by LP Lovell
“Your room is this way.” I ascend the stairs to the second floor. The balcony style railing runs along the length of the apartment, overlooking the open-plan living space below. My step falters at the first door, the room furthest from mine, the one I had intended to put her in, but for some reason I keep walking, stopping at the one next to mine. I push the door open and hold my arm out in a sweeping gesture.
“You should have everything you need, but if not then tell me and Margo will get it.”
“Margo?” Suspicion laces her voice.
“My housekeeper. I don’t keep girlfriends.”
She smirks. “You say that as though they’re pets. Butterflies in a jar.” She walks a few steps away and spins on her heel to face me. “You strike me as the sort to pluck the wings off pretty butterflies, Nero.”
Una Ivanov. There’s something about her that constantly taunts, teases and dares. I move further into the room, slowly closing the gap between us until I’m close enough to see her indigo eyes in the darkness. The easiest way to intimidate someone is to get in their personal space. It’s a habit when trying to force someone to back down, but with Una, I find it has the opposite effect. She rises to the threat, making everything in me sit up and take note. I want to be indifferent to her, I need to be, and yet, everything she does captures my attention. How can it not? I’ve never met a woman like her, and I know I never will. There is no one like her. She’s the best, the kiss of death herself. My eyes trace the outline of her full lips, and I suddenly remember exactly how they feel against mine, the lash of her tongue, the violent scrape of her teeth…
“Don’t worry, I’ll leave your wings well alone.”
She smirks and tilts her head back to look at me. “You mistake me for something pretty and fragile, but I assure you, any wings I had were plucked a very long time ago,” she says it casually, but I catch the briefest flash of sadness in her eyes. She doesn’t say it for pity though; she says it because she hates to be seen as anything delicate. I shouldn’t give a shit, but she’s like a puzzle that I can’t resist wasting my time on.
“Fine then, be an ugly caterpillar.” She snorts and the briefest smile flashes over her lips, sinking a dimple into her porcelain cheek. A butterfly indeed, although her wings are made of steel and her touch may very well kill. Forcing myself to move away from her, I step out of the door.
“Nero.” I halt when I hear her voice. “Uh…” she stammers over her words and it has me turning to face her. “You might hear things tonight. Don’t come in here.” Before I can respond, she slams the door shut.
9
Una
“You will learn your place, Una. You are nothing and no one, an unwanted orphan. Say it!” The matron of the orphanage shouts in my face, spit flying from those thin, cruel lips. A cigarette hangs between her fingers and the smell of tobacco wafts around the room. Defiantly, I hold her stare, refusing to break. The rough wood of the chair bites against my bare thighs, exposed by the sundress I’m wearing. The leather belts that secure my wrists to the arms of the chair are worn, but they still chafe against my skin, leaving my wrists raw. The matron likes to do this, to make sure the children here are well behaved and easy. I’m not. I know what they do with us, what they have planned. I refuse to accept this fate, and above all, I refuse to accept it for my sister.
“Fine. Remember you deserve this,” she growls, before taking the cigarette and stamping it into my shoulder.
It hurts, it really hurts. And then that smell, burnt flesh and melting skin. It’s the first time I’ve smelt it, but it won’t be the last.
The scene then shifts, the matron’s face blurs and morphs until I’m staring at Erik. Leather restraints give way to rough hands, and the wooden chair becomes a concrete floor. I know what happens here, and already my breathing is picking up, my heart thrumming so fast I can barely stop myself from having a full-blown panic attack. I thrash against the restraining hands but all it earns me is a swift slap across my cheek. My head reels back and a sting erupts across my skin.
Erik’s body lands on top of me, his hot breath blowing over my cheek. “I’m going to break you,” he hisses.
It’s at this exact moment that the part of me that still had a scrap of faith in humanity shatters. Everything becomes a blur of torn clothing and adrenaline. I fight, lashing out at anything within reach. Somewhere in the chaos I become removed, and instead of experiencing it myself, I become a bystander, and the girl being held down becomes Anna. Only she doesn’t fight, and Nicholai never arrives to save her. Tears track down my face, and I scream as I try to get to her, but I can’t. It’s as though my feet are set in concrete and all I can do is watch as my little sister shuts down and becomes nothing more than a fractured vessel in front of my eyes, her innocence stolen by monsters who have no right to take it.
