Read Return of the Assassin (All the King's Men) Online
Authors: Donya Lynne
Return of the Assassin (All the King's Men)
All the King's Men
Book 5
Return of the Assassin
AKM Return of the Assassin
Published by Phoenix Press
Copyright 2013 by Donya Lynne
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This book is a work of fiction. References to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or persons or locales, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover Art: Reese Dante
http://www.reesedante.com/
For you. You've been alone and suffering silently for too long. It's time you got your happy ending.
With every AKM book I write, the cast of helpers grows ever larger, and it becomes impossible to keep track of everyone and have enough space to thank them all. Special thanks go to my incredible, totally awesome group of beta readers in Traceon's Dungeon. I couldn't deliver these books at the level I do without each of you.
To those in my AKM Reader Group, I want to thank you for the laughs, the camaraderie, and the man candy that helps inspire me to create more characters, books, and scenes for this series. You all are very special. Keep being you.
To Caterina V. from Italy and my merry band of Italian fans, I want to give you a big hug and say grazie for your Italian translations that appear in this book. I specifically included that Italian conversation for you and all my fans in one of the most beautiful countries in the world. It is my dream to one day visit you all and see the magnificence that is Italy with my own eyes.
And lastly, thank you to Laura, my editor. We've taken this journey together from the first step. Look how far we've come, and imagine how much farther we can go. I trust you implicitly with my manuscripts and know that when you have them, my babies are in good hands.
Gina lay prone on top of the Miami high-rise, her eye to the scope on her rifle. Waiting. It seemed like waiting was all she did these days. But at least tonight she wasn't waiting for her mind to fritz out the way it had been for the past month. Tonight she was on a job. Hopefully, a job that would get her head back in the game.
Since leaving Chicago a month ago, Gina's life had begun to unravel. She had learned firsthand that she was her own worst enemy. Almost killing an innocent vampire had shoved insecurities, doubt, and that crap known as guilt front and center. They were her constant companions now. She slept with them, showered with them, and felt their ghostly tentacles fondle her mind twenty-four seven.
But her tormented psyche was only half the problem. The other half was Malek…maybe even more than half.
Warmth dashed through Gina's veins at the thought of Malek, who she had left in Chicago, and she frowned at the traitorous flutter in the pit of her stomach.
She needed to get her shit together. This was no time for fear, sorrow, guilt…or love. Someone like her didn't love. She couldn't allow herself that emotion. Not anymore. An assassin who felt anything—who
loved
—was an assassin with a weakness. She knew that better than anyone. After her brother Gabe's death a year ago, her love for him had almost been her undoing…and maybe it had been. The jury was still out, but if the past few weeks were an indication, the verdict wasn't looking good, especially with Malek in her rearview mirror. She felt like he was always there, watching her, closing in.
"They're on site." She blinked back to awareness as Trevor's voice came through the transmitter in her ear. Trevor was a fellow assassin and longtime family friend. He was also one of Gabe's ex-boyfriends.
"On it," she said as a bead of sweat tickled the back of her neck and slowly slid across her skin. Damn Miami. Only the end of April, and already the humidity was uncomfortably high.
Gina pressed her eye to her scope as the light came on inside the laser-tagged apartment. A male with long, white-blond hair entered the room alone. Gina narrowed her eyes, pulled back, frowned, and then settled her eye behind her scope again.
Dacians? No way.
Gina drew her eye away and shook her head in disbelief. Full-blooded Dacians hadn't shown their faces in public in decades. In fact, some thought Dacian vampires were extinct. That's how long it had been since anyone had seen one.
But this guy? If he wasn't a Dacian, she was human.
There went the neighborhood.
She looked through her scope again and stretched out her senses to verify what her eyes had already told her. Sure enough, the acidic fragrance of ancient, Dacian blood reached out and touched someone. Her. And not in a good way. The stench was enough to make bile rise in her throat, and not just from the smell. Old memories—
bad
memories—snared her mind, and a shiver rippled up her back.
"Dacians, Trevor?" she said.
There was a pause, as if Trevor was considering her question, and then his voice broke through the silence. "Ah, shit. I didn't think—"
"You didn't think that was something I should know up front?" Gina's ex-mate, Armand, had been half-Dacian, one nasty sonofabitch, and as abusive as they came. The bastard had a right
hook that would have knocked out Foreman, Tyson, and Holyfield in one punch. And that was being conservative.
