Play Dirty (Wages of Sin #2) - Neve Wilder Page 0,5

instincts warred back and forth as Madigan clenched his fists until the desire to destroy the hotel room abated. Then, he calmly packed up his gun, dropped it off in his room, and walked across the street. He watched the main entrance of the hotel for an hour before returning to his own hotel.

Akil. The intelligent one. He’d managed to fuck Madigan one last time, and Madigan could almost appreciate the irony and cleverness, if it hadn’t cost him a hundred grand.

Grumbling and cursing the entire time, he packed and prepared to head back to the States, where he could bury his woes in a week-long bender of pure hedonism.

On the way to the airport, he made a phone call to his former mentor, one of the few men Madigan trusted completely. Soren only had seven years on him, but it might as well have been a lifetime of experience. If Soren had told Madigan to walk into a burning building, he would’ve done so without hesitation.

“I’ve already heard,” Soren answered. He claimed he was retired from the lifestyle, but he still had an ear to the rails, seemed to constantly know everyone else’s business, and still ran special operations on occasion, if he was intrigued enough by the objective.

“All that fucking time wasted. I could’ve done three other shit jobs for what I’ve just lost,” Madigan snarled.

“Then maybe that’s the lesson,” Soren said lightly.

“Ah, fuck off.”

Soren chuckled.

“So, who did it? I need to know.”

Soren was quiet for a long moment, then sighed. “I’m not absolutely certain, but if it’s who I think it is, you need to leave him alone. Azrael Malka. They call him the Angel of Death. He’s a lone wolf like you, speaks about a hundred languages. Incredibly skilled. Left alone in the same room, the two of you would tear each other apart.”

For the first time since Madigan had woken, laughter rumbled from inside him, tinged equally with bitterness and amusement that lingered through the entire fifteen-hour flight back to New York City.

1

Azrael

Azrael sat back in the leather office chair, hands folded across his taut stomach, staring at the back of Madigan’s head. He was most definitely not staring back. The tension in his neck and shoulders told Az it was a deliberate slight, possibly payback for not greeting him at the door when Az greeted Madigan’s friend, Jonah. Had he hurt his feelings? Did he even have any?

Az supposed he had nobody to blame but himself. He’d started this little game they played the first time they’d met. It had been a battle of wills from the moment Az had laid eyes on him in that hotel bar. To Madigan’s credit, it was long after they’d both gotten off several times that Az realized they were both there for the same reason when he engaged in a little post-orgasm snooping. But Madigan hadn’t found any humor in Az costing him a six-figure job. When Madigan returned the favor months later, Az was more irritated with waking alone than with losing the job. But it had reminded him to keep his head in the game and limit his distractions.

Az planned to do just that.

The small group of people sitting around the conference room table grew restless. People like them didn’t have much use for sitting. At exactly twelve p.m., the clock counting down on the large computer screen disappeared, replaced by an animated image of a young girl with snow white skin, inky black hair, and cherry red lips, dressed like she’d just stepped from a deck of cards. Az watched as Madigan looked to his friend Jonah and rolled his eyes. They both knew something about this.

Interesting.

A strangely robotic, yet childlike voice, reverberated about the room. “The Red Queen bids you welcome. Underneath your seats, you’ll find a list of names. Those on this list have been found guilty of committing unspeakable crimes against the innocent, and, as such, the Queen has demanded their lives as payment. A value has been assigned to each high-level target based on the difficulty of the kill and their standing in society.”

Az, along with the others, reached beneath his seat to pull free the manila envelope taped beneath. Inside was a sheaf of papers containing the kill list, each target’s value, and the proof of life the Red Queen required to verify the kill.

“What is this?” Mina Ramedi asked. She was the only woman in attendance despite Jonah’s sister, Sadie, having issued the invitation. Sadie and Mina had