Mutual Destruction

"Tell me you're not here for him."

Paloma Reyes smiles like she's already won. Celeste Arnaud reaches for the weapon hidden beneath her immaculate jacket.

Of course she is.

Celeste has built her life around precision. As one of the Meridian Compact's most reliable cleaners, she survives by controlling every variable, leaving nothing behind, and never giving anyone enough of herself to use against her.

Then Paloma keeps getting in the way.

Paloma Reyes is everything Celeste refuses to be: reckless, loud, impossible to predict, and far too entertained by the fact that they have been hired by rival criminal organizations to eliminate the same man. Where Celeste plans three exits, Paloma invents a fourth on the way down. Where Celeste demands professionalism, Paloma responds with sabotage, stolen weapons, terrible jokes, and an alarming interest in finding out exactly how far she can push the beautiful woman trying to ruin her contract.

Their target is Gideon Rusk, an international financier whose money connects some of Veyra's most dangerous people. Killing him should be simple.

It isn't.

Every failed attempt drags Celeste and Paloma deeper into a neon-soaked world of luxury hotels, private clubs, rain-black alleys, hidden accounts, compromised loyalties, and criminal organizations that do not tolerate mistakes. Soon their rivalry becomes something neither woman knows how to control-and being distracted by the enemy is considerably more dangerous when the enemy knows exactly how to make you lose focus.

But Gideon knows more than either assassin expects.

As secrets surrounding the contract begin to surface, Celeste and Paloma are forced to question who is really being hunted, who can be trusted, and why the people paying them seem almost as interested in controlling their assassins as eliminating their target.

Celeste has spent years believing attachment is a weakness someone else will eventually exploit.

Paloma has survived by leaving before anyone gets the chance to abandon her.

Neither woman planned on meeting someone dangerous enough to understand the rules she lives by.

And neither is prepared for what happens when wanting to win starts looking dangerously similar to wanting the other woman alive.

When two rival killers discover that the greatest threat may not be the woman holding the gun across from them, will they destroy each other first-or become the one thing their enemies never planned for?