Gasping awake, I drag in lungfuls of air. Tears track down my temples, while the tell-tale ache of a scream lodges in my throat. It takes me a second to remember where I am. I can’t remember the last time I stayed in the same place for more than a week or two, and the constant travelling never ceases to disorientate me. Nightmares have plagued me for years. Well, they’re not nightmares so much as memories. My entire childhood was one long nightmare, so I have plenty of material. This is new though. This is the first time Anna has become the focus of my torment. That wasn’t a memory. I didn’t break, but Anna would break. The thought is enough to make my blood run cold, and a tiny voice in the back of my mind begs me to hope, to hope that maybe that was not her fate. I should know better. There is no room in this world for hope, only cold reality.
The bright lights of the city below cast a faint glow throughout the room that throw shadows across the pale grey carpet. My pulse is still pounding, and my skin feels sticky with sweat, so I get up and silently move to the bathroom on the far side of the room. Without turning the lights on, I start the shower and strip before stepping under the hot water. Letting the darkness and water wrap around me, soothing the tension in my body. I should hate the dark, but I love it. It allows us to just be, to hide all the flawed, unsightly parts of ourselves. With the light comes the truth, the reality of our shitty existence. When I’m done, I step out onto the mat and wrap one of the thick towels around me.
After a nightmare I’m always left wide awake and unable to sleep, so I leave the bathroom and venture out into the apartment in the hopes of finding a laptop or data device of some description. To my surprise, I find all my stuff resting against one of the couches in the living room. George hops up from his bed in the corner, while Zeus studiously ignores me. Slinging the black duffel bag over my shoulder, I head back to my room, but pause when I hear a low whine behind me. George stands, watching me go with the most heartbroken expression on his face. How a supposed guard dog can be as cute as any lap dog I don’t know, but he is.
“Come on,” I whisper. He keeps his head low as he walks over to me and then follows me up the stairs, looking sheepish the entire time. “You’re such a baby.” I laugh.
Returning to bed, George curls up at the end while I dig around in the duffel bag and find a laptop at the bottom. I have a couple of locations in the city just like the storage locker in Brooklyn, as well as others around the world. Guns, passports, money, a laptop and a change of clothes to hand are always needed. You never know when a job might go wrong, and of course there’s the rogue scenario. Pissing off the wrong people might result in someone putting a price on my head. The second that happens I have to disappear and run for Russia, and it’s not like I can just pop home and pack a bag before I do it. This life is one where you’re constantly looking over your shoulder, but it’s the only one I know.
Sometimes, I’m sent after targets who seem to straddle both worlds. Cartel bosses who have a wife and kids that they kiss goodbye every morning before they step outside and kill people, peddle drugs and sell whores. I know better than anyone how that always ends, with widows and orphans. But when I see them playing at having a nor
mal life, it confounds me. I don’t understand the motivation to be normal, to have the standard…the human compulsion to love and be loved is such a crippling weakness, and yet, even the worst of humanity still want such a simple thing above all else. No, I can’t do normal. I like the rush, the thrill of not knowing whether today might be my last. It makes each kill that much better. Every time I go after a hit, it’s kill or be killed, and every time I succeed, each time I win, it makes my grey world a little brighter. My entire life is a game of survival that I am determined to conquer.
Removing the brand-new laptop from the bag, I open it. In the side pocket of the duffel is a memory stick. There’s nothing on it, of course, all the information I have on the many crime organisations I work with is on my person at all times. I grab my necklace, a simple silver leaf, about half an inch long. It looks inconspicuous enough, but it’s actually a locket. Inside is a tiny memory card, the kind that goes in a cell phone. I pop it into a slot on the memory stick and insert it into the USB drive. Years of information starts downloading onto the computer drive.
