He was hard in a moment, and he wanted nothing more than to toss her on the bed and fuck her until she was screaming. But he had work to do. He ran his hand over her breast, digging into the bruises he’d left before, then running down and cupping her ass, pulling her against his hard cock.

  “I have to go,” he said, stepping away from her. He had to do it fast, or he wouldn’t do it at all. “I have work to do. But I’ll be back.”

  Piper looked up at him, her eyes blinking fast. Then she shook her head and forced herself to smile. “Okay. Yeah. That’s great.”

  That strange feeling shook him again, and he paused. “Is everything okay?” He was missing something, and he had a strong feeling that it was important.

  “No,” Piper said, and that smile got a tiny amount more real. “I mean, yes. Everything’s fine. You go—do whatever you need to do. I’ll be here. I may go get dinner. Is that okay, for me to get dinner alone?”

  Her manner was strange, and he was still worried. He took a long moment to take stock, but ultimately decided that no.

  No, there is nothing to do about any of it right now. Just keep going and see what happens next.

  If she had finally turned on him, there wouldn’t be anything he could do about it.

  Crystal, the girl Damian had bought for the night, led Chris out of his room at exactly the time they had agreed. Good girl. He would tip her—if he got a chance.

  One of the advantages to sneaking on to a ship under false pretenses to kill a billionaire philanthropist for crossing an organized crime family for several decades is that much like a hotel; the rooms were all basically the same layout. At least, they were under all the mess.

  Chris' clothes were strewn about the room without a care, the bathroom was open and full of his toiletries—Damian swore he could see some sort of jasmine body wash in there—and a steamer trunk by his bed. This wasn't the 1920s, and he wasn't looking to start a new life in a new country. Jack was, but that was more of a wish fulfillment issue if he got out of this alive. Something was very, very wrong with this room.

  A lot of somethings, actually. A search of the room revealed no go-bag, no suitcase, nothing hidden under the bed, or beneath the pillow. There was no way to pack up this junk quickly, no way to disappear. Not unless Chris threw it out the port window, and even that would take too much time.

  Damian took a quick picture of the room, then threw a few dirty boxers and shirts off of the luggage. It was a new model with one of those rolling combination pins. He looked at the steamer trunk and frowned. He lifted it by its bottom and felt the weight of it more than the trunk itself. He took another picture of where the combination had been left. He intended to crack it but paused.

  "There's no way that he's dumb enough…" he said out loud.

  He saw the model number on the bottom and pulled out his phone, checking for the default combination on the manufacturer's website. Sure enough, when he entered 967, the trunk clicked open.

  "You've got to be kidding me…"

  While nothing incriminating was in plain sight, there was an obvious false bottom made of plywood hinged with some dollar store crap. Damian rolled his eyes and took another picture before pulling up the false bottom, revealing a 9mm pistol next to a detachable silencer, some ammo, a box of zip-ties from a hardware store, a large bottle of aspirin that he could only assume was used to create an overdose, and a note.

  He lifted the pistol with his gloved hand and found that the serial number was still there instead of etched away. This wasn't just sloppy; it was amateurish, like a DIY assassination kit. He picked up the note, groaning a little. The handwriting was chicken scratch, but he was eventually able to decipher it.

  Tonight. 8PM. The Antique goes down – A.

  Code names, really? He shook his head, careful to put everything back exactly the way that it was according to the pictures. It was clear who had hired Chris now, but why did he hire someone in the first place? Why hire this amateur of all people?

  In a way, it didn't matter. This was going to end tonight. Chamberlain, the assassins, Damian's life, everything he'd pretended wasn't real with Piper.

  Everything.

  17

  Piper sat quietly in their room—no, her and Damian's room. It was best to start separating from him now, to keep herself distant. There was no 'us' with the two of them. Her and the baby, yes. She knew that she would keep it, that she'd love it unconditionally. She already did. But Damian? She didn't know how many people he had killed, how many people he hurt. She didn't know how deep the darkness that let him take a life really went.

