Killing had never particularly bothered Andrés, but he preferred not having to eliminate people he'd worked with. It meant he'd messed up somewhere. He didn't like the reminder, nor to resolve what boiled down to a personal problem with such extreme measures.

Still, the job was done, Chi would be safe, and the immediate threats to both his business and his control of London had been removed. Imogen's blood had bought him some breathing room to spin this to Liv. She might even be happy. Imogen's gone, her brother is safe. Not a bad day of work.

Aguilar approached, kneeling to check both bodies for a pulse before nodding a confirmation. Andrés started giving orders for a cleanup.

A metallic screech ripped through the room. The sound was immediately followed by a resounding clang and an all-too-human yelp from the adjoining room.

They had a witness.

Part of Andrés was infuriated by his team's failure to secure the warehouse, while the other part settled into the cold focus required for a hunt. Aguilar was already on his mobile, barking orders.

"Urrego and his guy are covering the north and west exits," Aguilar confirmed, already turning away. "I'm joining James on the east."

"I'll take the south. And, Aguilar." He waited until his man paused and met his eyes. "We catch them, or we don't leave. Understood?" he asked in a hard voice. At Aguilar's nod, Andrés turned away. As soon as he was outside he sprinted to approach the rear exit from the building's exterior.

He reached it just in time. Urrego had herded their prey straight to him, and he opened the door as their interloper approached at a run. A smaller body crashed into him and he got an impression of blue in the dark corridor as he took a glancing strike to his ribs.

Ignoring the pain, Andrés leapt forward and made a grab. Catching a slim waist, he quickly clapped a hand over a mouth opening to scream. His prey struggled and kicked, making outraged, feminine-sounding noises before trying to break his nose with a backward headbutt.

"Hijo de puta," he snarled, struggling to hold onto the wildcat. "I knew I was being followed. Who are you? One of Imogen's?"

The faintest whiff of amber and orange flower met his nostrils as James shouted, "Do you have her?" and clicked on a flashlight.

Her. A woman wearing Liv's perfume, kicking and fighting. He knew the play of muscles under his hands. Knew them intimately, although his mind screamed a rejection.

Oh, fuck.

Before Andrés could answer, Aguilar said, "Fuck, isn't that the hacker?" He stiffened, almost freezing in shock before he released her.

It couldn't be. Liv had left and gotten on the Tube...hadn't she?

Apparently not. A roaring started in his ears as Andrés watched Liv trip on her own feet before catching herself against the wall and turning around. James turned the light on her face, and it was unmistakably the last person he'd expected or wanted to see here.

He swore, pinching the bridge of his nose. Explaining himself had already been a difficult proposition. Now she'd seen him gunning down a rival.

"I didn't see anything," Liv panted, eyes too wide as she glanced between him and his men. The lie wasn't the least bit convincing, and the similar words of all the now-dead witnesses who had come before her echoed in his mind.

Cramming his rising panic into a small corner of his head, he forced himself to find reason. A smile slid across his face unbidden, and fear made her swallow as she froze in place. She'd always been able to read him better than most, and from the stiffening of her posture she recognized the threat.

"You wouldn't have said that if you hadn't, and you wouldn't have run," he pointed out, hearing his own voice come out in a tone both gentle and hard as steel.

He watched her flick her gaze at Aguilar and back to him, watched rage replace fear. As she launched forward, swearing, to shove him, Andrés remembered her struggles the first time he'd tied her up. Remembered wondering if her bedroom defiance would translate to the same in real life if her back was against the wall.

It did. His little bird was a kestrel, and she had talons.

"Fuck you!" She exploded forward to shove him. She clearly expected to die, and intended to go defiantly. "You fucking liar! Is this what you were after the whole time? Huh?"

Not quite, not if you fly away again, he thought, a hint of sadness breaking through the cool distance. Cillian's words rang in his head like funeral bells as he signaled Aguilar and James back and stepped away from her.

You haven't told her who you are or what you do.

Falling back on your old tricks, hey?

It will all go tits up with a bang.

The bartender's prediction was playing out a little too literally for comfort.

Reason, he needed to reason with Liv. She was logical and unusually open-minded. Maybe he could still salvage this.

