The Princess (Filthy Trilogy 2)

“A hitman.”

“What?” I blink and air lodges in my throat. “How do you know?”

“There was video footage of a man at my father’s hotel door and—here. Walker saw him here.”

I take this news like a punch in the gut and I double over and lower my head to Eric’s shoulder. “Hitman. We’re running from a hitman.”

“No,” he says, cupping my face and tilting my gaze to his. “He’s the one who had better run because I’m coming for him and he’s going to tell me who hired him before I kill him.”

“Are you sure it’s a hitman?”

“Yes.”

“Is it Isaac? Is he behind this?”

His lips thin. “He warned me that we were stirring up trouble. So is it him trying to head off that trouble? Or is it the trouble he said we were stirring? Yet to be determined, but at this point, if my father survives, I’d expect him to be on our side and start talking.”

“You took him coffee, Eric. The police are going to blame you.”

“I’m willing to bet the drug won’t show up on any test. Not unless I’m being framed and that’s not likely. No one but you knew that I was going to my father’s hotel room.”

“You saved his life by showing up.”

“Yes. I did.” His lips thin. “I saved the real bastard of the family, but I considered letting him die.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because I thought of the moment I would have to tell you that I could’ve saved him and let him die.”

“Me?”

“You, Harper. My father owes you, not me, his life. If it were up to me, he’d be rotting in hell right now.”

A wave of nausea overcomes me and maybe it’s crazy, but I don’t feel relief. I feel like I just helped rescue the devil. I feel like whatever that man does from this point forward, it’s on me. If he hurts my mother, it’s on me. If he hurts Eric, it’s on me.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Harper

My mother.

That’s where my immediate worry settles. I grab Eric’s jacket lapels. “My mother. Will the assassin go after my mother?”

“You know I’ve got her covered. You know I know how important she is to you.”

“I know you do,” I whisper, aware that he lost his mother, that he knows how much I fear losing mine. “But we’re talking about assassins here, Eric. They came at me. They got to your father.”

“They won’t get to your mother.” He presses his hands onto the glass on either side of me. “You have my word.”

“The minute she knows your father’s in the hospital, she’ll come here. She’ll come right to the assassin. Maybe that’s the plan. Does she know about your father yet? If she does—”

“We won’t let your mother come here. And no, she doesn’t know yet. I talked to Savage on the way over here. Blake is controlling the flow of information, using their connections to law enforcement to help us. He’s talked to the police about the man he caught on film. They know about the safety concerns.”

The implications of that kind of intervention washes away any relief I feel over how well Eric has thought through my mother’s protection, as the true magnitude of our scenario starts to play out in my mind. “Are we all targets? Is that what’s happening? Your father was distracting us while he tried to fix what couldn’t be fixed because the union or the mob, or whoever they’ve pissed off, was already too angry? They now want everyone who is a Kingston dead?”

“That was my first thought,” Eric agrees, pushing off the glass to settle his hands on his hips, under his jacket, “but the mob wants to get paid. They don’t get paid if we’re all dead.”

“But the hitman was watching us,” I remind him.