Four names. Four hits. I work, pouring over information until the sun starts to bleed across the grey morning sky. I learn my targets, their connections.
Finnegan O’Hara is Irish and honestly, has a knack for pissing off a lot of people. He’s IRA, high up in the Irish mob in Europe and owns most of the Irish ports. If the Italians want to run drugs through Ireland, which is the easiest export point on the continent, then they have to go through Finnegan. Someone was bound to gun for him eventually. Nero seems less restrained than a lot of the mafia that I usually deal with. It doesn’t surprise me that he’s taking him out.
The other three: Marco Fiore, Bernardo Caro and Franco Lama are all Italian, and I have no idea why he wants them.
I’m not aware of any feuds between Nero and any of them, but then I didn’t even know who Nero was until I met him. Even now, I’m not sure how he fits into all this. Lorenzo and Nero were both the sons of Matteo and Viola Santos. Lorenzo took the name and yet Nero has his mother’s maiden name, Verdi, a powerful family in their own right, but with no real weight here in America. Nero had his brother killed, which is about as dysfunctional as it gets. So is it simply a family feud? If so, it’s escalated pretty far, and Arnaldo is aiding it, so what’s his play?
Fuck, this is enough to give me a headache. Why do I even care? I never ask for a reason behind a job. Really, these are hits like any other, except that the payment is my long-lost sister, and my employer insists on me living with him. And of course, there’s the fact that I’m quite literally laying my head on a chopping block, but again, do the reasons matter? The only reason I’m doing this is to get to Anna. It matters though, because it’s right there, like an alarm going off in my mind. I rely on my instincts, and my instincts are telling me that Nero is not simply the stung son of a capo, out for revenge. There’s more to this. What am I not seeing?
I’ve been here five days, and I’ve barely seen Nero. He remains in his office most of the time, while I spend all my time researching names, locations, contacts. A job like this takes a long time to put into play, and I’m still not sure how I’m going to pull it off. George sits at my feet, waiting for the crusts off my toast while I sit at the breakfast bar. I absentmindedly hand him one while skimming over the floor plans for one of Bernardo’s nightclubs. The sun is just starting to rise, painting the kitchen in hues of pink and orange. I assume Nero isn’t awake until I hear a faint rhythmical beat coming from somewhere in the apartment. Frowning, I get up and follow the sound, opening a door that is right next to the elevator. It’s a gym, with a treadmill, heavy bag, various weights and machinery. It must be one of the biggest rooms in his apartment, and this place isn’t exactly small.
Leaning against the doorframe, I watch as his feet pound the treadmill. I can see his side profile from where I’m standing, but he doesn’t seem to notice me. He’s topless, his shorts riding low enough on his hips that I can make out the line of muscle that sweeps down his side before meeting the V at the front. Each muscle flexes beneath his tanned skin as he runs. Sweat glistens over every inch of him, dotting along the back of his neck before falling between his shoulder blades. I grew up training with soldiers, mostly men. I see the male form as an asset. Muscles equate to strength, nothing more. But as I watch Nero, I note the graceful way he moves, the way each line and plane of his body blends into the next. He’s beautiful. There really is no other word. His body is crafted into a weapon, a destructive force of nature. And just as the perfect blade takes time to make, to balance exactly, that body is the product of dedication and sweat. He slams his hand over the stop button and the treadmill slows rapidly beneath him until he comes to a halt.
“You’re staring,” he says without looking at me. He swipes a towel over his face and turns to face me, his chest heaving. “That’s never good where you’re concerned.”
“I’m not planning on killing you. Yet.” I step inside the room and lean against the wall.
He smirks as he steps off the treadmill and approaches. For the first time I see the tattoos on his body, script across his chest reads an Italian proverb, which equates to something along the lines of karma is a bitch. His right arm is covered to the elbow in an intricate sleeve, but I can’t make out the details without staring. He gets entirely too close as he reaches for his water bottle on the shelf right next to me. I flatten myself against the wall, but still his scent wraps around me. Sweat mixes with his body wash and he’s so close to me I could literally move my hand an inch and touch him. Damp hair falls over his forehead messily as he stares down at me.
