by April Lust
“I know you’re scared. You probably should be scared of me. I’ve done some pretty fucked-up shit. But there are more important things right now.”
“Yeah? Like what?” Hannah asked. Her voice sounded louder and clearer. She must have stepped closer to the door.
“Like Alex,” Evan said. “Salvatore will never give up. He’ll never let go of his son. Salvatore never talked to me about you, but he did talk about his kid. He thought he was building a dynasty, you know.”
He could hear Hannah scoff on the other side of the door. “Yeah, right. Fucking pompous self-obsessed jackass.”
“Exactly. Exactly. So that’s why you gotta know that he’s never going to let go of this. He’ll hunt you with everything he has.”
She didn’t say anything in response. Evan guessed that he wasn’t telling her anything that she didn’t already know.
“You’re smart. You’re really smart. You were able to beat me when nobody has before. But you don’t have the sheer numbers that Sal has. He can throw everything at you, all the men, all the weapons, all the money in the world. You’re only one woman, Hannah. You need help.”
“And you’ll help me?” Hannah asked, but her voice wasn’t as mocking as it had been in the past.
“If you’ll let me,” Evan answered.
There was silence for a long minute before Evan heard shuffling on the other side of the door. Then, a second later, Hannah opened it, holding it to one side so Evan could step in.
“Thanks. Thank you,” Evan said as Hannah shut the door quickly and redid the locks and chains that kept the house secure.
For a second they just stared at each other. Evan wanted to know why she’d gotten scared again, but he was a little afraid that if he asked it’d piss her off. But then Alex, who was sitting on the floor in the center of the room, broke the silence with a weird-sounding burp.
“Sorry,” Hannah said with a shy smile. “I just fed him really quick when I got in the house.”
“I don’t mind,” Evan said, staring down at the little boy who was playing with the edge of his rug, until Hannah spoke again a second later.
“I’m sorry for making you talk your way into your own house,” Hannah said sheepishly, her eyes glued to the floor.
“Um, it’s okay,” he said. “But uh, why now? I thought, back in the car…” His sentence trailed off. He wasn’t sure how to say “you were beginning to trust me.”
“Well, I saw your guns,” Hannah explained, pointing to a far corner of the room, where four or five rifles were all stacked up next to each other.
“That’s not even the half of it,” Evan said with a laugh. “I got like twelve more in each room.” He saw Hannah pale in response, but he didn’t understand why. Is she scared of guns? Evan wondered. “Are you okay?”
“It’s nothing,” she said, shaking her head, but then she spoke again. “It’s just…well, I don’t like guns.”
“Why?”
She shrugged a little. “My dad…he used to hold them to my head as a kid, as a joke, you know,” she said. Her tone sounded casual and light, but Evan could tell that it was forced.
“Your dad did that to you? Were they loaded?” Evan asked.
Hannah nodded. “Yeah, always.”
“Jesus Christ,” Evan muttered. “And I thought my family was fucked-up.”
She laughed then, and this time it was genuine. A smile lingered on her face, lighting her eyes up like wildfire.
It was the first time in a while that they were facing each other directly, Evan realized. In the car, they’d spent hours talking, but they’d been physically separated the entire time. Now, he could get a good look at her, really take stock of her appearance rather than scoping her out as a target. She had curves in all the right places and legs that went on for miles. Her face was beautiful, but in the way an old building is beautiful, marked with time. Maybe it was just because he knew what she’d been through, but Evan felt like he could read the history of her battles on her face. For a moment, he burned with curiosity about her, about whether or not she knew how strong she was, but he knew better than to ask.
“Anyway, I just saw them and got scared, I don’t know. It’s stupid,” Hannah said, waving her hand like she was physically pushing the conversation away.
“It’s not stupid,” Evan said. “It’s…did it make you think, ‘oh, he’s like my dad,’ or something like that?”
Hannah bit her lip for a minute before nodding slowly. “I think so. I just thought…how could someone trustworthy have so many guns?” She shook her head at herself. “I’m sorry. Stupid.”
Evan wanted to argue with her again, tell her that it wasn’t anything to apologize for, but he let it go. Instead, he cleared his throat and gestured to his bedroom. “Let me show you where all the guns are. Just in case.”
“In case…?” Hannah asked with a furrowed brow.
“In case you need them,” Evan finished, pointing to the hiding places where he kept weapons in each room. “It’s not likely, but you want to be prepared. Have you ever shot a gun before?”
Hannah shook her head. “No. I mean, I’ve held guns before. But I’ve always been too nervous to pull the trigger. Pathetic, right?”
In the past, Evan might have actually thought so. Violence was so habitual for him that he couldn’t quite understand anyone who didn’t take to it as naturally as he did. But there was something almost…honorable about it in Hannah’s case. She’d clearly grown up around plenty of guns and at least one person who was willing to use them, but she was different. How did someone who had been through so much come out of everything so…pure?
Evan shook his head in response to her words. “You’re pretty tough. You knocked me out cold with that frying pan.”
