek.
Control and condescension—tools he’d used often and to his advantage. But tools he’d used to teach her fearless resolve and deadly skill.
With time and the heavy weight of failure, he’d made her relentless.
And she had not forgotten.
She let her eyelids flutter, drew a grasping breath of air that felt like sucking oxygen from a straw, then scrabbled uselessly at the hand he held to her throat . . . and waited for the laugh. He’d never learned to hide his amusement at her failures, at her repetitive attempts, at her ability to pull herself to her feet.
And he didn’t disappoint her now.
The moment he chuckled, his hand twitched—and she struck. Hard.
Gripping his wrist, she drove her closed fist straight for his throat—he’d gone for her weakness, exploited a terrible memory; she could do the same.
Carlos stumbled back, his hand at his throat but a smile on his face. He nodded. “Bueno.” Then held up his hand, palm out, when she took two determined steps forward. “Esta bien. Esta bien.”
“What are you doing here?” Natalia snarled but let her feet take root and keep her from carrying forward into a fight that was ill-advised at best and potentially deadly at worst. Mentor or not, Carlos would weather only so many blows to his ego.
“You’ve become careless?” he asked, his head tilted to the side as he considered her.
She bristled, and when he smiled, she realized she’d failed another test. Reacted against another testing prick.
“Three days I’ve been here. Watching. Waiting. Three days you run. Same path. Same time.” He shook his head and clucked his tongue. “Careless.” The smile fell from his face, and his plain brown eyes went flat. “I taught you better.”
Yes, he had.
“Did you become stupid in your years away, as well?” he asked.
“No.”
“Then tell me, gatita, why am I here?”
Another test. Another riddle designed to see if she was paying attention. But ultimately one she’d been working at even as she stood on the steps. Change. An ending. A beginning. It didn’t matter. Carlos was the harbinger—the cartel wouldn’t send him unless things had reached a breaking point.
“My uncle?” she asked.
“Is a careless man.”
A careless man who’d let his accountant steal an untold amount of money . . . and get away with it. There would be payment, of one kind or another.
And Carlos had been sent to collect—a message, a warning, and a promise in one.
“How much does he owe?” Natalia asked, wondering how thoroughly her uncle had damned them. If it was already too late to mitigate the damage. If every sacrifice she’d ever made would all be wiped away by the careless actions of her uncle, the man who’d put her in this position to begin with.
“No se.” Carlos shrugged, rocking back and forth on his feet. Always poised. Always ready. Never caught resting or unaware or off guard. “I’m here first for Milner. An accountant who steals—an example must be made.” He stilled, and his white teeth flashed and bit through the dark like the warning of a predator circling in close. “Then we see.”
Who lives. Who dies. He didn’t have to say it. Natalia had been in this life long enough to understand the message.
In so many ways, life had been easier when she’d believed things were black and white, right and wrong, good and bad. But Carlos . . . he defied all categorization. He wasn’t the sort of man to lose sleep over the lives he took, but neither did he relish the kill. It was a contradiction that had taken Natalia time—and her own first, fumbling kills—to understand.
Carlos had grown up poor in the slums of Medellín, survived the rise—and more impressively, the fall—of Pablo Escobar. He’d navigated the tumultuous year that came after, survived the infighting, the government sweeps, the CIA hits. Sober, he’d claim that luck and careful planning had ensured his survival. But once, long ago, beneath the fog of tequila and an opium-laced cigar, he’d told Natalia the truth. He didn’t pick sides. He wasn’t emotional or vain or ruled by his reputation.
He pulled a trigger or sliced a vein. With neither care nor regret, he killed.
Ruthless but typically dispassionate.
But this, Natalia knew, he’d enjoy.
After all, Hernan had been responsible for the bullet that had stolen Carlos’s voice. But politics and power plays and good old plausible deniability—to say nothing of the protection afforded by the Vega name—had stayed Carlos’s hand. Until now. If her uncle couldn’t find Milner, couldn’t retrieve the money stolen on his watch, Carlos would kill him.
But where would it stop? What would satisfy Colombia?
“Collateral damage?” she asked, glancing toward the door.
“Your pretty sister, you mean?”
Natalia took a breath, reminded herself that Carlos was always pushing, always prodding, always looking for the chink, the weak spot, the wound he could press until emotion or reason or information bled free.
“The family has never cared for us, one way or the other.”
“But you hope I might,” he reasoned, the side of his mouth drawing tight—the equivalent of a lopsided grin lost long ago to the cut of a blade that had severed a nerve along his jaw.
“A warning, at least.”
“And would you run, gatita? Or use your claws?”
Little cat. He’d called her such for years, always teasing her for her tiny, trembling rage; her pitiful hiss; and her sheathed, but always present, blades. He’d given her the moniker the first time he’d beaten her for failing one of his many impossible tests. But what had once been a slur was now an endearment, odd as it was.
“I can’t kill everyone.”
“Perhaps you will not have to. Colombia wants their money more than they want Hernan dead. I’ve come to ensure they get it back.”
“Ana Maria is innocent—”
He shrugged. “No me importa.”
“Then why are you here?” she asked on an angry step forward she wouldn’t, couldn’t, take back. “To toy with me? To scare me? You lost that power long ago.”
