King Slayer: A Fog City Novel Read online

  King Slayer

  A Fog City Novel

  Layla Reyne

  Contents

  About this Book

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  A Note From Layla

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Layla Reyne

  About the Author

  King Slayer

  Copyright © 2019 by Layla Reyne

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the copyright owner, and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review.

  Cover Designer: Cate Ashwood, Cate Ashwood Designs

  Cover Photography: Wander Aguiar, Wander Aguiar Photography

  Layout: Leslie Copeland, Les Court Author Services

  Professional Beta Reading: Leslie Copeland, Les Court Author Services

  Developmental Editing: Kristi Yanta, Edits by Kristi

  Copy Editing: Keren Reed, Keren Reed Editing

  Proofreading: Susan Selva, Les Court Author Services

  First Edition

  August, 2019

  E-Book ISBN: 978-1-7320883-8-2

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-7320883-9-9

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All person(s) depicted on the cover are model(s) used for illustrative purposes only.

  Content Warnings: explicit sex including mild kink; explicit language; violence.

  About this Book

  Never fall for a mark. Mission fail.

  Christopher Perri—a.k.a. Dante Perry—infiltrated the Madigan organization with one goal: vengeance for his murdered partner. Falling for the assassin at the head of the table wasn’t part of the plan, but Hawes Madigan is not the cold, untouchable Prince of Killers Chris expected. Everything about the newly crowned king is hot, and every inch of him eminently touchable… and off-limits once Chris’s cover is blown.

  Exposure couldn’t come at a worse time. Hawes’s throne is threatened, and Chris suspects the same person who killed his partner is behind the coup. Working with Hawes benefits them both, but Chris’s employer has other ideas. Dismantling criminal organizations is what Chris does best, and his boss expects the King Slayer to deliver.

  But Hawes is taking the Madigans in a new direction, one Chris can get behind, and the two men form a shaky alliance strengthened by the irresistible attraction between them... until Chris learns who killed his partner. Once he knows the truth, the King Slayer is unleashed, and Chris will stop at nothing to destroy those who betrayed him, including the king who stole his heart.

  Twists and turns—and cliffhangers—continue in book two of the Fog City Trilogy. Read at your own risk!

  To Erin,

  without whom Chris would probably still be badge-less.

  Chapter One

  Never fall for a mark.

  Undercover 101. Hell, avid reader 101. As many assignments as Chris had worked, as many books as he’d read, he fucking knew better. He should’ve recognized the signs and thrown up a wall sooner.

  Would it have mattered?

  Looking down at Hawes Madigan, naked and handcuffed to the headboard—his trim, hard body coiled for a fight, his blue eyes liquid fire, his cock still half-hard, and his sharp mind no doubt working overtime—Chris figured probably not. No amount of training, no amount of reading, no amount of proper carriage, hair ties, or weaponry would change the fact that the place he most wanted to be right then was in that bed—with the enemy.

  With the Prince of Killers.

  No, the king.

  Fuck.

  Chris blinked away the frustrating hunger, blanked his face, and banked his futile desire. It didn’t matter what he wanted. What mattered was the badge lying open on Hawes’s chest and Chris’s mission. The mission he’d spent three years preparing for and that had led him here.

  His last mission.

  The one that had come to a head yesterday and now required him to blow his own cover before someone else did.

  “Your partner?” Hawes said, his voice a disbelieving whisper.

  “Special Agent Isabella Constantine.”

  “Isabella. Constantine.” Hawes repeated Izzy’s first and last name slowly, as if wrapping his brain around the differences between fiction and reality. They were subtle—the first names so close, like Perri and Perry; Izzy’s last name an Americanized version of her family’s Greek one.

  She had taught Chris that lesson early on in his ATF career. Construct a cover close to reality—name, occupation, history. Less likely to make an undercover slip, more likely to fool a doubting target. She had been a good agent. The best mentor and partner Chris could have asked for. Bringing her killer to justice was no less than the person who’d saved his life deserved. And the key to doing just that was currently at Chris’s mercy. He’d never get a better shot, a more captive audience.

  “You’re going to help me find her killer,” Chris said as he stepped toward the bed.

  Hawes’s gaze shot to his, clashing and sparking with incredulity. He laughed out loud—the same harsh, bitter sound that had scraped over Chris’s bones the night they’d first met. “Are you insane? You’re a fucking fed.”

  “Since when do you have a problem working with a badge? Braxton Kane is the chief of police.”

  Hawes’s chilly laughter waned, as did the color in his hollow cheeks. “Did he know who you really were?”

  “No.”

  Hawes held his gaze, judging the truth of Chris’s answer. “I trust Brax,” he said after a long moment. “I don’t trust you.” Emphasizing the point, he yanked again at the cuff around his wrist, the other metal end battering the rail where Chris had attached it.

  Chris wrapped his free hand over Hawes’s cuffed one and waited for Hawes to still. “You trusted me up until five minutes ago.”

