“We don’t have time,” I say in response to him pressing against me.
“You’re going to break my heart when you leave,” he says with a smirk as he pulls back.
“Break your heart, or something else?”
“My heart for sure,” he say languidly, fingers idly stroking my body.
“Pay me more money and I’ll stay,” I say with a shrug. Why is he talking about heartbreak? People always want a connection. I’ve no idea fucking why. Connections make you weak. I don’t need them. Just like you don’t need these boys?
I refuse to acknowledge that thought and stare back at him annoyed. He’s ruining my morning. Sex aside.
“You bitches…always wanting fucking money,” he scoffs lightly but he stops stroking me.
“I’ll stay until the job is done,” I shrug. “Or the money runs out.”
His eyes darken and he taps his fingers on the bed. “That might be sooner than you think.”
There. I hit a nerve. He’s not talking about my skills as an assassin.
“He cut you off didn’t he?” I might not be able to read emotion but I can read body language. I’ve been studying it my whole goddamn life, if you include what I had to do to survive my family. Italians are big on body language. Added to that, I have Duke’s mannerisms and what they mean, all neatly stored in the recesses of my brain from when I was stalking him. He’s not a fidgety person. He’s neat, bordering on being clinically diagnosed with OCD. Every move he makes is calculated.
Like me.
He looks my way for a few minutes, saying nothing. I wait him out.
Finally, he sighs and stops tapping, rubbing his hands through his hair instead. “He’s going to. He’s also liquidising his dead wife’s assets so there’s nothing to inherit there either. I’m going to be flat broke pretty soon.”
“What else?”
“Not much, only that he’s marrying Saskia off to one of his politician friends old enough to be her fucking grandfather.” He gives a harsh laugh. “We met him the other night at the estate. He wouldn’t stop putting his hands all over her. I almost fucking killed him, right there and then. Joseph was rubbing it on my face because he knows there’s fuck all I can do if I want any inheritance at all.”
“What can I do?”
“Nothing, you can’t fix this. Just”—he runs his hands through his hair again, shaking his head—“stick to the plan.”
The plan is to take out the entire list one by one without drawing attention, and rapidly so they don’t see it coming until it’s too late. If we’re lucky, we’ll get the majority of the list before we need to reinvent ourselves.
I’ve reinvented myself a thousand times. For the boys, it’ll be their first time. Most likely, they won’t. They have too much to lose, and I’m not going to wait. I agreed to delay until they got their inheritance money, and possibly graduate. But the longer my identity is Verity Hawthorne, the easier the paper trail is for my family to find me.
Lorcan is the one who knows the most about me, and that isn’t a lot. And now he knows I’ll leave after this, I get why he’s not pushing me to make a decision about who I fucking date. This brief interlude won’t last, and he gets that.
I have a month left…tops.
And then I need to disappear.
With or without them.
“Let me kill him for you.” The words slip out before I can stop them. It’s the least I can do. A token of affection. A leaving present.
Lorcan’s eyes narrow.
“He is on the list,” I add, as innocent as I can muster. “And it solves all of your problems providing your adoptive father’s will still names you and Saskia as sole heirs.”
He’s looking at me like I’m insane.
“Think about it.”
He gives a harsh laugh. “I meant what I said. You’re a fucking psycho.”