"What I want is to carry out business in peace," he began, hoping he sounded soothing. "Imogen is bad for business and wouldn't leave me be." Ah. There was something else to this; it wasn't just the murders that had her angry. "And I never lied. I just didn't tell you everything."

She wasn't having it. "Lie of omission."

Andrés wished her stubbornness hadn't decided to flare up in this particular moment. His men had to be wondering why he didn't just kill her and get on with it.

Just do it. Imogen and Bruno are dead and it's for the best. One more and you can go home, an emotionless whisper coaxed. He scrabbled for control, for focus. The lying seemed to be her hangup, so he'd address that first. He didn't want to kill her, not the first person who really seemed to understand and complement him.

Not the one he'd fallen in love with.

"So I should tell a vigilante hacker whose day job is working for the government all of my dirty little secrets?" he asked neutrally. Questions tended to be more effective than statements with Liv, and now was no exception. Her body language relaxed, then closed as she crossed her arms and went from offensive to defensive. "I thought we had something," she said to her boots. "Why didn't you trust me?"

Aguilar and Urrego don't need to hear all this, he thought with a mixture of anxiety for her words and annoyance at their audience. She jumped when he waved his people further back, giving them a sharp look to stay put.

True to her nature, she tried to fly while he wasn't looking. Not this time, little bird. Snatching for her, he caught an arm, tugged her close, got a solid grip on both wrists, and pinned her against the wall. They would finish this conversation here and now.

Again she tried to fight him. Part of his mind distantly whispered for her death, but Andrés definitely didn't want to hurt her and the nearness of her body was bringing him back to himself. "Don't," he said sternly, not wanting to be forced into harming her.

Her brown eyes searched his face in the dim light as she questioned him. "I won't just sit here and let you kill me," she said in a low voice.

She still thinks I'd do that? If he was going to, it would be done already. "I don't want to kill you," he assured her. I could never do that. "You're too valuable. And..." Shit, this was getting into the feelings he'd wanted to avoid telling her about.

Liv didn't let him off the hook. "And what?"

All Andrés could do was stare at her. How do I tell her? He couldn't avoid it now, and he looked off down the corridor to see what his men were doing. They'd secured the end of the hall, studiously ignoring what was happening. "I like spending time with you. I like...us."

At the root of it, that was why. Not because he particularly trusted that she wouldn't turn him in, but because she'd seen him. Not a murdering hitman, or a wealthy businessman, or anything at all other than him, and she'd looked at him like he was the best man in the world. That was why he'd fallen in love with her.

He felt her eyes on him as he leaned forward and rested his head against the wall, feeling truly lost. "I didn't want you to fly away again," he breathed, realizing that Cillian had been right in more ways than one. His not telling her everything's wasn't about timing, or details, or anything except for the fact that she might view him differently if she knew what he really was and who he'd worked for.

Holding her here against her will wouldn't fix the fact that she now knew everything, or at least everything that he'd put off telling her. Releasing her, he stepped back. If she hit his business or came after him, he'd take it as penance. Too late, he realized that she was the only one for him, and he'd fucked it up royally.

Liv's face flickered through too many emotions to read before she finally whispered, "I can't do this. I can't be with someone like...you."

The words hit him like a punch to the gut, but he knew he deserved them. It was what he'd been afraid of, why he'd hidden everything from her to begin with. "I'm sorry," he said, chest tightening.

She dropped her eyes again and asked, "What happens now?" in a careful, quiet voice.

"With Imogen gone, I can do things my way. Try to undo some of the damage she caused. Not just to me but to the city as well. Get some of the Bliss off the streets, for a start," he replied, striving for a neutral tone but hearing a hint of bitterness. He'd hoped she would come round. Maybe with time?

The speed with which she launched from the wall and into his face was startling enough that Andrés struggled to stay in place rather than giving into reflexes to address the threat with violence.

"You're gonna stand there and tell me you murdered two people for the sake of London? Are you fucking kidding me?"

He considered her, hands itching to take her under control as he forced himself to use his words instead. "Isn't that what we're both working toward? Our personal interests and vengeance? Don't tell me Lewis won't be safer with her gone. This was the best possible outcome for him."

