Les Recidivists (Chance Assassin Book 2)

by Nicole Castle

  He yanked his hand away and tugged my hair again, glaring at me. At least he didn’t stop fucking me. “No, V.”

  “Yes!” I demanded, pulling persistently at his wrist until he finally let get go of my hair and slapped me across the face instead. Then he came, shuddering and panting heavily, proving that I wasn’t the only one craving that extra touch of violence. “You better quit smoking,” I said, as if a lack of stamina had anything to do with the fact that he refused to choke me or at least fuck me until I passed out.

  “You’re a little shit.” Frank roughly gripped my jaw, not my throat, and quickly kissed me. Then he gave my hair another tug, albeit a gentler one. He pulled out of me, kneeling between my legs. He didn’t make eye contact as he said, “I love you, Vincent.”

  I bit my lip, feeling like a complete asshole for forcing him when I knew he was terrified of hurting me. “I love you, too.”

  “Your finger’s bleeding.”

  “I’m fine.” I wiped it on his shirt again. He’d have to change clothes anyway.

  I grabbed a clean shirt for him while Frank straightened the bed. He put the knife in a lower drawer. I put it back as soon as he walked away to collect the rest of our clothes from the hallway.

  Most of the apartment was blue inside, a color scheme picked by Casey with the direct warning not to go overboard. Bright colors gave me headaches. The appliances were stainless steel, with possibly the biggest refrigerator in Paris, one that would be considered normal in the States. Our decorations were also courtesy of Casey, paintings and framed sketches, but no photographs. Frank kept one photo of me in his wallet, and I had one of him as a little boy that we’d gotten out of his supposedly sealed criminal record. Otherwise we only had our pictures taken for identification purposes. We did not keep photographs of family, apart from the one of my dead parents. If we wanted to see Maggie or Casey, we bought them plane tickets.

  Unlike the sturdy and ancient furniture adorning our chateau in the woods, the furniture in our apartment was brand new when we bought it. After years of living in hotels, sleeping and fucking on beds that God only knew how many other people had slept and fucked on, we decided our first place together should be absolutely ours. It was a far cry from the house, which had once belonged to someone that I was pretty sure had been haunting the place until we got Hugo, who barked so loudly he could raise the dead.

  The previous owner was killed, a shotgun blast to the face by someone as yet unidentified. I’d assumed Frank had been the one to pull the trigger, since he found the place and suggested we buy it. But he insisted he had nothing to do with it, and had no prior knowledge of why it stayed listed for so long. The realtor wept when we signed the documents. We’d gotten a great deal.

  Frank gently kicked aside more of Bella’s purchases as we made our way out, bags aplenty littered about the hardwood floor. “Did you buy another painting?”

  I glanced at the canvas wrapped in brown paper, leaning against the piano that neither of us knew how to play. Alan had given it to us. He already had four. “Bella bought it,” I said. I’d forgotten all about the painting. Now that she was wearing Casey around her finger she could have as many paintings as she wanted.

  “Which one?”

  “The one you hate. She said it amused her, but I think she really wanted it because of the scandal.”

  “I don’t hate any of them,” he said, though he did hate that one. It freaked him out. Frank had nearly drowned when he was little, after witnessing his mother gang raped by two fishermen. Needless to say he had issues with water.

  Frank stared at the covered canvas for quite some time, knowing what was underneath and looking none-too-happy about it. I wondered whether he was more upset about it being in Bella’s possession, or it being in our apartment.

  We left the car parked and walked parallel to the Seine without getting close enough to see it, until we got to the shortest possible bridge. Frank had actually gotten much better about his phobia since we met, and was able to cross without too much anxiety. Once we were on the other side he was okay, since he liked seeing the book sellers, the bouquinistes, in their stalls. He’d wanted to be one when he was little, before he realized exactly how close those stalls were to the water.

