Page 24 of The King's Pawn

This time, the round punctured his forehead, smacked his head back against the tree, and left him slumped over, twitching.

“I’ve got you, Noah, hold on, all right? Don’t fall sleep. Stay awake.”

He mumbled something, but his eyes drooped. His soft breaths fluttered against my neck. Fuck, I needed to get him warm, fast.

“Better… dig… ’nother… hole,” he whispered, maybe meaning for him?

Fuck that, Noah wasn’t dying here. But Simon had. “Nah, let him rot.”

He trembled in my arms, so small, when he’d always been larger than life before. I retraced the tracks in the snow, carried him into the cabin, kicked the door closed, and laid him by the fire. I had to warm him slowly. Too fast, and his body would go into shock.

He bled from a gunshot wound in the shoulder, but the round had gone clean through. If I got him warm, cleaned his wound,he’d be all right. I needed supplies, blankets, might need to stitch him… I shifted to stand and his hand shot out and grabbed my wrist. He yanked me back down, eyes wide, pupils blown.

“Is my shirt… ruined?”

Hisshirt?! I snorted. “Sorry, baby, your shirt ain’t gonna make it.”

“Fuck.” He let his hand drop but managed a little tic of a smile. That smile told me all I needed to know.

Noah King was going to be all right.

CHAPTER

FOURTEEN

Killian

“I still think I should run,” Noah said, climbing from the car outside his father’s brownstone, blinking into Boston’s pale blue sky.

Running was not an option. There was a better way to end this and begin something new, for both of us.

Noah joined me on the steps. He was still pale, especially under harsh sunlight. It had been a couple of days since he’d been near death. The fact he was standing next to me at all was some kind of miracle. Although, I didn’t believe in God, or some divine being, shifting us around like chess pieces. But I had begun to believe in second chances in life, and love. I believed it because every time I laid eyes on Noah King, my heart tripped, my breath fluttered, and my thoughts got all tangled in the way the sun highlighted Noah’s messy hair, how his smile forever played on his soft lips.

“You keep looking at me like that, Killer, and we’d better scratch this meeting and go back to your place.”

I cleared my throat and pressed the bell. “We’ll get to that.”

“Yes, we will.” Noah licked his lips and gave me a savage once-over, reigniting a fire inside only his touch could quench.

The housekeeper let us in and left us in the living room.

Sunlight streamed through large sash windows, illuminating the old wingback chair. The room, like the house, was a slice of old Boston. It had stood for over a hundred and fifty years, as old as the Back Bay families. But the old ways were dying. Business was changing. I was about to make sure of it.

“My… son?”

Noah’s father stood in the doorway, wearing his suit, about to go about his day as the mob boss of one of the US’s most notorious criminal organizations. What he hadn’t expected to see was his son standing in his front room, back from the dead.

“Father.”

Val’s shock vanished too soon, and those shrewd eyes turned accusingly to me.

“Simon lied to you,” I said. “He was selling our goods to the Southies, using the docks to do it. He needed you distracted and me elsewhere while he betrayed you. Everything he told you about Noah sleeping around was a story, fabricated to undermine your grip on the business.”

The old man lifted his chin and straightened his cuffs. “I know.”

He’d… known? Before or after he’d ordered me to kill his son?

“You overstep, Killian,” Val said. “Noah’s fate is not yours to decide.”