Nemesis: Katie's story (Heart of Stone Book 15) Read online

  “I’m not refusing to grieve,” I argued, the waffle forming a soggy lump in my mouth and refusing to find a route to my stomach.

  “Yes, Katie. Yes, you are!”

  Anger bubbled in my gut and I glared at him. “Shit, Mark. I’ve lost my aunt, my husband, my brother, and both my parents in the space of eight months. What the fuck do you want me to do?”

  His own temper flared and he leaned across the table to me, love and worry etched into every line on his handsome face. “Grieve, Katie. I want you to fucking mourn them! I want you to scream, throw things, have a meltdown if necessary.” His voice caught and sadness filled his eyes. Taking my hand, he sighed. “I want to see you cry. I want to see it all break free, and every bit of your heartache to escape with every damn torturous tear.”

  Shaking my head, I looked down, denying him my eyes. “I can’t.”

  “Why?” he urged. “Why?”

  Every part of me ached but the pain in my chest became unbearable. “Because it’ll drown me. Every tear will pull me under, and I’m scared I’ll not be able to breathe under them.”

  “Oh God, Katie.”

  Shaking my head harder and snubbing the desolation creeping up once again, I pulled my hand free when my phone rang. Mark cursed under his breath as I gave a sigh of relief, thankful for the diversion.

  “Graham?” I answered, pushing away the plate of delicious food when it curdled in my belly.

  “Got him, boss.”

  His simple sentence had the hairs on the back of my neck springing to attention. Every nerve ending in my body buzzed with electricity and hope. “Close?”

  His chuckle delighted my heart. “Oh, very. You’re not gonna believe this.”

  Mark was as keen as me when I put my phone on speaker.

  I scoffed. “Seriously, there’s not much that can shock me, mate. Not a lately anyway.”

  “Ahh, I think I can rectify that.”

  “For fuck’s sake,” Mark grumbled, “Will you just fucking fill us in!” Mark and Graham had a mutual dislike of one another. Their bickering gave my team both humour and irritation, yet, put them together on a job and they gelled solidly. Although they fought, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that they had each other’s backs. Whereas Mark was my muscle, Graham was my tech guy, while he was shit hot with a gun he was even more skilled with a keyboard under his fingers.

  “He’s on the guest list for Henry Stillman’s party this Saturday.” Henry Stillman was the new police commissioner, succeeding the very wonderful – sarcasm – Robert Delaney after he’d been sent down for corruption. Luckily, Henry had been on my payroll for many years but he was actually a really good guy. He was holding a high-profile formal dinner on Saturday, which I had also been invited to.

  Well, fuck, that did shock me. “What?”

  “Alias, Owen Peters.”

  For the first time in a long while, I smiled. “Well it looks like Owen Peters, or rather Tristan Hope, owes Thelma and Louise a dance.”

  Two

  Tristan

  I knew she saw me without her eyes even seeing me. She surprised me. I had expected a masculine, muscled bitch; after all, her reputation for being cold and ruthless would make anyone imagine her as I had. But she was stunning. Her long, wavy red hair hung down her back, the green backless cocktail dress that matched the deep colour of her large eyes revealing an intricate tattoo of vines and thorns that wove along the grooves of her mesmerising vertebrae. Her high cheekbones and pale skin gave her an ethereal appearance, and her small but pert breasts, slightly exposed by the low cut of the dress, made my dick hard. I was almost tempted to fuck her before I cut off her air supply. But that would only complicate things.

  Henry Stillman kept her deep in conversation, yet I felt her concentration on me as if we shared the same senses. I knew that her two favourite blades were tucked into sheaths held high up the outside of her thighs. My mouth watered at the sharp knives practically touching her cunt.

  “Sir?”

  I blinked, my attention interrupted by a waitress. She held up a tray laden with flutes of champagne, and seeing my confusion, she smiled. “Drink, sir?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “Thank you.”