  Sophie was standing outside the shop, her arms crossed over her chest. She straightened up when she saw us coming, waving and smiling, then blushing as pink as her dress. Frank leaned over to kiss the back of my neck, a rare public display of affection, and ownership, for her benefit.

  “Hello, Vincent!” she called out. Her father had told us that before we met, English was her least favorite subject in school. Now she was tutoring her classmates.

  “Bonjour, Sophie,” I said, greeting her French style with a peck on each cheek. Kissing was how I introduced myself to men in America, before I met Frank. It was a custom that took very little getting used to. Frank gave her a condescending pat on the head and led me inside by the hand. He soon released me, once he saw that we actually had customers. It wasn’t that he was ashamed for someone to know we were together, he just needed both hands to shove them out if necessary.

  Frank’s shop was fittingly named La Librairie. The French word for bookstore and the English word library were so close to each other it was no wonder Frank found the concept of actually selling any books to be so strange.

  Bertrand came over to us, issuing apologies with each step. Apparently the shop had been featured in some British guidebook as being owned by an Englishman, and tourists had been swarming like locusts since spring. Bertrand hadn’t had the heart to let Frank know, hoping that by writing to the publisher he could get us removed from future issues.

  Frank grumbled that he wasn’t English, an insult slightly bigger than the unwanted attention had been to begin with; then he walked right up to one of our customers and placed his hand on the book the man was holding, looking him in the face and slowly shaking his head no.

  The man opened his mouth to speak but only managed to stammer, “Oh,” before releasing the book and backing up. For a second the other customers, two pasty-faced men in parkas and a tiny blonde woman with too much makeup, stared at him wide-eyed. Then they also confusedly set down their books and walked toward the door, as if they were expecting to be on Candid Camera.

  Once our intruders had been successfully shooed away, Frank told Bertrand to try not to sell anything else, and returned the books to their shelves. Frank was the only one who understood how they were supposed to be arranged. His books at home were the same way. Not to mention the ones he hid all over the house like a dog burying a bone just for the pleasure of digging it up.

  We hit the shops next, having to go three different places to track down only a fraction of what Maggie needed for American cuisine. It would have to do. Frank made me carry the bags. He’d be eating bread and cheese in protest.

  Bella was awake and Casey had returned from the abyss when we got back. They were falling over each other laughing in the library at something about bagpipes. Maybe Frank was right after all. It was a bad idea to encourage them. Casey was going to be absolutely heartbroken when he found out she wasn’t staying for Christmas. And from the looks of it, so was she.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  As a child, Frank had lived in a world of isolation. Sophie Moreaux was terrified that someone would take him from her if he ventured out alone, and Frank being painfully shy himself, had never argued the matter. He did not attend school, and understood no English. He had never spoken a single word to anyone apart from her, and never played with children his own age.

  When Frank grew older, his lack of socialization became more apparent. He began to question normal human behavior, the actions of modern men and women that weren’t explained in the classic literature that occupied his imagination. To satisfy her son’s curiosity without alerting him of the vastness of the world beyond his books, Sophie began to make up stories about the people around them.

  Frank learned to think of strange
rs as background characters who lived only in relation to he and his mother, disappearing once they were shut safely behind the door. It would frighten Frank when they had interactions with these characters: buying groceries, visiting museums or the park near their home; but he knew that the strangers didn’t really exist. It wasn’t until the interactions became violent that Frank realized that he and his mother weren’t safe after all.

  After she was murdered, Frank had to acknowledge that the characters were real. He began to study people, learning everything he could about them, and about the world they lived in. He was no longer afraid of them, although he remained distant and detached from the rest of the human race.

  When he began to make his living by taking their lives, stalking became a natural progression. Instead of momentary observations on the street or through a window, he would follow them for weeks at a time, learning their idiosyncrasies and knowing long before the crucial moment exactly how they would respond in the throws of death.

