Although she didn’t want to look—didn’t want to know what kind of violent end someone had met with a short while ago—Jordana couldn’t keep her gaze from peering between the warriors at the slain individual on the ground.
She caught a glimpse of baggy, worn denim on the skewed legs of the victim. The brown loafers on the man’s feet were scuffed and aged … familiar.
Oh, no. It couldn’t be …
She was holding her breath. She knew that even before the ache in her starving lungs forced her to suck in air.
Even before she saw all the blood on the asphalt, and the object lying next to the body. An object that looked unmistakably like the dead man’s—
Before her horrified mind could confirm what her eyes were seeing, a deep voice was at her ear. “Holy hell.” A pair of strong arms swept her away from the scene, a firm hand holding her head against a rock-solid chest covered in black combat fatigues. “Jesus Christ, Jordana. What the f**k are you doing here?”
Nathan’s words were rough and dark, but his hands were warm and gentle on her as he held her close, keeping her face averted from the carnage. She didn’t want to acknowledge how welcome his touch was in that moment. She meant nothing to him, so feeling his comfort now only added a deeper sting to the shock she was feeling.
She pulled out of his hold on a ragged cry. “It’s him,” she murmured. “I know him.”
Nathan’s black brows crashed together over his stormy eyes. “Who?”
Jordana gestured in the general direction of the victim, too stricken to look again. “That man. I was just talking to him a couple of hours ago.”
Nathan’s scowl deepened. “You talked to him?” His dark voice went from concerned to demanding, almost bordering on suspicious. “You saw him today? Where, Jordana? When?”
“Jordana,” Carys said, walking over now with Rune. “What’s the matter, honey? Are you all right?”
“It’s him. The man I met in the exhibit this afternoon. He was alive earlier today and now he’s—” Jordana’s stomach lurched, choking off her words. Her chest ached with a sense of loss she could hardly reconcile for a stranger she’d known only a few minutes. “I don’t understand how this could happen. Why would anyone want to kill Mr. Cassian?”
A swift, uncertain look passed between Carys and the two Breed males. Even in her distress, Jordana noticed the change in the air.
“Mr. Cassian?” Carys asked gently. “Jordana, that man over there is Cassian Gray.”
When Jordana didn’t react, Nathan added, “La Notte’s owner. Until tonight, no one would admit to having seen the bastard or to knowing where he might be.” He slanted a dark look at Rune. “I guess the Order wasn’t alone in trying to track Cass down.”
The fighter held the warrior’s stare. “Like everyone told you, Cass dropped off-grid for a few days without warning. It wasn’t that unusual for him.”
Nathan grunted and turned his attention to Jordana. “Why was Cass at the museum today—did he tell you that? What exactly did he say to you? What did he want?”
Jordana shook her head, confused. She hadn’t known the club’s proprietor by name, had only glimpsed him once or twice from a distance on those rare occasions when she’d gone with Carys to watch Rune fight.
What she vaguely recalled was a man with a shock of stiff, white-blond hair and black leather clothing bristling with metal studs and buckles. Not the drab-dressed everyman she’d met today.
“There has to be some mistake. I don’t know the man who runs this club. He’s not who I saw in the exhibit. He doesn’t even look like him—”
“It’s Cass,” Nathan insisted. “He’d altered his appearance and stayed out of the public eye, no doubt because he knew the Order was after him. Maybe he did it because someone else was after him too. The one who chased him down and took his head tonight.”
Jordana winced at the reminder. “The man at the museum today wouldn’t have those kind of enemies. He talked to me about sculptors he admired, about art and some of the pieces we have in the collection. He seemed like a decent, nice man—”
“He was a criminal,” Nathan cut in. “More than likely, far worse than a criminal. If I’d seen him anywhere near you, it would have been my blade biting into his neck.”
She stared up into his sternly handsome face, into stormy blue-green eyes that kindled with the faintest embers of amber light. She didn’t know what skewed reality she had to be living in that would make the kind of possessive, violent remark he’d just made seem like a pledge of affection. Certainly not in her reality—the one she’d chosen to retreat back into after she’d let Nathan nearly seduce her in her building’s elevator.
He cared for her about as much as he might care for any of his bed partners here at La Notte’s sex dens. Possibly less.
Jordana forced herself to break his arresting eye contact. “If I’m supposed to be flattered that you would use me as an excuse to murder an innocent civilian, you’re sadly mistaken.”
His thundercloud eyes narrowed on her. “He was no innocent, Jordana. Trust me on that.”
“Trust you?” She scoffed. “I don’t even know you.”
She turned and started walking away, needing space to breathe, to process everything that had happened today. She felt sickened by the death of the man she’d genuinely enjoyed meeting—whoever he truly was. And she couldn’t deny that seeing Nathan again, even under these awful circumstances, had affected her more deeply than she cared to admit.