His expression changed, the quirk of his mouth going flat and limp, disinterest painted in thin but obvious strokes.
“Still emotional. Still weak.” He sneered at her. “You should have cut such ties long ago.”
Even now, all these years later, Natalia’s heart seized at the very idea. It was, after all, one of the first things Carlos had told her.
Your sister will be your death.
She’d asked him once what he’d have her do.
Kill her. Sell her. Shed the weakness like old skin and live again.
Harsh, cold words, whispered across a table and over a meal. As if they’d been discussing a bad habit or an old shirt. But words Carlos lived by.
He’d never understood Natalia, never reconciled that she’d become so lethal yet remained so loyal. It was, she suspected, one of the things he liked about her. The puzzle. The mystery. He wanted to see her fail, to crack and crumble and become the detached sicario he’d trained her to be . . . But there was a part of him, too, that wanted to see how long she’d last. How far she’d go. He’d never admit it, but Natalia knew on some level he hoped she’d stay the course. Continue to be unmoved by promises of freedom or money or power.
He studied her a long moment, waiting for her to ask for help, for an exception. To pretend that no matter what perverse affection had rooted deep then slept and crept and leapt like a tangled, thorny vine over the years, that he wouldn’t still kill her the moment the order dropped.
He would, without question or hesitation, the only kindness in the smooth stroke of a knife he’d never let her see coming.
An assassin’s courtesy.
She’d never, not once, begged him for anything. Understood, even at seventeen, such pleas would fall on deaf ears. She wouldn’t start now.
“Stephen Milner will be found and the money returned.” She turned her back on him, the heaviest insult she could lob at his head, and reached for the door. When her hand met the cold metal of the knob, she looked over her shoulder and delivered a warning of her own. “And you’ll stay away from Ana Maria.”
“You reveal too much, gatita.”
“Nothing you didn’t know already.”
He laughed, a hissing rustle of noise, like dead leaves blown along a frozen sidewalk.
“Walk carefully, little cat. Cornered men lash out.”
“And cornered women?”
“Suppose we see.” He shook his head, his smile fond but his eyes sharp.
Carlos walked away, his hands stuffed into his pockets as he ignored the drive and disappeared into the heavily shadowed yard. As quiet descended and the sounds of suburbia filtered in—the hum of electricity, the pass of a car, the gentle, mellow tone of the neighbor’s music—the porch light flickered back to life and cast Natalia in a dim yellow glow that did nothing to chase away the gloom.
Carlos had come to see her, to scare her, and, in his way, to warn her.
Time was nearly up.
She could run—and never stop looking over her shoulder.
She could fight—and lose against the power of the cartel.
Or she could trust in hope . . . and do something far more dangerous.
Twelve exhausting hours after the meeting with his team, Ethan tossed his keys on the counter and shrugged out of his jacket, draping it over the back of a stool. He left his gun safely tucked in his shoulder holster. Slowly, he turned to face the living room and the floor-to-ceiling windows that showcased the vibrant city lights of the DC skyline.
“American, just as I suspected,” Natalia said, her voice low and steady and just a little bit smug. He watched as she ran her finger along the rim of a cut-crystal glass. She’d left the bottle of Jack Daniel’s Single Barrel on the counter where he’d tossed his keys. Intentionally, no doubt, though the warning took nothing away from the picture she made. Ensconced in one of his leather club chairs, the DC skyline a silent sentinel at her back, Natalia quietly watched him as if she couldn’t quite decide what to do with him.
He, on the other hand, had plenty of ideas about what to do with her. Dozens of thoughts of just what her leave-little-to-the-imagination activewear concealed. On what it would feel like to put his hands on her hips, to pull the black runner’s fleece over her head, to press her, naked and willing, between the heat of his body and the cold plane of the window.
There wasn’t a man alive who wouldn’t consider all those things and more.
But only a stupid one would try it when there was a gun within easy reach on the table beside her.
“Full of surprises, aren’t you, Miss Vega?” he asked, fighting back the surge of desperate arousal that could very well get him killed.
“You’ve no idea.”
Regardless of what Natalia Vega was, Ethan couldn’t let go of what he wanted her to be.
Friend. Ally. Lover.
So damn stupid. He’d met beautiful women before. Taken more than a few of them to his bed. But not a single one of them had ever been a threat to him. Most saw either the polished prestige of an old family name or a dangerous Special Forces operator—a man they could take to bed once and tell stories about for years.
But Natalia . . . Natalia saw Ethan for what, if not who, he was. Controlled. Skilled. Deadly.
Her enemy, maybe. Her equal, definitely.
Turned out, lust didn’t give a shit about convenience, stupidity, or danger. Because as Ethan stared at Natalia, comfortable and relaxed in his home, drinking his liquor, questions lingering in her eyes and poised on her lips, all he could really think about was all the things they could do in bed.
And what it would take to earn her surrender.
No doubt she’d make him work for it.
He prayed he got the chance. The fact that she was here, that he wasn’t dead, told him he just might.
She tipped back her drink, draining the last of the alcohol she’d poured for herself. “We need to talk, Mr. Somerton.”