  But Frank had known Bella for years, and though he shadowed her closer than any of his marks, he had no intention of stealing her life. If it was Silva’s wish for him to be responsible for her, to take care of her when he died, then Frank would take the task seriously. It would be like a job. An assignment. And his assignments always involved stalking.

  Observing her from afar proved impossible. She and Casey were always together, and Frank could not bear to have Casey come between his crosshairs as he lay up on the roof, spying on Bella. He had to move closer.

  At first she was simply annoyed by his increased presence. She would make rude comments in an attempt to force him away, scream and yell, and at one point even became violent, shoving him out of her room. It was to no avail. When she and Casey went for their strolls in the woods, Frank would be there, keeping them company and keeping his eye on her. This was what Silva deserved for his manipulation, though he was not likely to feel any of the punishment his lover, or daughter, was experiencing.

  Bella, upon close inspection, had undergone a transformation from the angry, impulsive woman he had known. It had not been a gradual maturing over the years but rather a change in character since arriving at his home. She was by no means calm, but calmer than she had been. She looked healthier as well, a brightness to her eyes and color in her cheeks, and in the brief moments when he did not make his presence known, seemed happier than he had ever seen her.

  It was Casey’s influence, of course. She never would have admitted it, but Frank had experienced the effects firsthand. The kid radiated happiness. Perhaps that was why he had been drawn to her. There was without a doubt the physical attraction, but he had singled her out, befriended her despite his family’s wishes, and despite her frequent apathy towards him.

  Still, Frank did not approve. Casey should have been miles away from a woman like Bella. Miles away from a man like him. Not whispering tête-à-tête over the contents of a perfumed magazine, or feeding her candied yams off of his fork.

  Vincent, in want of attention, tried to entice him away from her, using his ever assertive powers of seduction to lure him off the job and into bed. But like Casey, Frank came back time and again to study her. Silva would be proud. Of both of them.

  They were children when they started, Bella younger than he had been. It made him melancholy to think about the time they spent together, at Silva’s home amongst veteran killers, men who looked at Bella, and him, as prey. But they had been untouchable there, inside a fortress that should have been designed to keep such men out. Now he planned to return, to bring Vincent into the most dangerous place he had ever known, to kill a man he admired, a man who alone could protect them from men who had never respected anyone else. A man whose life he had already promised to his husband.

  Casey fed the fire with yet another unsatisfactory sketch of his muse. The past few days had been colder than normal, and save for Maggie and Gideon, who were becoming increasingly isolated by Bella’s company, they had all gathered in the library in want of warmth.

  Vincent had fallen asleep on Frank's lap, his forehead against his chest. He would be happy to know that Casey had taken a brief respite from Bella to sketch the two of them together, with much greater success. Frank would likely have it framed, even though he was in the picture.

  It was a quiet evening, the likes of which he never imagined he would have with Bella Moncrief anywhere in the vicinity, and he was glad for a moment that Silva had given him such a charge. He and Bella used to be quite close. She was the first person apart from his mother that he had considered family, and had taught him a great deal not only about killing, but also about living.

  Frank glanced at Bella, who had fallen asleep with her cigarette dangling out of her mouth. Casey smiled at him from across the room, then got up and removed it from between her lips. He stubbed it out in the coffee cup she was using as an ashtray and wiped away a line of drool with his sleeve, carefully so as not to smear her lipstick. The action, though innocent enough, made Frank’s ears burn and he turned away feeling like he had seen something he shouldn’t.

  Before he had been hollered at by Charlie for walking in on him with a prostitute, Frank had never realized that intimacy, and sex, were such private affairs. When his mother was alive he had accidentally walked in on her with gentlemen callers many times; doors were never locked in the infinitesimal hovels where they lived. She had not shouted at him. She invited him into her bedroom, and kicked the stranger out.