She started to retort, then froze. Guilt stole over her features and her mouth snapped shut. What are you thinking, little bird? Guilt turned to horror, then to a twisted grimace suggestive of nausea before she said, "If you're not going to kill me, I want to go home," in a strangled whisper.

Andrés's past self warred with the present. Am I Imogen's hitman, or am I better than that? The present won. He moved out of her way, unwilling to give up on her yet. Let her fly, and see if she comes back one more time.

"I won't talk," she assured him forlornly as she stepped past. Her sad, quiet assurance did nothing to assuage his anxiety, but he didn't stop her. Trust and faith were the only things that could save this situation now, and he waved Urrego off when the man shouted "Seriously, boss?" at this unexpected turn of events.

"Go," he said with a nod.

Liv didn't just go. She flew.

Aguilar's footsteps provided a counterpoint to hers, fading quickly with the speed of her escape. His director said nothing, but Andrés could feel him looming. "I'm not finished with her, yet," Andrés said, turning to go and trying to figure out his next move.

"I bloody well hope not, or that's all of us in prison," Aguilar growled.

Trust and faith, Andrés reminded himself.

Andrés felt and ignored Aguilar's hard glare at his back as he returned to the main room to oversee the disposal of Imogen and Bruno. There would be an inquiry and he wanted to ensure it wouldn't lead back to him. Sloppy hitmen didn't grow old, and at thirty-two, Andrés had survived longer than many of those he'd known back in the day. Getting out of Imogen's shadow had helped, but being smart was more of it.

Liv's presence and the broken walkway turned out to have been a godsend in a way. Rather than having to risk taking the corpses to the river, he had his men shift some of the concrete flooring shattered by the metal catwalk's fall and use the rusty shovels still on-site to dig shallow graves.

The bodies were dumped in, and acid, stored here by Andrés years ago to cover up another hit, poured into the gunshot wounds. There would be no hiding that they'd been murdered if they were ever discovered, but the ballistics evidence would be thoroughly destroyed.

The dirt was piled back on, concrete shifted back, and the main crime scene destroyed by hacking at the bloodstains on the floor with the shovels and mixing the dust with more acid. The gun he'd dump in the Thames later after wiping his prints from it. This whole area would be underwater at high tide, due in less than an hour, so the river would gradually eat away at whatever the acid didn't finish. It wasn't a perfect crime by any means, but it would be confusing enough that he was confident of not being caught.

The work kept his mind off of Liv for a short time, but as he slipped away from the warehouse afterward his thoughts returned to her. Aguilar's glowering disapproval had been unceasing, but Andrés preferred it to killing her. The ghost of his past, still not quite leashed, panted in barely-controlled anxiety at the thought of an unaddressed loose end.

Agitated, Andrés strolled along the river, walking through Hammersmith and over the river to Putney as afternoon drew toward evening. He hadn't intended to go so far but he needed to think and Putney, with its many boat ramps down to the muddy riverbank, was as good a place as any to ditch the gun without being obvious about throwing something off a bridge.

Fearful as she'd been, Liv's fierce refusal to give up had impressed him. Suspecting that kind of strength in someone tied up in the bedroom was different to see it under the circumstances she'd found herself in. She had steel in her spine and fire in her spirit, the sort he now realized could never be tamed or fully molded. He'd made a mistake thinking he could manage her.

I did what I had to do, he thought, scowling. I didn't get this far by telling everyone my secrets. Liv's righteous streak had made her relentless against Imogen and KAP, so even if he hadn't been afraid of changing the way she looked at him, telling her who he really was would have been an unthinkable risk.

Cillian's words floated through his mind again. At this rate, it will never be the right time. He snorted as he pulled the gun from the small of his back with a hand wrapped in his t-shirt and skipped it into the river's welcoming dark waters.

Rising, he started heading back up to the road. If there ever had been a right time, it was well and truly gone now.

He didn't want to face Cillian, but facing the empty flat in Regent's Park or the one where the sheets smelled like her in Chiswick would be worse. Flagging a black cab, he directed the driver to Perdition.