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CHAPTER 19

RAIDEN

We’ve been going at it for a month now, and it’s the best fun I’ve ever had. And I don’t mean fucking like rabbits. Though we’ve more than been doing that, too. I mean, showing up at each other’s hits and taking the fucking limelight.

My job has always been something that I’m just good at. It’s never been something that I actively look forward to. Until now. The idea of Kiara showing up just to fuck with me shouldn’t satisfy me this way, but it does, and I’m fucking obsessed because she wouldn’t come if she didn’t care. I’m living rent-free in that pretty little head of hers, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Kiara St. James doesn’t waste time on things that don’t matter, and I . . . I matter more than she will ever care to admit.

Fuck, she’s stubborn. The way she tells me that she hates me whilealso screaming my name. There’s simply nothing like it.

Though one thing is for sure, over this past month, I’ve been able to redeem myself, leaving my treasured rifle in my storage unit, and as she calls it, getting my fucking hands dirty.

And that’s exactly what I’ve done, over and over again.

At first, she claimed I’d gotten lucky, that my first couple of steals came down to nothing but sheer timing. After the fourth and fifth time that I’d consecutively and effortlessly stolen her hits, she started to realize that maybe this isn’t dumb luck, and that I simply am that good. Hell, good enough to rival that beloved legend of hers, the Iron Viper.

It’s actually been great heading back to basics. It’s forced me to tighten up on skills I haven’t visited in a while, but just like muscle memory, it all came back in screaming 4K color. Don’t get me wrong, Kiara St. James is a beast in the game, and she has more than bested me on multiple occasions, but I wouldn’t be lying if I said I tried extra hard to win. I love watching the way she loses her shit, and when she’s ready to work out those frustrations on my cock? I’m absolutely here for it. Though it’s a two-way street. If she wins, she wants to celebrate on it too, so I’m truly getting the best of both worlds. Either way, we both win.

She underestimated me, but I underestimated her as well. We’ve taken every single job that has come under our radar—even the smaller jobs we have no business wasting our time on—just for a chance to best each other, and I saw from the get-go just how incredible she was. There’s no denying that she is one of the best in the industry, butI didn’t truly understand just how good she was until I watched her effortlessly kick my ass. Over and over again.

And it’s not just her physical skills that have blown me the fuck away. It’s her ability to read a situation, to look at a target and know exactly why their time is up, to sit down with her laptop and follow the crumbs until she has exactly what she wants.

There’s no stopping Kiara St. James, but that doesn’t mean she’s better than me. That’s a hill I’ll die on, simply because it grates on her nerves to know it.

As for how I feel about that little firecracker who lives next door and flips me off every chance she gets? I’m already way beyond falling for her. And it’s a fucking problem. A big one.

I think she knows, and she keeps her distance as much as she can, because us together, it doesn’t work. It can’t. We can’t be together without putting the other at risk. That’s just how it works in our world. There’s no way that we get a happy ending. It’s simply not possible. Not unless one of our heads is on a stake, and I won’t put her in that kind of danger.

Together, we’re too much of a threat. If our agencies were to find out . . . fuck. It’s over for us. And I don’t just mean this relationship.

Our worlds would crumble. Any mention of our names would be scrubbed from existence. We would simply cease to exist. And when there’s a woman like Kiara St. James living next door, that’s not an outcome I’m willing to accept. So for now, we remain as is. Just two neighbors who believe each other’s cover story. She’s a travel blogger,and I’m a boring international sales rep.

My phone chimes, and I pounce like an animal on crack, barely gazing at the job before hitting accept and taking it off the roster, silently smirking to myself because I got in first.

“Fuck!” Comes through the thin walls, and my smirk widens as I immediately take off.

My feet pound against the hardwood floors, flying out of my apartment, not even bothering to lock up behind me. What’s the point? The only person who’s going to go in there is Kiara, and all she’s going to do is leave another trigger bomb. Only, instead of filling it with explosives, she filled it with red paint. I guess that’s what I get for beating her at her own game, but it’s not my fault that her target may have been given the heads-up on the hit and was lured to another location. Sure, I was the one to take him out, but it was an honest coincidence. I have no idea how her target just happened to wander into the very estate where I just happened to be spending my afternoon.

Kiara wasn’t very thrilled about that one, but I sure enjoyed it. I also enjoyed the thorough sexual takedown I’d earned myself afterward. Let me tell you, that woman sure knows how to get a man on his knees. Anything she wants, I’d give her without hesitation. If she wanted me to crawl through lava with my cock dragging against the hot coals simply for the chance at getting between those perfect thighs . . . fuck. I’ll do it.

Whipped doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Racing out to the street, I cut through traffic and fly down the block before finding the ridiculous rental car I’ve been rocking for the past few weeks. After the car wars took a turn for the worse, we ended up thoroughly destroying two perfectly good cars.

My Audi ended up hanging from a chain off the edge of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, just dangling there like it had nothing better to do, and even weeks later, I still can’t figure out how she pulled it off, let alone managed to drive it across the state and get back without me noticing.

Kiara’s Lamborghini, on the other hand, suffered an unfortunate incident when it accidentally drove itself onto a cargo ship, which is due to arrive at the Kerguelen Islands, somewhere in the Southern Indian Ocean, roughly this time next year. It’s a real shame, especially considering the abundance of weapons she still had stored in the trunk. It’s even more of a shame considering there are no flights in or out of the Kerguelen Islands, and the only way to get it back would be to put it back on another cargo ship.

Diving into the driver’s seat of my rental, I take off toward my storage unit, already searching for details of my newest target.

Alistair Montague Vale. Eight-million-dollar payout.

I scoff. Apparently the bastard insists on using all three names. He’s probably the type to get his initials monogrammed onto his briefcase and cufflinks. Sounds like an egotistical, elitist fuck to me.

Alistair is a strategic wealth architect. By day, he wines and dines his ultra-high-net-worth clients, and by night, well . . . Alistair sure hasbeen a naughty boy. He specializes in filtering money into offshore accounts, laundering through boutique art auctions, and manipulating cryptocurrency pump-and-dump rings. He truly is a stand-up man of the community.

This target isn’t a physical threat. Taking him out should be relatively easy, depending on his location and current security setup. He’s a social threat and has the ability to bring down multiple heavy hitters. He also has a big mouth, which is exactly how this contract came through.