Hannah smiled a little at that. She walked over to one of the guns against the wall and dragged a finger across the level of dust that collected on top of it. “Have these ever been used?” she asked.
“Maybe for practice,” Evan said. It was hard for him to remember what all he’d done in the past several years. Usually he didn’t use guns for his hits. All of his guns were unregistered, but the chance of ballistics tracing the crime back to him was still enough to make him use his hands instead.
“Will you teach me?” Hannah asked.
“What?” Evan asked, confused.
“To shoot. Will you teach me? I want to be able to hit a target.”
Before Evan could answer, Alex started wailing again in the other room, causing Hannah to groan and hit her own forehead hard enough that it made a slapping noise. “Jesus, fuck.”
They returned to the living room, and Hannah picked Alex up, rocking him a little bit in her arms. “What’s going on here, sweetie? I fed you, I changed you. What’s the big idea?”
“Have you eaten yet?” Evan asked her.
Hannah sighed heavily and shook her head, bouncing Alex a little in her arms as he continued to fuss. “I haven’t had the chance yet.”
“When’s the last time you ate something?”
She shrugged. “A couple hours before you attacked last night.”
“Jesus, you must be starving,” Evan said. “Let me fix you something. I’ve got food in the kitchen.”
Hannah shook her head. “No, that’s okay, I’ll do it. I just got to get him to sleep first.”
As if on cue, Alex cried out louder than Evan had ever heard a baby scream. Goddamn, what was wrong with him?
Hannah sighed again and shut her eyes, swaying back and forth until Alex quieted down to a more acceptable decibel of whining. “He’s mad at me,” Hannah said.
“What do you mean?” Evan asked.
“All the moving around. He wants his room, his crib. He doesn’t know where we are or what we’re doing and it’s pissing him off.”
Evan nodded. That made sense. The poor little guy had been through a lot, more than any child could possibly understand. But Hannah…at this rate she looked like she was going to pass out from
lack of food and sleep.
She blew out her breath again and opened her eyes. “Could you show me where the food is? I can make myself a sandwich or something.”
Evan and Hannah walked into the kitchen, and he began opening up the cabinets, showing the different food options he’d stocked up a week ago.
“I have stuff in here for pesto, I think,” Evan said, looking in the refrigerator and cabinets for the appropriate ingredients. “I can make some noodles and we can eat that, if you want.”
“No, no, that’s okay, I can just have some crackers or something,” Hannah said as she rubbed the back of Alex’s head soothingly.
“Hannah. Please, just let me,” Evan said, and without waiting for her response, he immediately went about his work, getting out a blender and a pot from underneath the sink. “I want to.”
She was quiet a minute, just rubbing Alex’s back as he fussed quietly. “Okay,” she finally said in a low voice, almost like she was afraid to accept his offer too loudly. “Thank you.”
“It’s no problem,” Evan said. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Hannah lean back against one of the kitchen walls, her eyes screwed shut. She needs to rest, he thought. She deserves it. But she deserved a lot of things that she’d never had before, he figured. The world was unjust that way. It was only people like himself who got what they wanted, he realized, a hard lump forming in his throat. It was only the bad people.
***
Hannah
For a hitman, Evan was really handy in the kitchen. Hannah couldn’t help but feel impressed as she watched him work, quickly cutting up herbs to blend into pesto sauce. She had never really learned how to cook. Her mother had died when she was young, and her dad…well, let’s just say her dad wasn’t much for chores. She’d grown up on a steady diet of Pop-Tarts and candy. When Salvatore came along, she ate better than she ever had her whole life. Maybe that was part of the reason she loved him, at first, before the bad stuff started. He showed her a world that she’d never seen before. Or so she’d thought.
It was all the same. Same old world. Same old problems. Same old evil men who don’t care who they hurt, she thought, clutching Alex tighter in her arms before he could slide down her body. He was wriggling a little bit, like he wanted to be let down, but she knew that the second she put him on the floor he’d whine to be picked back up again.
She kept blinking to stay alert, but honestly at this point she had reached that level of tiredness that looped back around into full consciousness. She probably couldn’t sleep even if she had the opportunity to right now. Hannah’s entire body buzzed with some kind of energy, somewhere between fear and anxiety and curiosity about this new place, this new side of Evan that she was getting to see.
He was focused, totally absorbed in the task of cooking as he boiled the pasta. Hannah wondered if that’s how he always was, if he set his entire mind and body to every task that he ever did. He must kill this way, too, she thought, shivers running up her spine at the images that flooded her mind in response.
She pushed the thoughts out of her mind. It wouldn’t do her any good to judge him right now. Sure, he was an unrepentant murderer, but he was also the only help she had right now. Where do I get off, thinking I’m better than him, anyway? All that good food I ate with Salvatore was paid for in crime money. I’m just as bad, really, Hannah thought. She found herself thinking back on those early days again, when Salvatore had picked her up out of nowhere and made her feel special. He’d even made her feel safe, for a little while. It was the first and only time she’d ever felt safe in her life. At the time, Hannah had thought that her days of pain and struggle and torment were over. She didn’t have to be afraid anymore. She didn’t have to worry that anyone was going to hold a gun to her head.
