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“What was her name?” Niko asked cautiously, his eyes no longer meeting mine.

Saliva stuck in my throat, making it difficult to swallow down the emotion that clogged it. When I spoke, my words were barely above a whisper, and I looked at my hands as if they were the most interesting things in the world. I didn’t feel shame or regret about most things, but this failure haunted me.

“I don’t know her name.”

The air shifted as if it were sentient—affected by our moods—moving from angry and charged to mournful.

Kenji’s warm fingers gripped mine. “You’re going to make yourself bleed,” he commented, stopping me from picking at my abused cuticles.

“He didn’t let you know your mother’s name,” Caleb said. The words were injected with understanding.

Tears collected along my lash line, threatening to run over the edge and paint my face with salty streaks of shame.

“It’s why I taught myself to get good with computers and find information people didn’t want out. But she was sold into the sex trade from Russia, and then Dominick got rid of anything that could have given me a clue as to who she was.”

Niko piped up. “You’re Russian?”

I let out a chuckle. I couldn’t tell whether his tone was full of excitement or horror. “Don’t worry, we aren’t related. You can still fuck me.” I winked, loving the pink tinge that bloomed on his neck. “All I was ever able to determine was that she was from Dagestan.”

A sharp inhale of air came from Kenji. “That’s why you know the fighters.”

It wasn’t a question. They were starting to see the crisscrossed lines that made up my life, and I was about to blow their fucking minds even more.

“Yeah. Magomed hired Cain to take out some asshole stealing children back in his home country. He’s not allowed back there, so he needed—”

Caleb cut me off.

“Wait, you fucking know Cain? No one can get a hold of them. They’re a fucking ghost. So how the fuck did you?” Understanding flashed in his eyes. His thick brows hit his hairline as he leaned forward on his powerful forearms. “You mean to fucking tell me that you are the infamous merc for hire?”

CHAPTER 34

NIKO

CAIN HAS A PUSSY?

She shrugged her shoulders nonchalantly, as if she were talking about the weather, not the fact that she was one of the criminal world’s leading hits for hire. Her kill rate was perfect, probably because she was extremely picky when it came to what jobs she’d take.

My mind whirled, connecting information so quickly that a dull thudding was beginning to form above my eyebrows. I kneaded the area with the pads of my fingers, shutting my eyes so I could reduce all the stimulation happening at this moment. Luckily the cabin lights were dim since we’d hit an early flight and the sounds of her and Caleb’s activities had kept me up all night.

The fabric of my jeans was suddenly too tight in the crotch as images of my cock glistening with her saliva while she bobbed her head on my shaft threatened to shove what we’d just learned out of my mind.

Ironically, imagining her coated in the blood of another after she’d violently taken their life was equally hot. Cain had a reputation for being ruthless. She ran clean jobs in the sense that there was no evidence as to Cain’s true identity, but there were rumors on more than one occasion of the chaos she left strewn in her wake.

It was why it was widely theorized that Cain had to be a man.

“Holy shit. C,” Kenji commented, his eyes lit with excitement, making me chuckle. I knew she was perfect for us. When you had shitty things happen in your life and recognized that one more second on this floating rock wasn’t guaranteed, you didn’t question whether it was crazy to become infatuated with someone in such a short time. And Scar seemed to be a collage of all of our broken pieces.

Fragmented shards forged together to create something beautiful.

Perfectly imperfect.

“I honestly don’t know why everyone assumes Cain is a man anyway. Has no one watched an episode of Snapped? Women are fucking ruthless; we push out humans we grow, for God’s sake.” She huffed, drawing her legging-clad legs up into her chest and resting her chin on top. Her messy bun flopped to the side as she studied Caleb.

The only change in his body had been the shifting of his finger farther from the trigger. He was still holding out. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe her. It probably wasn’t even that he didn’t trust her. It was that he didn’t know if he wanted to let her in again. There was a flash of vulnerability on his face, but it was gone as fast as it had appeared.

The pounding of my headache revived. Stubborn bastard.

“Okay, go on with your little explanation. What does that have to do with anything?” Caleb asked, his tone frosty and his eyes even colder.