Escaping Armand had almost killed her. Literally. Trevor knew this. He had seen Armand's handiwork firsthand. And even though it had been over a century since she—
ahem
—parted ways with the asshole, she never quite got over what she called the Armand Effect. His beatings still left a nasty mark on her mental state. Yeah sure, kind of like a guillotine only just
sort of
removes a head. Who was she kidding? The mark Armand had left on her soul was more like a gouge that resembled the Royal Gorge in Colorado. A giant monstrosity of a wound that not even duct tape and Super Glue could fix.
Trevor's frustrated sigh broke through her earpiece. "I'm sorry, Gina. I wasn't thinking."
"Clearly." She rolled her eyes then squinted through her scope. "I'll make you pay for the nasty reminder of my past later. For now, where's the second target? I only see one."
She couldn't think about Armand now. She was working and couldn't afford another distraction, because enough of those already sat tapping their fingers in her psyche, waiting for her to let her guard down so they could righteously bungle her world to hell and back. She couldn't let that happen. Not now. Not on her first job since
the incident
.
"Mark Two is on his way," Trevor said. "And go easy on me, Gina. I'm still not myself, either. I miss him, too, and—"
"Forget it, Trev." Gina didn't want to hear what he was about to say, because she knew it had to do with Gabe, and she could only take one upsetting reminder of her past right now. "We've both been through hell."
But it hadn't always been that way. Once upon a time, she and Trevor had been happy, and Gabe had been part of that happiness. Back then, the three of them had worked as AKM enforcers in Atlanta. Now Trev ran an independent agency in Florida called the Knights of Justice, or KOJU. King Bain had never sanctioned KOJU, but their mission was similar to that of All the King's Men, just without the royal credentials.
Gina kept her eye glued to her scope. Her neck ached, her arms burned, and every muscle begged to be stretched. A shallow smile curved her mouth for a split second, and then was gone. Before Gabe's death, during happier times, the three of them had gone on a lot of stakeouts together, just like this one.
Poor Trev. He had taken Gabe's death hard. Even though they had broken up decades ago, Gabe had still been his best friend, and they were like family to one another. Two males, once lovers, who discovered they were even better friends. Trev had been swallowed by grief and heartache after Gabe was gone.
Gina, on the other hand, had turned her grief into something darker. Something vengeful and dangerous that spurred her to hunt down every person involved in the factory raid where Gabe was killed. Including Severin.
Severin had been Gabe's boyfriend at the time, and Gabe died thinking Sev had turned on him. He hadn't known Sev was a deep cover agent with Vampire Dreck Affairs. No one had known, and Gina didn't take the time to get the facts…just went after him with guns blazing. Sev had been as much a victim as she, Trevor, and Gabe, but she had been too hung up on vengeance to see his innocence, and she had almost killed him.
Thank God she had failed, but now her confidence was shattered. She was full of doubt and that enemy called emotion. It was as if she no longer had a place in the world. For the past month, she had drifted through her existence as a shadow, a wraith. Aimless and hollow. She didn't just feel empty, she felt rattled. All the pieces no longer fit, and she was a fractured projection of the female she had once been. And not just because of her attempt to assassinate Sev. Malek was partly to blame, too.
She closed her eyes and tried to push away Malek's memory, which was becoming harder to do. Malek was the male who had saved her when all she had wanted was to die. The male who promised to be a whole lot of holy-hell-I'm-in-trouble if she let him.
"Mark Two is on site." Trevor's voice came through her earpiece, startling her.
Gina shook herself out of her reverie and pulled her head back into the present. A moment later, her hands trembled, and then her heart fluttered and began to race.
No, please no. Not now.
She tried to ignore away the crackle of panic. "I don't see him." Her breath came harder in quick, shallow breaths, and sudden pressure tightened her chest.
Oh God, no. Please no. Not again.
"He's not in range, yet," Trevor said.
Gina's heart beat in her ears, suddenly frantic, beating wildly in her chest.
Thu-thump, thu-thump.
Like a thoroughbred leaping from the starting gate in the Kentucky Derby, her heart raced and pounded against her rib cage.
This can't be happening now!
