My heart thudding in my chest was the only thing I could hear, and a part of me reveled in it. I was finally involved in some real action and I didn’t have to stay in the background and wait for others to resolve the situation for me.

Maybe Hugo shouldn’t have protected me so much, but he’d wanted more than anything for me to grow up into a person strong enough to defeat the Ezzatis, and for that, I’d had to stay alive long enough. If I was lucky, maybe I’d get to finally join my family. I blinked, pushing the dark thought away.

“You!” A shout made me jerk, and I raced forward because our intruder must have advanced more than we’d expected and had probably run into James. Shit. And James didn’t even have a weapon to defend himself. I’d been so worried about what could happen to me and who might attack me—my whole life everyone had always been concerned with keeping me alive and safe—that I hadn’t considered someone might be after James too.

One of Desmond’s men, perhaps, or a completely different enemy. Someone who might not have run away or who had passed our checks so they hadn’t been chased out of here or hunted down with the rest. Just because someone lived in the Ezzatis’ area didn’t mean they had any connections to them, and although many people with mafia connections were usually spotted sooner or later, that wasn’t always the case.

I reached the right room just in time to see James lift his hands up as a dark-haired man pointed a gun at him.

“You fucking traitor!” the man yelled. “You’re a disgrace for the Ezzati name.”

Neither he nor James had spotted me, but I was behind the intruder’s back and James had much bigger concerns.

“Is that a compliment?” James tilted his head.

“You became that bitch’s whore and for...”

I pulled the trigger. More than once. The guy toppled to the floor in a pool of blood. “Great. Now we’ll have to call the cleaning crew again,” I said.

James lowered his hands, his brow creased, and I wondered if he was bothered by what the man had said.

“Did he tell you why he was here? Did you recognize him?” I asked as I holstered my gun. It looked like this guy had been the only one who’d gotten inside and there wasn’t anyone else. But how had he known we were here? And what exactly had he wanted?

“No. He didn’t have a chance to say much, but he was clearly one of my father’s men.” He crouched next to the body and patted the man’s pockets. I realized the man’s gun was on the floor and I waited for James to pick it up, but he didn’t.