  Her smile turned into something sultry, and I let my gaze wander down her curvy frame. Her large tits were barely contained within the tight white blouse she wore and her short black skirt struggled to cover her ample hips. She was definitely fuckable. However, it wasn’t a fuck I was there for tonight. Well, not with her anyway.

  She stared after me when I strolled away, not giving her the attention she was desperately after.

  Both Henry and Katie moved their gaze to me when I approached them. I nodded my head respectfully at Henry. “Henry.” I then slowly moved my gaze to her, a wide grin creeping up my lips. “Miss Fox.” Clinking my tongue, I sighed. “Sorry, Mrs Steed,” I rectified with a smirk.

  Her grin matched my own, something dangerous and lethal hinting at the darkness inside her. “Mr Hope.”

  My smirk grew wider. She was more than aware of why we were both there, the cold vehemence pouring from her impressing me. This was going to be fun. It was usually so easy, and so boring. But I sensed a fight in her that was on par with my own mercilessness. It got my blood rushing through my veins, the expectant dance between us one that would be beautiful and unforgettable.

  She turned to Stillman and smiled, excitement flashing in her striking eyes – eyes that I knew, long after her death, I would never forget. “If you’ll excuse me, Henry, I have to go powder my nose.”

  “Would you like someone to escort you, Katie?” His glance shifted between me and Katie, his brow creased with awareness when he felt the chill in the air around us.

  Her lips twisted with amusement. “I was rather hoping Mr Hope would do the honour.”

  Stillman’s eyes, surprisingly, flashed but he swallowed and blinked away his expression. “If you’re sure?”

  “Oh.” She chuckled, swinging her eyes my way. “I’m sure he’s just as eager as me.”

  I tipped my head, agreeing. “It would be my pleasure.”

  She slipped her arm through mine when I held out an elbow. A slight jolt went through her, the same time as a hit of something trickled its way into my veins. She appeared stunned for a moment, stalling and blinking but she swallowed and straightened her shoulders.

  “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Mrs Steed.”

  She scoffed, training her eyes straight ahead. “But we’ve already met, Mr Hope. The day you murdered my husband.”

  Sighing, expecting her words, I looked directly at her. “I only fired the bullet, sweetheart, my client sanctioned your husband’s death, not me.”

  She sucked in her lips and the tips of her teeth clasped the very edge of her tongue. “Is that what helps you sleep at night, telling yourself some utter bullshit?”

  “And what helps you sleep at night, Katie? After all, I would imagine your death toll is as heavy as mine. You’ve taken the lives of someone’s husband, wife…. Child. What makes you any different to me?”

  We entered the long corridor that accommodated the bathrooms. Katie’s eyes studied the area, and spotting a door to the left, she opened it and gestured for me to go through. “I can honestly say I’ve never taken someone out on their wedding day. That’s a bit… cold. Even for me.” Finally looking at me, she elevated her eyebrows accusingly. “Wouldn’t you say?”

  A large room opened up to us. Most of the area was covered with dustsheets, renovations turning the room into a bare and cold square, and if it wasn’t for the full-length window running along the left-hand wall it would be as dark as it was grey.

  “It’s just a job, sweetheart. I’d have thought you, of all people, would have got that.” I peered around the open space, silently liking her choice of place to argue our grievance. “So, how do you want to do this?”

  She nudged aside the material of her dress, the slit running up the side exposing her cream
y thighs. My dick twitched and a slight chuckle from her brought my eyes back to her face as she slowly pulled each blade from its sleeve. “I’m preferable to knives, but I guess you already knew that, Mr Hope.”

  “Please,” I smiled, slipping off my dinner jacket and taking my own choice of blade from the holster hidden behind my back. “I think we’re about to become very intimate, Katie, call me Tristan.”

  She edged to the side, her eyes fixed firmly on my face but her attention on every part of my body. She was skilled, that much was obvious. But then, she was the daughter of the notorious Mason and Ava Fox, her reputation for cruelty making me hungry to get started.

  Her brow creased a little, and she twisted her lips in thought. “One question before we start.”

  I nodded, allowing her request.

