“Do I have any other choice? I’m almost twenty hours into this mission and the only time I’ve even been in the same room with the target is when I shook her hand at that damned party, in front of two hundred other people.”

Aaron shrugged and sipped from his cup, then swore beneath his breath when he burned his mouth. “That’s an easy fix. Just tell Leah—”

“It’s Kori,” I corrected again, leaning back in my chair.

“Fine. Tell Kori that you want to meet some of your future associates. Have her get a group together. If she’s any kind of sister at all, she’ll invite Kenley, and you can get her alone and put a bullet in her head. Problem solved.” He leaned back in the chair, cradling his coffee and looking quite satisfied with himself.

An unexpected flash of anger licked the base of my spine. He wouldn’t be so indifferent if we were discussing shooting his sister.

“Yeah, that might work,” I snapped. “If not for the fact that Kenley is under twenty-four-hour guard, to prevent exactly the kind of idiotic plan you just rattled off. I might be able to put a bullet in her, but not without taking a few myself.”

Dying for the cause was the worst-case scenario, and things hadn’t gotten quite that bad yet.

“Oh, right. You wanted to survive.” Aaron shrugged and blew over the top of his mug. “So what are you going to do?”

“The fastest, easiest solution I’ve come up with is to get Kori to bring her sister along on a tour of Jake’s side of town. Surely Tower will let her come without her usual bodyguard, since Kori has security experience and more motivation than anyone to make sure Kenley is safe.”

But when I thought about that for too long, I started feeling nauseated. This wasn’t some armed, hostile insurgent or terrorist. We were talking about killing someone’s little sister.

Kori’s little sister.

That part shouldn’t have bothered me any more than the rest, but it did. In fact, the more time I spent with her, the more the whole thing bothered me. But if I didn’t kill Kenley, Steven would die, and if she refused to give up on him, Meghan would die with him.

“Wouldn’t it be easier to shoot her in her sleep?”

“Yeah. If I knew where she slept. But that’s the bit of classified information Kori is least likely to give up.”

“Maybe so, but she’s not going to let you near her sister—even in broad daylight—until she trusts you completely. Can you make that happen?”

“I think we’re almost there.” I glanced at my hands, suddenly wishing I’d poured some coffee, too, so I’d have something to do with them.

Aaron set his mug down and cleared his throat to catch my attention. When I glanced at him, he frowned, studying me. “No, Ian,” he said, finally.

“No, what?”

“You know what. I know that look.”

“What look?”

“That look that says you’ve found a wounded puppy and you want to nurse it back to health. And keep it, like that dog that got hit in front of your house when we were kids.”

“That wasn’t me, that was Steven.”

“Bullshit. It was you,” Aaron insisted, and I didn’t bother arguing. “Korinne Daniels is no wounded puppy, Ian. She’s a fucking Doberman, and she’ll rip your throat out if she finds out what you’re really doing here.”

I forced a laugh. “I was in the marines, and you don’t think I can take a one-hundred-pound woman in a fight?”

“I think you won’t fight her, because you want to keep her, but she is not a fucking puppy, Ian. You can’t have her, you can’t keep her, and you sure as hell can’t let her get in the way of what you’re doing here.”

“I know.” But I also knew that Kori didn’t deserve what was coming. Neither of them did. I scrubbed both hands over my face, yet couldn’t scrub away the guilt.

Aaron set his coffee on the table. “Don’t lose sight of the goal here, Ian.”

“You don’t think I should feel bad about shooting her little sister?”

Aaron eyed me sternly. “Don’t do this to yourself. Don’t overthink it, and do not get emotionally involved. You’re here to save your brother’s life, and keep my sister from killing herself by trying to save him. I’m as sorry as I can be for your girlfriend’s impending loss—it’s the same loss you and I are both facing right now—but let’s not forget that this whole thing is Kenley Daniels’s fault in the first place.”

“I know.”

“And it’s not like Korinne is a Girl Scout, either. She’s got blood on her hands.”

“So do I.”

Aaron growled in frustration. “You killed men with guns, to keep them from killing anyone else. She killed people who got into Tower’s way. There’s a big fucking difference, Ian.”

Maybe.

Kori and I had fought in different wars, but I wasn’t naive enough to believe that her life in the syndicate was any less a battle than what I’d seen overseas.

“Look, we can argue about this all day if you want, but that’s not going to change the facts. Kenley Daniels has to die to keep your brother and my sister alive. Where does your loyalty lie, Ian? With your own flesh and blood, and friends you’ve known your whole life? Or with a woman you met yesterday?”

“Here. My loyalty is here. Why else would I be here?” Steven and I had had our problems over the years, but I couldn’t let him die, and that would have been true even if it wasn’t my use of his name that had gotten him into this mess in the first place. He was my brother.