Page 1 of Fastest Kill

1

The bass hit Dario's chest like a second heartbeat, deep and thudding, syncing with the strobe of colored lights cutting through the crowd. Istanbul knew how to do nightlife, and usually he loved it.

The rooftop bar overlooked the Bosphorus. It was the kind of place where the cocktails cost more than most people's rent, and the people looked like they had walked out of a perfume ad.

He should have been having the time of his life. Instead, he was fucking bored.

Dario leaned against the bar, smoking a cigar and swirling the dregs of his whiskey. He had stopped tasting it two drinks ago and tried to figure out why his skin was too tight.

He had been here for three hours. He charmed the bartender into pouring doubles. He made a table of Swedish tourists laugh so hard that one of them had snorted champagne out of her nose. He turned down two invitations to dance and another two men and a woman looking for a hook-up, which was so unlike him that even he noticed.

Something was off. Something had been off since…

Since the wedding, his brain prodded him, and he told his brain to shut the fuck up.

He signaled for another whiskey. The bartender, a sharp-eyed guy who had clearly seen every kind of person drown every kind of feeling in this place, set it down without comment.

Good man.

Again, he wondered what he was doing there. Oh, right, Rodrigo and Giana were making heart eyes at each other. Or whatever you called it when two people who had already been through kidnapping, torture, and a full-scale assault on the villa decided they needed 'alone time.'

Dario had made himself scarce because that was what you did when your older brother finally won over the woman he had been obsessing over for six years. You got out of the way. You gave them space. You took yourself to Istanbul and said you would help the Edgeworths look for a deranged sorcerer. Then you found the loudest, most crowded club you could, because silence was dangerous.

Silence made you think, and that wasn't a good thing.

Leo was back at his apartment with Dante and hadn't been in a partying mood. His little brother had that particular glow about him lately—a settled look like he had found exactly where he belonged.

Leo had his computers, his husband, and Altun had offered to teach him about his magical potential if he wanted to learn it. He had stepped into his power like he'd been born for it, which, Dario supposed, he had.

And you've got a red silk shirt and a talent for small talk. Don't overthink it. It's not what you are good at, his inner voice sneered. It sounded way too much like his mother. Even death wouldn't stop Gabriella Colleoni from prodding him.

He took a long pull of the whiskey. It burned, but not enough.

The problem with being the charmer of the family was that it worked on everyone except himself. He could walk into any room and own it within ten minutes. He could talk his way out of a hostage situation, into a locked vault, and through a border checkpoint with expired papers and a smile. Gabriella had used him for it. Rodrigo relied on him for it. It was his thing.

But what was it, really? Rodrigo had the strategic mind, the ruthlessness, the ability to lead. Leo had the razor-sharp intellect, the assassin's stealth, and the hacking skills that made intelligence agencies look like amateurs.

Dario had... volume. Personality. A willingness to be the one people underestimated, because underestimation was its own kind of weapon.

The spare, the vicious voice whispered. The overlooked middle brother. Gabriella's afterthought, who could never be as useful as she wanted.

He killed that thought with liquor and sheer force of will.

A woman slid onto the barstool beside him. Dark hair, red lips, expensive perfume. She said something in Turkish that was an invitation. He turned the full wattage of the Dario Colleoni smile on her—the one that had been making women lose their train of thought since he was sixteen—and said something charming and empty that made her laugh.

And he felt absolutely nothing.

This is new. This is a problem.

He used to love this. The game of it. The electricity of a new conversation, a new possibility, the crackling potential of a night that could go anywhere. Now it felt like performing a routine he had memorized so long ago that he couldn't remember learning it.

The woman touched his arm. He let her. He even leaned into it, because that was what the role demanded, but his mind was somewhere else entirely. Specifically, it was at a long table in Tuscany, at a wedding reception, where a dark-haired woman with a warrior's build and a tongue so sharp that it could cut glass had sat across from him, drinking a beer.

Frederica Alesci saved you a seat at Leo's wedding.

She hadn't said anything about it. He hadn't made it a thing. He had walked into the church, scanning the room the way he always did, and there she was, sitting with one hand resting casually on the empty chair beside her.

When their eyes met, she gave him a look. The one that was somehow both a challenge and an invitation, daring him to make something of it while simultaneously pretending it meant nothing.