  “Five minutes ago, I thought I knew who you were.” Hawes arched and twisted his torso, casting the badge off his body and onto the opposite side of the bed from Chris. “Lies, all of it.”

  Gun trained on Hawes’s lower half, deterring any kicks or sudden movements, Chris released Hawes’s wrist and stretched over him to retrieve his badge. He pocketed it but remained leaning over Hawes, nose to nose. “Not everything.”

  Facts that were close to the truth, as Izzy had taught him, and emotional truths too, no matter how much Chris wished otherwise. Lies would make his job a hell of a lot easier, would make being done with this a whole lot less complicated.

  Heat, doubt, and hope flared in Hawes’s eyes, and the tension drained out of him—chin lowering, chest collapsing, spine hitting the mattress. An opening Chris’s heart rate ratcheted up to accept. Only to have the door slammed in his face. Elbow locked, wrist flexed, Hawes swung his left arm up and aimed the jutting heel of his hand directly at Chris’s temple.

  Concussion incoming.

  Chris batted down the attack and reared back, out of Hawes’s reach, fighting
the magnetic pull that had sprung up so quickly between them.

  Hawes was clearly doing a better job of resisting the pull than he was. Tender emotions wiped from his eyes, they burned with anger, hate, and betrayal. “I’m not fucking helping you.”

  Well, if that’s how he wanted to play things… Chris straightened, squared his shoulders, and kept his pistol at the ready, not trusting the assassin. “I have you on murder.”

  “I have the same on you.”

  “Self-defense in the act of an investigation.”

  “And mine wasn’t?”

  Chris couldn’t argue that. Jodie would have killed Hawes. He’d acted to defend himself, more so than Chris had in killing Ray. But Jodie wasn’t Hawes’s only kill. “Lucas.”

  Hawes smirked. “Lucas disappeared.”

  It was Chris’s turn to laugh. “Into the Bay, on your orders.”

  “I gave no such order. You were there.”

  “Explosives trafficking,” Chris countered.

  “You know I’m trying to get out of that business.”

  “But you’re not out yet, are you? You manufactured and, until yesterday, were in possession of illegal explosives, which you’d planned to smuggle to a new owner under the guise of a real estate sale. Did I get that right?”

  Hawes bit his bottom lip, as if struggling to hold in a string of fiery curses. The dam didn’t hold long. “Fine, haul me in,” he exploded. “I’m still not fucking helping you. I’ve done enough damage already. I’m not going to make it worse. Fuck, I’ll be lucky if Holt and Helena ever forgive me as it is.”

  Chris lowered the hammer. “Funny you should mention them. You know what’ll make things worse? The backup of Amelia’s flash drive. She told me where it was before you and Helena stormed in. I get a hold of that, and I’ll have everything I need to arrest you and your siblings.”

  As expected, Hawes froze, his struggle with the handcuff forgotten, Chris’s threat to the people who mattered most to him capturing all his attention.

  “You might not care about yourself, Madigan, but I know your weakness. That soul you can’t hide. The one that’ll do anything to protect your family, even if they aren’t exactly innocent either.”

  Hawes gulped and slowly cast his gaze down, eyeing Chris’s gun. Chris could swear he heard the brush of long lashes against pale cheeks. And again on the way back up.

  But that was impossible… Fuck!

  Realizing his mistake too late—that the faint, wispy sound had come from behind him—Chris shifted to defend himself. And in the next instant he was defenseless, the gun knocked from his grasp by a bare foot.

  “And we’ll do anything to protect him,” Helena declared.

  Chris spun her direction with a, “How the fuck—” but was cut off by Hawes’s, “Low, Hena!”

  She instantly dropped into a crouch. Metal clanked against wood behind Chris, and he whipped back around. Too late. Abs curled, Hawes was levering onto his shoulders and scissor-kicking his legs into the air. Not at Chris. At the exposed pipe hanging from the ceiling above the bed. Lofted as the bedroom was, Hawes had no problem reaching the pipe with his long legs, locking his heels around it, and—

  Fuck!

  Chris caught a face full of water, the dislodged pipe acting as a high-pressure hose. Spluttering, he raised a hand to protect his eyes and sidestepped the geyser. The crack of splintering wood had Chris dropping his hand and flinging off water, desperate to get clear eyes on the situation. Too late again. Hawes flung away the broken headboard rail dangling from the handcuff and vaulted onto his knees, while Chris fell to his, kicked from behind by Helena. He couldn’t catch his breath, much less make a move to get ahead of them, their coordination practiced and deadly.

  Helena cinched his wrists behind his back with a zip tie, then shoved him facedown onto the mattress. She scaled his back, light as a feather, lethal as a viper, then planted one foot on the mattress and the other on his nape. “Tell me right now why I shouldn’t break your neck.”

  Chris ignored the instinct to fight and forced himself to still. Grappling with Hawes was a well-matched challenge. Add Helena to the mix, take away Chris’s weapon, and it was a no-win situation, no matter how good he was at hand-to-hand combat. He had to be smart, had to use what he’d learned about the Madigans, and offer them something they couldn’t refuse.