  So why did she feel, sitting on the bed, like she was a wife waiting for her husband to come home from war?

  As she was laying back, her phone chimed with the custom alarm she had set for Fiona. She pulled it out and read.

  Piper, something's wrong, and I need a friend right away. No red alert, just come. Please. Please.

  She could hear the soft, plaintive voice in the text. Fiona wasn't asking for security; she needed someone to talk to. Piper rose immediately, making her way to Fiona's cabin with the longest strides she could make without risking slamming into someone. She knocked as a courtesy, then walked in to see Fiona shaking, a wine glass in her hand. A cursory glance showed that Fiona wasn't drunk, but her face was pale white and her eyes red from the tears streaking down her face. Her sleeveless dress showed marks on her shoulders. It took only a split second for Piper to lock the door behind her.

  Fiona looked at her with wild-eyed fear, then settled after a moment. "Good. It's you. It's not him. Not him."

  Piper walked over, arms open. Fiona sat the glass down and ran over to wrap her arms around her.

  "Piper, he came in, he wouldn't stop, he didn't make any sense. I don't know what happened. He-he grabbed me." Her voice choked, and she sobbed against Piper's shoulder.

  Carefully, Piper rubbed Fiona's back, whispering gentle words. "It's okay. I've got you. Where did your security go?"

  Fiona laughed bitterly. "They left on my orders—stay out of the room in case things got heated in a good way. I'm an idiot. I could have been… Could have been…" She trailed off, her voice muffled against Piper's shoulder, the words no longer audible.

  Piper listened quietly, just holding the poor girl. Fiona was the safest person on this ship, and she knew that, but telling her now wouldn't do any good. Not when she suspected that Damian had left to do something unspeakable to Fiona’s father. She brushed Fiona's hair and felt the shaking slowly subside.

  "You're not an idiot. Sometimes we expect better from people than who they really are. I'm not going anywhere, and Chris is not coming anywhere near you. He'd have to go through me." She smiled, filling her voice with a confidence she didn't really have. "And that's never going to happen. I promise."

  Fiona nodded against her shoulder. The two stood there for a while, holding each other until Fiona had cried herself out. Piper could only think about the one she was foolish enough to trust, the bruises she'd asked for instead of ones inflicted on her. Were they really so different, Damian and Alex? She hoped not. She hoped that whatever Damian was, a part of him cared, a part of him thought of her as more than just a tool.

  A grateful smile finally dawned on Fiona’s face. There was no need for words. Piper helped her get to bed, her mind racing, her face as calming as she knew how to make it. Strong, confident, brave. All the things she didn't feel. All the things that Fiona needed.

  When Fiona had started to relax beneath a blanket that cost more than some people's cars, Piper sat down on a chair partly facing the door and partly in Fiona's line of sight. A promise was a promise, no matter how scared she really was. Alex would have to get through her to get to Fiona. She wasn't pretending, not about her.

  18

  After all the time Damian had spent sneaking around the boat, working on getting the layout memorized and the routines of all the security lined up perfectly in his head, getting into Chamberlain’s state suite was disgustingly easy. After this shit, he was definitely committed to the plan of becoming some dude who sold newspapers or hot dogs on a street corner. But if it weren’t for that, he’d consider looking for work as a security advisor. After all, who better to protect you than the guy who used to try to kill you? He wasn’t sure it would make a really superior business slogan though.

  But after a moment, it was painfully obvious that this wasn’t a case of him finding the perfect moment to slip through the glaringly obvious security gap that only occurred once every six hours. Someone had, yet again, gotten here before him. He saw a dark stain on the carpet that was clearly blood, and a chip in the wood next to the state door that had probably come from either a small caliber bullet or a blunt object being swung at a weird angle. He wasn’t going to spend enough time staring at the damn thing to figure it out.

