Page 3 of How to Kill Your Rival

That’s enough of that.

I shove him hard with both hands, stepping out from between him and the wall while yanking my skirt down. He catches himself with one palm against the brick, breathing hard. Between his messed-up hair and the devilish look in his eyes, it’s a deeply delicious image. One I’ll tuck into the wank bank for later.

I shoulder my kitbag.

‘Have a date with your fist if you’re desperate,’ I tell him.

James watches me for a moment before tracing his fingers over the very evident bulge in his jeans. God, it’s like a bloody Tennent’s can. I swallow down the urge to beg him to let me see. I’ve given in to a relationship within the Death Council once, and intend to keep it that way. Don’t shit where you eat. And fucking my stepbrother, who’s a competitive asshat, would be taking a big ole dump in the worst possible place.

‘I will,’ he says. ‘I’ll be thinking of you the whole damned time.’

I turn and walk away, determined not to look back.

As soon as I’m out of the alley, the busy London street swallows me up into its glorious anonymity.

The trouble with James is that whenever we clash, it feels so bloody good. It makes me feel alive. In a way that crawls under my skin. James is a rival contract killer and a royal pain in my arse, and I can’t trust him as far as I can throw him. I did that once, and it broke my stupid eighteen-year-old heart.

I’ve got a Death Council full of douchebags to deal with. Despite my excellent kill rate, they still seek to undermine me at any opportunity. Hell, of my last five contracts, two had been killed before I even got to them. A mistake in the app that assigns us? Or something more sinister afoot? I don’t know yet, but I’ll find out.

I straighten my wig and set off for home, ready to wash off the day.

And perhaps spend a few minutes with a battery-operated stress reliever…

2

JAMES

Fucking underlings.

While the upper echelons of the Death Council are made up of contract killers, each family generally runs a criminal empire of some sort. Some deal drugs, pharmaceuticals, and otherwise, while others deal in imports or exports. All manner of things to maintain control or make money.

My family was no different, and neither are the Hamiltons. And that takes us back to the fucking underlings.

Allan and Dean in particular. They have nothing to do with the contract-killing side of the operation, yet they’ve been taking contracts all right.

The last contract they took was to kill a woman called Sarah Redland. Forty-two years old, primary school teacher, three kids, and an ex-husband who didn’t fancy handing over half the value of the family home in the divorce settlement.

Sarah Redland is dead.

And those wankers are going to join her.

The sky is as black as my mood as I trail through the junk-ridden side yard leading to the door. They are supposed to be working on repackaging exports, not taking contracts into their own hands.

Anger bubbles up in my chest, popping in my head and making me want to smash the two idiots’ heads together.

It’s not like I’m against killing. It’s my life’s work. But the Hamiltons, and I by extension, ever since my mum married Eliza’s dad, only dispatch the wicked. People who deserve it.

You don’t take contracts from just anyone. Divorce settlements or inheritance disputes are for the courts, unless the person involved is the scourge of the earth. The Death Council exists to separate us from the two-bit contract killers. The ones who will kill anyone for a fee. If you want someone dead, you’d better have a better reason than the cost of a solicitor.

Allan and Dean don’t have clearance to be taking contracts at all.

I pull on my gloves and take my knife from my pocket, flicking open the deadly blade and setting my shoulders.

It would be ideal if both of them could be sorted out one at a time, but I know they entered the building together, and that neither has come out.

More than anything, I want to do Evan and Eliza proud. My dad was on the Death Council himself before he died, and his place went to me. But we were a much smaller operation than the Hamiltons, and I’d always dreamed of being in a family like theirs.

Eliza has worked twice as hard as anyone else at that table for half the recognition, and she does it with glee. Fraser, while barely out of his teens and more likely to take the piss than be serious, would die for his family before he’d see anyone say a bad word about them.