  “I do wonder how you knew I would be here tonight.”

  I shrugged. “Tip off.”

  She hesitated, her teeth biting into her bottom lip as her frown deepened. “Yeah,” she said quietly. “Same.”

  She was twirling her blades in her fingers mindlessly, and we both locked pensive stares. “What are you thinking?”

  “Most probably the same as you. You don’t find it…”

  The beat of my heart stilled and every instinct inside me snapped to attention when, right in the very centre of her forehead, a tiny, but definite red dot appeared.

  “FUCK!”

  Her eyes widened and her breath caught when I leapt at her. As we both fell to the ground I hissed in pain when one of her blades sank into the flesh above my right hip after she mistook my lunge for an attack. Yet, when the bullet meant for her brain fractured the huge window and embedded into the concrete column she had been stood in front of, she gawped at me. “What the fuck?”

  Shaking my head, telling her to stay down, I scrambled along the wall, hiding from the open view beyond the window.

  “Bollocks!”

  “What?”

  She suddenly moved beside me, her eyes trained out of the window the same as my own.

  “There’s at least four.”

  “We’ve been set-up.”

  “Obviously,” I growled, angry with myself that I hadn’t seen it. The tip-off shouldn’t have been so easy; the information not that readily shared.

  “Two for one,” I mumbled when it became apparent whoever wanted us both dead had found the perfect opportunity.

  Katie pulled a phone from her cleavage, the raw rage on her face making my blood chill within the warmth of my veins. I was wrong about her. She wasn’t tough. She was dangerous, and very deadly.

  “Graham, need a way out. Quick.”

  She nodded, her eyes searching the room before settling on a vent situated high on one wall.

  She took my hand, grabbing at me and pulling me across the room behind her.

  “St Thomas’? The church on French Street?” she asked into the phone as she gestured for me to lift her up to the panel. “Right. Meet you there.”

  Her tiny frame was easy to lift, and I couldn’t help but grin to myself when the angle at which I boosted her up brought her tiny backside in line with my face. She smelled delicious; a mixture of raw sex, all woman, and subtle vanilla. One quick flip and, especially with the cut of her dress, I could have her cunt embracing my face and her taste on my lips. I had trouble holding back the groan when my balls throbbed in need.

  She ended the call and tucked her phone back inside the top of her dress. “Fuck,” she hissed when it became clear the fixed vent cover was not going to budge, and begrudgingly I lowered her feet back down to the ground. Taking out her phone again, she was once again listening to orders and nodding her head.

  She led me back out into the corridor, to the end, where a door, locked by a keypad, halted our escape. “You linked me in, Gray?” she spoke sternly but affectionately into the phone.

  Almost immediately, the locked door pinged and it swung open in front of us. We advanced into a large room and the door relocked behind us.

  “Remind me to give your guy a fucking kiss.”

  She chuckled. “He’d probably accept.”

  Nodding, silently answering her man directing us out of the building we’d been easily trapped in, she ran towards another door. As if by magic, it opened to us and, yet again, locked itself behind us, stopping any chasers we may have inside the building.

  “Any ideas who wants your ass?” she asked as we plunged down a concrete staircase. “Other than me, and most probably a million others,” she added with a laugh. Her steps were silent and it occurred to me she’d ditched her heels somewhere between the main room and the staircase, and I hadn’t even noticed. That angered me. I was usually alert, and it was something so minor that made me curse my sloppiness.

  Scoffing, I fled down each step with her. “I’m sure the target was on your head, sweetheart.”

  “But why just me?” she asked, not even out of breath as we jumped down each small group of stairs. “It’s pretty obvious they wanted us both together.”

  “Hmm.” That thought had occurred to me. A thought I didn’t like. Someone had got one over on me, and if it hadn’t been the target on Katie’s forehead, then I would have thought she’d brought back-up with her. Yet, she didn’t seem like the type of woman reliant on others, or to cheat, so to speak. She liked to sort out her own problems. Me being one of them.

  We broke through a metal door, the hit of fresh air telling me we’d made it out of the building.