“Maybe you just like looking.” Lifting the water bottle, he places it to his lips and drinks, staring at me with amusement in his eyes. A drop of sweat rolls down his throat, and I can’t help but track its path down his chest. Something foreign settles in my gut and my jaw clenches. He makes me uncomfortable and yet, I want to touch him. I want to know if he feels as hard and implacable as he looks. He knows it though, because he brushes a hand over my waist. When I tense, he smiles. He thinks he’s simply making me uncomfortable, but it’s so much more than that.
I grip his wrist. “Don’t.” I warn.
He leans in until his lips are at my ear. “Or what?” he dares on a dark whisper.
Placing my hand on his stomach, I dig my nails into his skin hard enough to push him back a couple of inches. His gaze meets mine, my breath hitching as his abs tense and roll beneath my fingertips.
No one could ever argue that Nicholai isn’t a master in training his assassins. He used to tell me that some guy had trained a dog, taught it to salivate on command through simple conditioning. He would ring a bell every time he fed the dog, so the dog associated the bell with food. I was trained much the same way, conditioned into having set responses. We were deprived of human touch, of even the slightest form of affection. The only time we touched another person was during a fight, under raining fists rather than soft caresses. On the rare occasion we did receive some form of contact outside of the ring it was deliberately coupled with pain, usually an electric shock. Add into the equation a lethal set of fighting skills, and the nature of human survival, and you create a reflex killer. I will admit that reflex has saved my ass more than once; however, as I got older, things changed. Much of my job involves seduction, which I was also trained in. The result is a constant battle, the instinctual versus the necessary. My instinct is to tear Nero’s arm from his body, but…I don’t want to.
“I’m serious, Nero.”
“And yet, you’re touching me.” His eyes dropping to my hand splayed across his stomach. He makes no move to step away, simply waits. I realize that I can’t remember the last time I touched another human being voluntarily, not to aid a job, and not to kill them. I don’t know what it is about him. He’s not a soldier, not a brother in arms, or a boy I grew up with. He’s not really a client, and he’s certainly not a hit. He is… an anomaly, an exception, a strange ally. He
confuses me whilst leaving me in awe of his savagery. He leans in closer and my nails dig into his skin. His powerful heartbeat pounds through his body, ricocheting up my arm. I blink and tear my hand away from him. Huffing a small laugh, he steps back very deliberately before leaving the gym.
I stand there, confused and extremely uneasy. Weakness. This is what weakness feels like. I think he likes it. He doesn’t fear me, so he wants to challenge me, wants to see me snap. Well, this living situation is going to get awkward real fast. When I go back into the living area he’s not there. When he appears again he’s fully dressed in an immaculate dark grey suit, his hair damp from the shower.
“I have some business to handle, I’ll be back later,” he says briefly, whistling at the dogs who both leap up to follow him as he walks to the elevator.
“What? You’ll be back later. Are you serious?”
He turns to face me, a bored expression on his face. “You’re reminding me why I don’t let women stay with me.”
On a laugh, I grab one of his kitchen knives and launch it at him. It nicks his jacket before hitting the steel elevator door and clattering to the floor. He cocks a brow and lifts his arm, showcasing the neat slice through the expensive material.
“Your aim is shit,” he growls, stalking towards me.
“It is. I was aiming for your chest.” I shrug. “Your kitchen knives aren’t very well balanced. But, now I have your attention, I think we need to rediscuss our terms.” He ignores me and walks straight past, heading up the stairs. I follow. “You see, you’re so quick with your threats – if I leave you’ll go to Nicholai. All that shit.” He walks into his bedroom, ducking into the walk-in closet. Again, I follow. “But if you go to Nicholai, he’ll find Anna himself, and you’ll have no leverage,” I drawl, as if the entire notion is boring to me. At least then I could kill him. I stand in the doorway of the closet, watching him strip out of the damaged jacket and take an identical one off a hangar. “So…”