  “I wasn’t lying about the flash drive,” he said.

  “We’ll find it,” Helena replied, then told someone on the other end of a comm unit, “Kill the water.” Holt, Chris assumed, had to be somewhere in the building in order to manually shut off the pipes.

  “Maybe you’ll find it,” Chris said, once the geyser quieted. His next words were aimed at Hawes, wherever he’d slid off the bed to. “And killing me is against your rules.”

  Helena pressed harder on his neck. “You’re a threat.”

  “Who is after the same thing you are.”

  “Let him go, Hena.”

  She backed off with a gasp. “Hawes!”

  Righting himself, Chris glanced across the room in the direction of Hawes’s voice, and immediately understood Helena’s change of tone. Hawes stood in the far corner, sheet wrapped around his waist, Chris’s gun in his hand.

  Chris stayed on his knees, intentionally at a disadvantage. Not a threat. “You won’t use that.”

  Hawes lifted his arm and aimed the gun at Chris’s head. No tremble, no hesitation. “Right now, you don’t know what I’ll do.”

  “Big H…”

  The quiver in Helena’s voice, together with Hawes’s dark words and steady grip, were indication enough that Hawes was close to stepping over his self-imposed redline. One Chris respected. Pulling that trigger was the last thing Chris wanted to goad Hawes into doing.

  “I’ll go.” Chris rested back on his heels, eyes downcast, chin lowered. He’d put his hands up too, if he could. “But my offer—”

  “Didn’t sound like an offer to me.”

  Lifting his head, Chris locked eyes with Hawes. “You need to know who is trying to unseat you. I need to know who killed my partner. We’ve worked well together the past week. We can solve this too.”

  “Get out, Agent Perri.” Flat. Cold. Deadly. Not a trace of warmth or any other emotion.

  Chris rose to his feet, and Helena perp-walked him down the stairs to the door, where she cut the zip tie with her knife. Chris held out a hand to Hawes, who stood behind her. “My gun?”

  “No,” Hawes said. “I think I’ll keep it. Might come in handy.”

  Chris hoped like hell it didn’t, almost as much as he hoped like hell Hawes stuck to his rules. Otherwise, there’d be no way out of this for any of them.

  Chris swung into the South Park loop and found a spot in the line of cars parked along the curb, backing the Hog in behind a hideously flashy Maserati. He killed the engine, dismounted, and rifled through the books and detritus in his saddlebag for his earbuds. South Park was only two blocks from Hawes’s condo; he couldn’t have missed much.

  Earbuds in, he opened the surveillance app on his phone and waited for the signal to connect. He kept his gait casual as he strode toward one of the perimeter benches in the bustling neighborhood park. As many times as he’d parked here the past week, the residents probably thought he was a new employee at one of the start-ups that rented space around the oval. Just another tech bro on his phone, nothing to see here, even if he did look half-drowned.

  The static in his ears resolved, and Chris lowered himself onto the nearest bench, listening intently.

  “Condo is clean,” Holt said, confirming Chris’s suspicion that Hawes’s twin had been on-site. Not directly in the line of fire—all three Madigan siblings rarely were, especially if Holt had his daughter with him—but nearby to help control variables and get there quickly for the debrief. “No devices I can find.”

  Chris smiled. His supposedly undetectable tech was so far undetectable. Good. That said, given the bug’s location, the volume of the voices
inside the condo fluctuated depending on its carrier’s proximity to the speaker. For now, it remained close enough to clearly transmit their conversation.

  “I told—” Helena started.

  “Don’t need to hear it,” Hawes said. “Already thought it myself. What led you here?”

  A thump echoed through the comm, something solid landing on a table or the kitchen island. Chris had to kick up the volume on his device, the voices farther from his bug, the carrier likely scared off by the noise.

  “You got the yearbook,” Hawes said.

  “And a lead on who was paying him.” Holt paused to shush Lily, who, judging by her cries, also hadn’t liked the sudden noise. Couch cushions groaned, and then a flurry of keystrokes followed. “When I couldn’t find Perry with a Y, I searched variations.”

  “And found Perri with an I,” Helena said. “The hard copy of the yearbook confirmed it.”

  “And his bank accounts are at a federal credit union,” Holt said.

  Chris pictured the giant man sitting on the couch, daughter strapped in the sling against his chest, laptop open on his knees, reaching around Lily to point to evidence on-screen that would confirm what Chris had told Hawes.

  “Because he’s ATF,” Hawes said. “Saw the badge myself.”

  “We figured he was a fed. Guessed ATF, but we weren’t sure.”

  “Regardless,” Helena said, “I got here as fast as I could.”

  “Thank you for the save,” Hawes replied.

  “You would have rescued yourself, eventually.” The smirk in her voice didn’t last long. “Given our businesses and past investigations, ATF made the most sense.”