Damn it. She didn't need this shit. Not when she was minutes or even seconds from pulling the trigger and making society a better place by turning two Dacian vampires into worm food.
Ever since parting ways with Armand, she had suffered from occasional panic attacks, but never like this. Never this crippling, and certainly never this prolific. What had been a rare nuisance before had, in three weeks, become debilitating. And the attacks were steadily growing worse. And more frequent, as if she was repressing some deep-seated emotion and this was her body's way of trying to get her attention. But what was she repressing? She had already dealt with the aftereffects of Armand's abuse a long time ago, and she wasn't repressing anything where Severin was concerned. On the contrary, she lived the guilt and shame of those actions every single godforsaken day. By deduction, that left Malek.
Nope. Not gonna think about him.
Too late. She already
was
thinking about him and couldn't stop.
She kept her eye on her scope and watched for the target, even as every muscle tightened and her chest constricted as if a python were putting the death squeeze on her.
"Gina? You okay?" Trevor said.
"Uh-huh. I'm f…fine."
"You're such a lousy liar." He paused. "Stand down."
"No. I'm fine. I c…can do this." She
needed
to do this to prove she wasn't falling apart and becoming an invalid. That she wasn't losing herself in the pot of rancid stew her life was turning in to.
"I said stand down. I can hear you practically hyperventilating into your transmitter."
She frowned and listened to herself. Shit. She was. But she wasn't going to let Trevor down. Or herself.
"I can do this, Trevor." She
had
to. If she didn't, she may as well hang up her assassin's hat right now, sell her rifles, and off herself. If she couldn't perform, she couldn't work, and then what would she do? Knit? Yeah right. She'd rather poke herself in the eye with one of those foot-long knitting needles than use it for its intended purpose.
"Gina, I'm not going to argue with you. Stand down. I can take care of this. I just need to wait for Mark Two to enter the frame from the bedroom, and I can take them both."
The bedroom was on her side. She checked her scope again and saw Mark Two standing at his dresser, removing his cuff links. "I've got a shot. You take out One. I've got Two." Determination surged within her. She would not be an invalid. She would earn her keep or else.
"Gina…don't!"
Pphht! Pphht!
Too late. She had already depressed the trigger. Twice.
The bullets strayed, and marble shards splintered from the side of the window.
Damn it!
The Dacian spun toward the window, and his hand shot to the waist of his pants for his gun.
Trevor cursed. "Gina! Abort, damn it! We're blown!"
No, she wasn't going to let this target get away! Especially since he was a Dacian. At this point, this shit was personal. "Take down One, Trev. I've got Two." She took aim again. Her finger trembled on the trigger, but she fired off several shots. Surely one would hit.
"It's too late," Trevor barked. "One's gone!"
The bullets sprayed more marble from the wall then shattered the window. The target lurched to the side and ducked just as the last bullet zipped past where his head had been.
Shit!
Failure.
Trevor was going to kill her. She knew better than anyone that when it came to Dacians, you were lucky to get a second shot if the first shot failed. Dacian vampires were slick, wily, and cunning, and they had incredible hunting skills, finely developed and tuned to match their overly aggressive nature, which meant she and Trevor needed to beat feet. Missing this hit was a major fail, and if the Dacians weren't already on her and Trevor's trail, they soon would be.
When Trevor formed from the cloud of mist that blew up on her, she was already dismantling her rifle. But her hands trembled so violently she could barely unlock the pieces of hardware from each other. She was in a full-on panic attack. She never should have taken that shot. Hindsight was always twenty-twenty, wasn't it? Too bad foresight wasn't.
"What were you thinking?" Trevor was pissed, and rightfully so. He spun and snagged his gun case from midair a second after appearing, and then dropped it to the roof as he knelt and jerked Gina's gun from her hands. He finished taking it apart and hastily dropped the pieces into her case. "We've got to move!" He sealed her case shut, shoved it under his arm as he picked up his, and grabbed her wrist. "Now!" With a jarring yank, he pulled her to her feet and practically dragged her to the ledge of the roof, which overlooked the alley where their getaway vehicle waited.
"I can't breathe." She clutched at her vest.
Too tight. Too tight.
Trevor cursed, shook his head, and threw a desperate glance over his shoulder. "Your breakdown is just going to have to wait until we're out of here. We're in deep shit."