Page 26 of Pretty Little Assassin

“Donnie builds a false emergency extraction for the names in the directive. None of the real omegas move, but the digital trail makes it look like I panicked and decided to escort them to one rally point myself. She grins viciously, and I imagine that expression while her stiletto pins me to the couch. “If my stepfather is watching, his people follow the route and expect it to lead them into the rest of the network.”

“And where does the route end?”

She looks up from the screen, and nothing soft is in her smile.

“With me.”

In my mind, I flip her onto the couch so she's under me. Every instinct in my body rejects her answer. Tactically, it is the correct one.

“Too exposed,” I say.

“That’s the point. He needs to believe I stopped thinking.”

“We choose the location, control every entrance, and establish two exit routes before you appear.”

“Three.”

“Two you know about.”

Her smile sharpens. “There’s the paranoid psychopath I agreed to work with.”

“Your survival is now operationally relevant.”

“Careful, Viktor. You almost sound like you care.”

I blow her a kiss.

She returns to the message, her thumbs moving quickly.

“When his men arrive,” she says, “we leave one alive.”

“For questioning.”

“Eventually.”

The threat in that single word warms her scent again. My pulse answers before discipline can stop it.

“This changes the order,” she says. “We protect the omegas first. Then we find the missing stepdaughter and tear apart everything he built around himself.”

She does not need to persuade me. Her stepfather has turned the Primacy against me, threatened people under her protection, and made the mistake of assuming I would cooperate with my own execution.

“We secure the omegas,” I say. “We find the missing woman. Then we remove your stepfather.”

“‘Remove him.’ Is that what the Primacy calls it?”

“Prison did not hold him.”

Her eyes harden. “Good. Because I don’t want to simply snuff out men who think biology gives them the right to hurt others. I want to make them suffer, and I have a feeling you know exactly how to do that.”

“Indeed.”

The phone vibrates in her hands.

DONNIE: I CAN BUILD IT. DO NOT TOUCH THE REAL NETWORK UNTIL I SEND THE ROUTE.

Valentina reads the message, then slides Mercy from its sheath and checks the blade. “Let’s make him believe I panicked.”

“He will believe what we permit him to see.”