  Except, victory didn’t have a chance to settle in my gut, when the click of not one but five guns, made my breath catch.

  “Fuck!” was the last thing I heard from Katie’s mouth before the world went black.

  Three

  Katie

  “You know I wouldn’t have ever survived this life without you, Sis.”

  The shimmer of tears in George’s eyes made my heart panic, yet I couldn’t move. My feet felt heavy and rooted to the floor, my body locked down with them when he smiled at me. A smile I would never forget.

  “I love you. I always have, and I know, wherever this takes me, that I’ll love you there too.”

  “George.” His name on my lips, gasped in a whisper, sounded hollow yet full of so much sorrow.

  My head shook when his smile grew into a huge, happy grin, his eyes twinkling with life for the first time in a long while.

  “Forgive me,” he whispered.

  Then he nodded once, thrust the gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger.

  The ear-splitting scream jolted me from the darkness of my nightmare into a very different darkness. Stiffness coated my muscles and my head throbbed, forcing a reluctant groan from me.

  “Katie?”

  Confusion rendered me mute, the aftereffects of my dream lingering in my throat and making it difficult to breathe.

  “Katie?”

  His voice was stern, his concern, or maybe just puzzlement, making me turn my head in the blackness to find him. Shadows, edges, and the faint haze of something foggy clouded my vision but I managed to seek out his silhouette a few feet from me. “Hope?”

  “You okay?”

  Was I? “Yeah,” I answered impulsively. Because I was always okay. Always.

  “You screamed.” The faint quiver in his voice told me he was in pain, and I frowned.

  “Are you?”

  “Am I what?”

  “Okay?”

  I tried to move and the burn in my shoulders caused me to hiss. My wrists were tied behind me, the cold feel of metal telling me I was secured to a pole of some sort. My arse ached, the cold concrete floor harsh and unforgiving. My face felt sticky, most probably from the trickle of dried blood, and my teeth slightly sunk into my swollen lip.

  “I’m good,” he answered almost as mechanically as I had. “Are you hurt?”

  “Nothing major. Where the fuck are we?”

  He sighed. “No – fucking – idea. But I know why.”

  My attention peaked, moving aside the hazine
ss in my head, and I mumbled a question to his statement as I tried to shift into a comfier position. It was hopeless, the tight restraints not giving me any leeway to ease the ache in my muscles.

  “Henry Stillman.”

  I stilled, confused. “What about him?”

  “He’s the reason we’re here.”

  I scoffed, and if my head wasn’t so sore I’d have shaken it. “Why the hell would Henry do this?”

  “Seriously?” he snorted, the sound of his disdain angering me. “Are you that stupid?”

  The white wrath my father had been famous for started to ooze from my pores, hardening me from the inside out. “Watch your fucking mouth!”

  “They were his men, Katie! Have you no idea who Henry Stillman is?”

  We both froze when the sound of locks disengaging and metal scraping filled the silence. Light burst into my sore retinas and I squeezed my eyes closed against the scorch.

  “Ladies.” It was Henry’s voice, his slow drawl, and even though I couldn’t yet see him, I knew for definite it was him.

  “Henry?”

  Finally prising my eyes open and blinking against the light, I shuffled back in surprise when Henry’s face appeared an inch from my own.

  “Aww the beautiful Miss Fox. What have they done to you?” The humour in his voice was as loud as the thud of my pulse in my ears. “I told them to tread carefully with you.” He tutted, and then sighed. “I shall have to have words.”

  Laughing, he suddenly stood up and tipped his head at me, his eyes narrow as he studied me. He was still dressed in the tux he wore to his party and I was surprised by how pristine he looked after all the dust floating around in the glow from the light.

  “What’s going on, Henry?”

  As if he deliberately didn’t want to answer my predictable question, he spun on his heels, his polished shoes squeaking on the hard floor, and turned to Hope who was captured by chains that hung between two concrete columns. His white dress shirt was saturated in blood, the material sticking to his body and exposing each ridge of hard muscle.