“It’s no problem?” Donovan asked, an edge to his voice. “Look the fuck around, there is a problem. I warned you that the moment you fucked this, I would pull your arse back home. Perhaps you thought I was kidding?”
“I can fix this, Da. I—” His lips snapped shut when Donovan glared at him, that look enough to make Reagan afraid to speak.
There was someone Liam feared, she realized, his father.
“Get to the bottom of this and clean it up, or I’ll do it for you.”
Donovan signaled to his men, all of which walked both ahead and behind him as they left, never sparing another glance to any of them.
It was then that Liam turned in her direction and realized she had witnessed all of that—and probably noticed the look of fear on his face when he addressed his father.
But before he could address her, Rourke spoke up.
“Fecking Declan Flanagan, that was,” Rourke exclaimed in his gravelly tone. “We need to put him in the ground before he can pull this shite again.”
Liam didn’t look away from her, his open expression shifting to something akin to a silent fury. “We will—and anyone standing at his side.”
Her brother. His name might have been left unspoken, but it hung between them all the same.
* * *
Toweling her hair dry, Reagan was both mentally and physically exhausted as she left her bathroom with a towel wrapped around her body and another in her hand.
After everything that had happened at the warehouse, the police sirens could be heard miles away and Liam wasted no time with having someone take her home, ensuring the police never got a chance to talk to her.
And during that long journey home, her thoughts had turned to Jimmy and the fact that she still hadn’t heard from him. She no longer doubted that he had gotten into contact with their old childhood friend, but she was more worried about just how involved he was with what happened at the warehouse.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow she would go over to his apartment and finally figure all of this out. There was one thing about ignoring her calls, but he couldn’t avoid her if she was camped out at his place.
Reagan was almost to the kitchen, thinking about the slice of cake sitting in her refrigerator that she was looking forward to when she noticed someone sitting by the window in her living room, shrouded by darkness.
Yelping in surprise, she nearly lost the towel that shielded her nudity. She didn’t even have time to do anything else before the man stood and stepped forward, looking positively annoyed…like he had any reason to.
“Niklaus? What the fuck? It’s not bad enough that you knew where I lived, but now you’re breaking into my place?”
He didn’t answer her question, not right away. No, his attention was rapt on her bare legs, slowly making their way up, stopping to linger where she had ahold of the towel.
Even she had a hard time remembering why she was angry with the way he was looking at her.
“Niklaus,” she called his name again, hoping to actually capture his attention this time.
“You could’ve been killed today, you know.”
She frowned, about to ask him how he could possibly know about that, but then she remembered the person in the mask. Now it made sense why his eyes seemed so familiar. “That was you? What the hell were you doing there? What…”
She was going to ask what the hell was going on, but then she remembered his sudden reappearance, and besides his fixation on her, he had questioned her about Liam, about what she knew about his family. He’d said he had come back for her, but now she was starting to realize that he wasn’t there for her at all.
“This is about Liam, isn’t it—the reason you’re back.”
“No, I meant what I said. He was the excuse, you’re the reason.”
She couldn’t begin to understand what he meant by that. “Sanitation, my ass. Are you like a damn spy?”
He shrugged—just shrugged as though that answer was entirely plausible. “Close, but I’m not affiliated with any government.”
What. The. Fuck. She was almost afraid to suggest the next one. “Assassin?”
“Depends on the job.”
Even though it was Niklaus, even though he had never given her the impression that he would hurt her in any way, a chill went down her spine at how easily he had admitted to that.
“What—”
“Mercenary,” he said carefully, his eyes scanning her face, what he was looking for, she didn’t know. “That’s the word you’re looking for.”
It wasn’t the first time she had heard the word though she couldn’t recall what it meant, or what they did exactly, but that was the last thing she expected him to be.
“Depends on the job, you said. So, Liam…he’s the job?”
Niklaus shook his head. “Not necessarily.”
“Then explain it to me.”
She could see a muscle working in his jaw, and she almost expected him not to answer, but he did.
“I can’t.”
Reagan could believe that, he had admitted, albeit vaguely, that he killed people for a living. Why wasn’t she freaking out? Why was she still standing there talking to him and not getting as far away from him as she could?