And then, things changed. Things always change.
Maybe that’s why it was so hard to trust that Evan wasn’t about to betray her. Salvatore had seemed like a good guy once, too. Maybe all men were like that, secretly biding their time to hurt you. Maybe it was impossible to separate the good guys from the bad guys because they were all the same, all waiting to pounce the second you let your guard down.
“Do you want garlic bread?” Evan asked, breaking her out of her reverie.
“Sure,” Hannah replied, her tone casual, like she didn’t care one way or another, when really the prospect of garlic bread made her mouth water and her knees weak. God, I need to eat. I need to eat so bad, she thought.
“Hey, he’s gone quiet,” Evan said, referring to Alex, who was now staring at him as he worked at stirring the noodles.
“It’s a false alarm,” Hannah said. “He’ll start screaming in a second. He just tired himself out, that’s all.”
“Did you have a nanny back…back with…” Evan trailed off, obviously not wanting to say Salvatore’s name.
Hannah shook her head. “No. I didn’t want one. Kind of regretting that now, ha.” She closed her eyes again and leaned her head against the hard wall, wishing it were a pillow. The cabin only had one bedroom, though, and she figured she was going to end up sleeping on the couch that night. That is, assuming Alex ever calmed the fuck down and let her get any sleep at all.
Right on schedule, Alex started crying again, but at least it wasn’t as loud as before. “Shh, baby, shh, please stop punishing me. I know you miss your bed, darling,” Hannah murmured to him, bringing him up to kiss the top of his head.
“I think he just does it to get attention,” Evan said, sticking a pan with garlic bread into the oven.
“Yeah, well, it’s working,” Hannah said with a laugh. They fell silent again, and Hannah just watched Evan work. She couldn’t help but admire the curve of his ass as he bent over to check on the bread before she realized what she was doing and snapped out of it. Objectifying your would-be murderer? Nice, she taunted herself.
She inwardly argued with herself: on the one hand, it was disgusting, having any kind of attraction to a hitman. But on the other hand, she’d been so well-behaved her entire relationship with Salvatore. Even when he was flaunting his mistresses right in front of her, just to hurt her, she never strayed, partly because she knew Salvatore would kill her if she ever so much as looked at another man. So, it was nice, staring at Evan’s body, even if she still half hated the person it belonged to. It was a tiny little rebellion, doing something that would make Salvatore absolutely incensed.
“All done,” Evan announced a minute later, getting plates out to fill with pasta and bread. “Sit down,” he directed her, pointing at the kitchen table.
Hannah complied as best as she could, holding Alex still in her lap when he tried to climb up onto the table. He was so full of life. It made Hannah smile to think about, but she wished she had even a fraction of his energy. Maybe I used to, when I was a little kid, she thought as Evan put a plate down in front of her and handed her a fork. But it’s all gone now.
Holding Alex as still as possible with one hand, she started eating with the other, twirling her noodles around with her fork to achieve maximum pesto coverage. She hadn’t eaten this in years. It tasted even better than she remembered. For a few minutes, they just ate in silence, but then Evan spoke up. “Do you like it?”
“Are you kidding?” Hannah asked, finding herself smiling. “It’s delicious. Where did you learn to cook, Italy or something?”
“Or something,” Evan replied, smiling back at her. Hannah felt a rush of heat climb up her spine, so she tore her eyes away from his face, staring down at Alex instead. She didn’t know why she felt so embarrassed. It was like she was in high school again, chatting up the bad boy that used to make fun of her. It made her feel a little sick to her stomach to think about. I’m not attracted to him, she argued to herself. I don’t like him at all. He’s a murderer. He’s a monster. He’s evil.
Evan finished his plate before her, not because she wasn’t starving, but because it was hard to eat quickly when she had Alex to handle. He was squirming in her lap, whining a little in
his desperation to climb up on the table and play around with the noodles. “Alex, stop,” she said sternly, pulling his tiny hands back from the table. “Stop it.”
“He’s a little handful, isn’t he?” Evan said as he rinsed off his plate.
“Yeah, he’s a brat,” Hannah said, kissing the top of his head again. He was her whole world, but it got exhausting sometimes, dealing with him on her own. He was this little ball of light and energy and just life, and Hannah mostly felt like an empty shell instead of a person.
After another few minutes, Hannah finally finished her meal, getting up with Alex in her arms to put her plate in the sink. “Thank you,” she said to Evan. “It was amazing.”
He blushed—actually blushed, like a schoolboy—and looked down at the ground. “It was nothing.”
“Anyway,” Hannah said, “thank you. I really needed that.” She groaned and shifted her weight from one leg to the other, trying to ease the pain of her full bladder. “And now…I’ve got to pee. Jesus Christ. They don’t warn you before you become a mother about these things.”