Page 164 of Himbo Hitman
I don’t want to be reminded of that moment ever again. The whole run here, I’d been terrified I’d walk in and find him dead, and fighting Luther on the floor was only a step up from that.
I still can’t believe he took a bullet for me. He probably would have taken a lot more than one if Arlie wasn’t so fast and took out both Luther and the guy who shot Perry before they could react.
“What are you all doing?”
She pushes back from the desk and stands, stretching her arms out high. “Taking over. I’ve wanted Lethal Poison for the last year or two. Luther wasn’t running it right, too focused on his side hustle, and I’d learned enough to know that he’d moved into illegal substances.”
“Drugs?”
“He imports, passes on to a colleague, and then shares a cut. Or … he did.” She gets this wicked smirk. “Lethal Poison wasn’t part of the drug trade when I started here, or I wouldn’t have taken this job. It killed both my parents and was a firm line for me, so when I told Luther I wanted out, he blackmailed me. Told me Carson Alexander was too invested in my hits.”
“We should have guessed,” Everett grumbles. “All those rumors we heard about him … all started here.”
“This way was for the best.” Arlie leans against the desk. “If I’d known before, I wouldn’t have been able to keep him convinced I was loyal. Now, we can tell everyone that Carson Alexander wanted him dead, and who are they to question it? It’s not like Carson can come back from the dead and deny it.”
“That’s why you helped us?”
“If you’re good at something, don’t do it for free. This was our payoff. I didn’t know it would go down exactly like this—I actually thought Perry would be the one to kill him, which would have made things just as easy.”
My foot nudges the books Colin and Onyx are poring over. “What’s all this?”
“Creditors,” Colin answers. “It’s a mirror of the accounts my PI found with Yanni, only Carson’s side of things. I’ve been trying to get hold of Ryan Wing all day though, and he’s not answering …”
“Who?” Arlie asks, narrowing her eyes.
“He’s the man I hired to look into Yanni. Really good at his job, but then he just stopped taking my calls.”
Arlie grabs her phone and types something, then turns it to show a tattooed man with long hair. “Him?”
“Yeah, how did you?—”
“He’s dead.”
Colin’s mouth drops. “What? How?”
“I killed him. It was the first hit I took Perry on.”
“How do you remember that?”
“Haven’t you learned your lesson about other people’s business yet?”
Onyx sets their hand over Colin’s and shakes their head. “Let it go. For now, we have what we need.”
It takes my brother a moment, and I can tell he’s struggling with the unanswered question, and knowing that Ryan’s fate could have just as easily been his if it wasn’t for Onyx.
“What do we do with all this?” Colin asks, looking back at the paperwork. “It’s not like we can go to the police with it now that Luther’s been killed. They’ll ask questions and want to know how we got our hands on the evidence.”
“We don’t need to go to the police,” I say, still bitter over them not being the ones to find Colin. “We only need to go to Yanni. Carson’s gone now. He can’t hide behind him anymore.”
“Then … everything goes back to normal?” he asks.
Back to normal. That’s … impossible to think about.
“Guess so,” I tell him, and it’s like all the stress leaves my brother. “Do you want me to do it?”
He’s fast to shake his head as he takes another photo of the page in front of him. “I will. Well, me and Onyx. We need to face him, and you need to stay out of this mess.”
For once, I’m more than fucking happy to agree.
