“I can’t. All I know is that your actions attracted the notice of the very people you were supposed to kill, but you didn’t do that.”

“I haven’t finished yet.”

Jimena shook her head as though at a recalcitrant child. “You were attracting too much attention. That is why you were told to disappear. I did send a team to kill Joe Hunter because I lost confidence in you.”

“The ones at the diner? They didn’t do a very good job.”

She shrugged. “They paid for their failure. The one who survived? He won’t survive the night . . . I have already arranged that.”

“You have a low opinion of those working for you.”

“Only when they displease me. You didn’t find Bryce Lang and ultimately you failed to kill Hunter.”

“Like I said: I haven’t finished yet.”

“Oh, but you have.” She lifted a hand from under the sheets and waved it at Cesar Calle and his henchman lying on the floor. “This severs our contract, Rickard. You have led Alvaro Silva’s men to my home, and you have murdered the man who was financing you . . . it is over.”

“It doesn’t work that way. Only I say when it’s over.” Rickard put down his assault rifle and pulled his blade from his belt. “Not an ugly whore like you.”

A bullet had stroked her face, blinding her in one eye and cutting a furrow up her forehead to her hairline. She was permanently disfigured, but only when viewed from one angle: from her untouched side she was still incredibly beautiful. Not that he saw her that way. Jimena’s beauty might hold power over the likes of Cesar Calle, forcing the man to do her bidding like her personal lapdog, but to him she was just a hopeless bitch in need of putting in her place.

Deep in his gut he felt the stirring of the serpent. It was not a supernatural creature that infested him, but the expression of the rage and fury he held for all women. It was the culmination of the seed planted there when his mother had abandoned him as a child and left him in the hands of his brutal and sexually deviant stepfather. He had suffered terribly and for that he hated all females. And he had a desire to show that he was not someone a woman could disregard like he was garbage to be thrown in the gutter.

The serpent coiled and demanded release.

He lifted the blade.

Jimena laughed at him.

Rickard paused. “I’m going to kill you and you laugh at me?”

“Do it, Rickard. You will be doing me a huge favor.” Jimena allowed her hand to flutter across her body and down to her paralyzed legs. Then she reached up and touched the horrendous scar on her face.