Page 93 of Pretty Little Assassin

Still, the bastard tries to run.

Stubborn. Dumb as fuck. Credit where it’s due.

And he has just handed me the exact moment I’ve been salivating over for nine years.

I give him three steps before descending upon him. This could be fast, or not.

I choose not.

While Madam watches with wide-eyed satisfaction, I carve him up like a holiday turkey. Slowly, with the kind of precision that requires just the right amount of reckless restraint.

I take his ankle tendons and watch him hit the floor. I cut his hands when he tries to crawl, leaving him unable to run, fight, or plug the wounds leaking across his expensive suit.

“She spent nine years in rooms you put her in,” I tell him. “She came back for me anyway. She died doing it.”

Finally, I take his tongue after he has spent enough time screaming for mercy.

“You already have Mercy, Stepdaddy. She’s right here.”

I pull his head back and open his throat.

His blood pours over my hand until the fear empties from his eyes and his body goes still.

Red on my hands. Red across the floorboards of his house. It was my favourite colour before he dressed me in it at sixteen and tried to sell me, and I’ve loved and hated it ever since.

Tonight, clothed in his blood, I love it again.

30

VIKTOR

I stop the stolen SUV outside Johnson’s gate.

It’s closed now, though Donnie says it was open when Valentina arrived. Johnson welcomed her inside, then locked it behind her.

The barrier is industrial, designed to stop vehicles and amateurs. I am neither.

A maintenance conduit runs beneath the eastern wall toward the house. It is narrow, filthy, and barely large enough for my shoulders.

Discomfort is irrelevant. I remove the grate and pull myself inside.

The wound in my side opens again on the second bend, warmth spreading beneath my shirt and soaking into my waistband. Metal scrapes both shoulders as the conduit narrows around me.

For one second, my body refuses to move, and my breaths go shallow. But Valentina is inside.

I force myself forward.

The grate at the other end gives beneath my hand. I lower myself into the house and find two dead Primacy operatives on the kitchen floor.

My little assassin has been busy.

I follow Valentina’s scent to the stairs. The familiar jasmine and vanilla, and so much copper. As my heel touches the bottom stair, I hear talking above me.

I take the stairs three at a time, silent despite my size. By the time I reach the hallway, my gun is already in my hand.

Valentina stands at the opposite end, alive, upright, and covered in someone else’s blood.

Relief hits harder than the wound in my side.