The Black Wolf (In the Company of Killers, #5)(77)

But I’m stopped cold when I see one of Francesca’s sisters, the nameless one who had her eyes on me during the first meeting right before I called out the real Francesca.

There’s a gun in her hand.

Fuck…

“I’ll show you the safest way out of here,” she says, and then places the gun in my hand—it’s my gun, I realize.

What the f*ck…?

“Come on.” She grabs my elbow and pulls me along. “There’s not much time.” She releases me when I start following her, and we take a back elevator, probably used only by the employees of the mansion, down to the ground floor. We walk briskly through the kitchen, past a dozen workers who, by the worried looks on their faces, know that whatever we’re up to isn’t anything they want to be a part of.

The sister leads me down a set of steps into a dark basement, pushing our way past industrial kitchen equipment and boxes piled to the ceiling, until we make it to a door.

“Go around the left side of the mansion,” she says with urgency in her voice. “You’ll see your car parked. I’m going back upstairs to buy you more time. If Mother goes into that room, you won’t get off the property.”

I want to ask her why she’s helping me—ask her her name even—but there’s no time for that shit. Only stupid people do that in the movies.

“Thanks. I think.”

“It’s me who should be thanking you,” she says.

She smiles, pushes open the door and I leave without another word. Only when I get inside my car, drive off the property without being shot at the gate, and get two miles from the mansion do I let out my breath. My fingers are white-knuckling the steering wheel; a vein throbs in the left side of my head—thumpthumpthumpthump in fast succession.





Niklas





“You did what?” Izabel’s eyes are blazing.

Nora is laughing, shaking her head. “Oh wow, Niklas, what a way to piss your brother off.”

“Nobody asked you,” I snap.

She laughs again and looks down into a magazine.

Sian sits quietly in a window seat with her legs drawn up, knees pressed to her chest.

“I can’t believe you did this,” Izabel says 53642.70 ? exasperated. “This whole mission was for nothing—nothing except your revenge. Victor will—.”

She stops herself.

“He’ll what?” I challenge, feeling like I know exactly what she was going to say. “What’ll he do, Izzy, kill me? Go ahead and say it; you know you want to.”

She swallows her words, crosses her arms and rounds her chin.

“I was going to say that he’ll be furious.”

I throw my head back and laugh out loud.

“Cut the shit, Izzy—I know what you were going to say, and I know why. But don’t worry,” I go on, “he won’t kill me; not this time anyway. He’ll be pissed that I f*cked up his payday, but he’ll let it go”—I point at her quickly—“I have you to thank for that.”

“Me?”

“Yeah—you. He didn’t kill me before because you stopped him. And he won’t kill me now, because he knows you won’t forgive him for it.”

“That’s bullshit—he’s your brother, Niklas, that’s why he won’t kill you. I have nothing to do with it.”

“Keep telling yourself that.”

Izabel shoots into a stand, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. “Is that why you came on this mission? That’s it, isn’t it?” She steps up into my face. “Your plan all along was to go so you could screw everything up to get back at Victor—for something he shouldn’t be blamed for!”

Trying not to let her screaming get too me, I shake my head and look away; take a deep breath. “Believe what you want, Iz; you’re going to no matter what I say.”

“Oh, it’s pretty damn obvious to me, Niklas”—she points her finger in my face—“everything you’ve done was for yourself—selfish, childish f*cking *! You made Nora play the slave role so you could beat her”—she jabs the tip of her index finger into my chest angrily; her eyes swirling—“and then you f*cked her to shame her—”

“Hey, nobody shames me,” Nora cuts in. “It’s all either of us wanted, Izabel.”

We ignore her; Izabel glares at me, I glare back. I want to grab that finger of hers poking me in the chest and shove her into the seat behind her, but I can’t bring myself to do it.

“And the only reason you made me play your girlfriend was so you could use me to get back at Victor”—her palm lays across the side of my face hard and a slap rings out; stunned by the hit, I just stand here, looking back at her, wide-eyed—“that kiss…” She can’t go on.

Instead of retaliation for hitting me, I want to know what she was going to say, even more.

“What about the kiss?” I ask; my cheek is stinging.

Izabel’s hand drops to her side. She looks wounded…wounded.

She shakes her head and readjusts her rage-filled expression, quickly covering up the one that made her vulnerable, the one that hurt me inside.

“Then the money,” she goes on, looking away, disappointment twisting her features. “I thought you helped Sian because…” Her eyes lock on mine again, and in them is the same disgust and hatred for me that I always saw when I looked at her after we first started working together. And that shit hurts more than anything—I know now I’m the one of us who must look wounded. “The only reason you saved her life was to—you’re just an opportunist; you spent every bit of that money because you knew it would piss Victor off. And you had no intention of ever looking for Olivia Bram!”