  He had also walked in on Bella with a man once, when they were in Belfast between jobs. They were staying with an old friend of hers, a man she began dating five years previous when she was barely fourteen. Her boyfriend had been nineteen then, soon to be married with a child. Deaglan. He was in the IRA, loyal to his country when he should have been loyal to Bella regardless of the other woman he'd impregnated, and as far as Frank was concerned, a petty terrorist; he did not care for him at all.

  Bella had laughed at his reaction to finding them in such a compromising position. Deaglan swore at him and told him to get the fuck out. Bella punched Deaglan in the face and hopped off, and the two of them went to find a hotel. No one yelled at Frankie but her.

  “You okay?” Casey asked, having resumed his position by the fireplace.

  “Fine,” Frank said. Casey liked everyone. Bella was not special to him. He was not special to Bella. Was he? “I am going to take Vincent up to bed. I’ll come back for her.”

  “Leave her.” He couldn’t have meant it as a command, but there was a tone of possessiveness, of irritation, as if Frank really had been intruding on their private moment. For a second they stared at each other, tension passing between them. “She’s fine,” Casey laughed, as if trying to pretend it hadn’t happened. It sounded forced.

  Fuck three weeks. Bella was leaving tomorrow.

  Frank carefully slung Vincent over his shoulder and slapped Bella’s feet off the sofa, waking her in the process. “Let’s go, Bell. It’s time for bed.” He could feel Casey’s eyes on him, on them, but he did not look back. He could not look back. “Bon nuit, Casey,” he said, and made sure Bella led the procession out of the room.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Casey woke face down on the sofa to the bustle of an impending journey, travelers scuttling back and forth in preparation. For a moment he forgot where he was, the familiarity of friends in youth hostels leaving before the sun was up, and of all the times Frank ended his brief stay with a whispered au revoir and a sleep-filled embrace. He sat up, running his hands through his hair, and stumbled groggily to the kitchen.

  Gideon was drinking a cup of coffee, with an expression on his face like a man in a hospital waiting room, preparing himself for bad news. He’d had that expression a lot lately. Casey’s mother was making enough sandwiches to feed an army, or Vincent, and folding them in plastic wrap, carefully setting them in a paper bag with apples and bottled drinks like school lunches from long ago. Her hair was in curlers, her feet in slippers. “Hey, honey,”
she said, giving him a slightly pitying look like she knew he was the last person to figure out what was going on.

  He turned around to see Frank hauling shopping bags out the front door. Bella’s shopping bags. Vincent was leaning against the doorframe, bundled up in Frank’s coat and cradling a glass of orange juice, looking cold and half asleep. He avoided eye contact.

  Casey headed up the stairs feeling out of sorts, like the moment before arriving alone at a costume party, where you doubt yourself and wonder whether you misunderstood and no one else is going to be dressed up. Bella was just exiting the bathroom in a cloud of perfumed steam as he made it to the hallway. She was fully dressed, her hair wet. “What the fuck are you staring at?” she asked angrily, then turned away from him and went to her room.

  He followed her, unsure of what to say. All of her things were packed, which he was expecting, though actually seeing the room emptied of her existence felt like it had when she shoved him to the cold, wet ground. “So you’re leaving?” he asked, aware that he sounded accusatory. Hostile.

  “Aye,” she said conversationally. “We’re going to see Silva.”

  He tried to remain calm, to stay amiable, as if nothing they’d done together, nothing they were to each other, mattered. “You and Frank?” Why hadn’t Frank mentioned this?

  “Vincent, too.”

  “Just out of the blue?” His voice cracked with emotion.

  “It isn’t so sudden.” She smiled like nothing pleased her more than to hurt him. “Only you were too stupid to know what was really happening.”

  He flinched like she’d struck him. “What is your problem?”

  “It’s pathetic. You’re fucking pathetic. I was hired to kill your fucking dad, and all you want to do is shag me!”

  Casey felt the blood drain from his face, only to come racing back with a flash fire of heat. His breath caught in his chest, knotted around his heart in a futile attempt to keep her from shattering it.