  He heard a loud sound within the state suite, and he stopped worrying about what was going to happen next. Old military reflexes, the ones he’d honed to a fine edge overseas and then tightened still further in private security, kicked in. In one smooth motion, he drew his weapon and yanked the door open. The hinges were pointed towards him; if he had tried to kick it in, he probably would have broken his foot. He lucked out, however, since whoever was in the room hadn’t locked it behind them.

  The scene he saw in front of him was the strangest thing he had ever fucking seen. He took it in fast, just like his training had always forced him to do: Chamberlain, tied to a chair, with rope and amateur knots. A man—it only took Damian’s brain a moment to recognize him as the best man at the wedding, with some incredibly white bread name. Chris.

  Chris had a gun trained on Chamberlain, but his eyes were flicking wildly back and forth between the restrained man and—for fuck’s sake—Alex, the newlywed, who was standing there with a gun trained on Chris.

  “You can’t do this to my father-in-law,” Alex said in a voice that was so obviously rehearsed that Damian would have rolled his eyes if it wouldn’t have taken his eyes off two weapons. He kept his own at his side, turning his body ever so slightly. It made him a narrower target and hid the weapon from these idiots. “I’ll kill you myself.”

  Chamberlain seemed to be the only one who was bored as hell. “What is this, fucking amateur hour?”

  Damian bristled just a little bit, but he didn’t let it show. He was cold as ice now, everything but the killing drained out of him. The other two men, however—they both started shouting. It was a whole lot of bullshit; Alex screaming about how Chamberlain was going to sign some papers or he would call Fiona in to watch her old man die, while Chris screamed that he wasn’t an amateur and if the son of a bitch said that again, Chris really would shoot him.

  Damian kept his weapon steady at his side and waited for the situation to unfold. At this point, waiting was the best thing he could possibly do. And possibly, it was what made Chamberlain’s eyes focus on him.

  “You’re not an amateur, are you, son?”

  Damian’s eyes narrowed at being called ‘son’, but there was something kind in the old man’s tone that he couldn’t bring himself to ignore all the way. It threatened to crack the ice, and that was dangerous. That couldn’t be allowed to happen.

  And also, to his annoyance, it caused the other two men to turn their focus to him. That was a problem. He pulled his weapon up, starting to draw on Alex—Chris was a wild card, and Damian was sure he could charge the idiot and knock him down before Chris could get an accurate shot off, but Alex moved like he’d at least gotten some practice in at the shooting range. Killed a man, maybe not, but he was at least familiar with a handgun.

  Before he could zero in and pull the trigger, however, Chamberlain’s voice snapped like a whip.

  “No!” Damian knew the voice was for him. He glanced at the man as time slowed. “Him.” He nodded towards Chris, and Damian made a split-second decision to follow the old man’s lead.

  He dropped to one knee to throw off any shot that Alex might have been about to make and put three silenced shots straight into the center mass of the target. There was a thump as the target collapsed.

  A shot whizzed over Damian’s head. It wasn’t perfect, but he would have been clipped if he hadn’t dropped. From the position on his knee, he leaped at Alex. He hit him at the knees like a linebacker, and the groom dropped hard and fast. His head cracked on the floor hard; he didn’t go out, but he was dazed. Damian rolled him onto his front and put his knee in the other man’s back. He grabbed the weapon and tossed it into the corner. No one was getting to it without going through him.

  And he found himself glancing back at Chamberlain like he had, once upon his time, looked at his superiors. Waiting to hear the next instruction. This was who he had been in the military: ready to listen, ready to follow orders, and not under anyone else’s control, but ready to take on whatever was necessary to make sure that his unit survived and his target did not. Including knowing which of those two missions was primary.

  To his amusement, Chamberlain had shrugged out of the poorly tied ropes and was rubbing the circulation back into his arms.

  “Idiots,” he murmured. His gray suit was rumpled, but he looked better than a man in a hostage situation normally would. “Drag that fucker over here and tie him up, would you? I’m sure you know how to do it better than he did.”

