Page 41 of Pretty Little Assassin

“That’s amusing since you literally accepted a contract to kill me.”

She’s not wrong.

“You accepted a contract to kill me, too,” I say mildly. I pull a tactical SOG knife out of my boot and hold it loosely. “Play the message, or we can see who kills each other first.”

She snorts sarcastically, but I smell the metallic distress in her jasmine scent as she presses play and the message starts rolling again on her phone.

Hello, stepdaughter, my dear.

I know you’ve been staking out the gala venue. I have eyes everywhere. Don’t you remember what I told you years ago? That this is MY house—the whole city, and now the entire infrastructure of the Primacy, too.

There’s nothing you can do that I won’t see.

And here’s something for YOU to see.

The video pans to an omega on the screen who's been worked over. Her mouth is bleeding; one eye is dark purple and nearly swollen shut, and she’s been stripped down to nothing but a bra and panties as she sits bound to a wooden chair.

Beside me, I can feel the coppery heat of rage seeping off Valentina’s skin as she watches her stepfather turn the camera back onto him and continue to talk.

Come to the gala. I’d like us to have a little family reunion.

If you don’t show, I’ll start killing one omega every hour.

The choice is yours.

Happy Valentine’s Day, stepdaughter

This time, when the video message ends, Valentina lifts the phone and slams it back down on the table so hard a corner of the screen chips.

“No,” I say, answering the question she asked before we played the message again. “I don’t think that you should just do nothing. But I do think that your stepfather is baiting you into a trap by torturing an omega on camera. He knows you will come running. That is exactly what he wants.”

“Yeah, and so what’s your point? Because that’s not just any omega, Viktor. That’s a VEIL omega.” Her voice is tense and strained. She spits her words between gritted teeth. I understand that fury.

I also know better than to give in blindly.

“It is my responsibility to ensure the safety of those girls. I don’t give a shit what you say; you’re not talking me out of going in.” Her eyes narrow and her scent starts to overpower the room again. “He’s using them to get to me, and that means their deaths will be on my head. I won’t let that happen.”

“I understand. But you’re not thinking clearly. He’s invited you as a guest, used leverage to ensure you attend, and definitely hit your emotional soft spots.”

“Are you really going to lecture me on the things stacked against me right now?” Her chest is heaving. And her lethal little knife is flicked open in her hand.

I want my cold and calculating ruthless little murderess back.

“No,” I answer calmly. “But I am also not going to stand here and watch you plan a suicide mission in real time. That won’t help those omegas either. If you die, their use to your stepfather dies too.”

“We need to be smart about this,” I continue. “He has been ahead of us the whole way.”

“I noticed.”

“He was out of prison before you noticed. He secured the Director’s chair while he was still in prison. And his boast about eyes everywhere is just posturing. He already had the advantage.”

She looks up.

“Donnie looped the municipal cameras. He must have hacked other surveillance.”

“He knows the contracts failed, and he knows we’re working together.”

She starts pacing, a tiny enraged bundle of fury.