  Without waiting for a response, Chamberlain looked over at the other target. Chris, Damian forced himself to think. Another man. If he was going to be a human being again, not just a killer, he had to start remembering that other people were… people. He would deal with the implications of his life later. Now, he just had to… do this right. Baby steps.

  “Shame that fucking idiot didn’t have the sense to die on a plastic tarp. Well, I imagine you’ll know what to do about that after. Now, it’s time we talk.”

  But before Chamberlain could say anything else, he seemed to lose his breath. He started to cough, and once he had one thick sounding huff out of his lungs, it seemed to take over his entire frame. It bent him over so hard that he dropped back onto the bed, still sitting—but it looked like, if the bed hadn’t been there, he would have dropped to his knees.

  Damian heaved Alex over his shoulder and carried him to the chair. He dropped the asshole into it and secured him with real knots that would actually hold up. The chair itself was way too rickety to hold up against someone determined, but since he was increasingly sure that Alex wasn’t going to leave this room any more alive than his best man, he wasn’t too worried about it. Not for now.

  By the time he had Alex secure, Chamberlain’s coughing fit had passed. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and it came away bright red. Damian’s eyes widened ever so slightly.

  Chamberlain saw his gaze shift. The man nodded. “Sit down a minute. We’ll talk, and then you can kill me. The Santiagos sent you?”

  Damian didn’t say anything, and Chamberlain stood slowly, making sure he had his legs under himself before he tried to walk, then gestured towards a pair of high-backed leather chairs that looked like they belonged in some kind of old-fashioned drawing room.

  “Funny they sent you,” Chamberlain said as he eased himself down into the seat. “Those bastards never could do their research. That was why it was always so easy to get in their way, block them from whatever crappy plan they had lined up next. Like dealing with mobsters from some bad Al Capone flick. Ridiculous.”

  Damian didn’t exactly disagree, but he wasn’t sure yet what the play was. Did Chamberlain have a gun located somewhere near these chairs? Was there a recording device he could use to expose Damian’s irritation at the Santiagos, who had sent him on this absurd mission that was going to get him killed? Because he’d finally had to admit to himself—Todd played the dutiful son too well. Carlos was behind this, just as entwined as his stepson. Damian was supposed to die here. Whether it was a dastardly “he knows too much” situation, or a simple decision that he had outlived his usefulness somehow, the Santiagos expected to be done with him after this.

  It took another long moment, and then he decided the best way to cast his lot.

  “Can I get you anything? Water or something?” he asked, coming over to the chairs.

  When Chamberlain shook his head, Damian let himself sink into the opposite chair.

  “They sent me,” Damian said.

  And with those simple words, he cut his ties for good. If they were words he had uttered as he put a gun to Chamberlain’s face, maybe it would have been something different, but that wasn’t what was happening. Instead, he was making a confession.

  Chamberlain nodded. Of course, this wasn’t news to him. “What do they have on you?”

  Damian shrugged. “It’s a pretty typical story.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  It only took a minute, really. He had meant it when he said it was typical. But Chamberlain listened like it was the first time he had ever heard of a man who’d risked everything for someone—and ended up paying everything. But throughout, Chamberlain was nodding along, agreeing to everything that Damian said. He asked a question or two about Damian’s sister. Damian answered the questions about Alison carefully, nervous about revealing too much... but at the same time, he believed the instinct that told him this was his way out.

  After Damian’s story was complete, Chamberlain nodded again, his eyes focused on the middle distance. “Do you know why I say this is all irrelevant?”

  Damian shook his head.

  Chamberlain smiled, just a little. “There’s no need to murder me. Cancer’s going to take care of that in, hmm... three months or so, the doctors say. I think it’ll be sooner than that, honestly.” He shot a long look at Damian. “Maybe tonight.”

  Damian narrowed his eyes, considering the implications of what the man was saying. “Cancer?”

  “Yes. It turns out that prostate cancer is very treatable when it’s caught early. By the time it's metastasized into your lungs…” He shook his head. “Get your cancer screenings is my point.”