by Cece Rose
“Five-four,” I answer. “Is there a point to this little question and answer game?”
“I figured as much. There is, but just wait. What’s your favourite food?” he continues with his inquiry.
“Either pasta or pizza. Death by carbs sounds like a good way to go if it includes those two things,” I answer, wondering where the hell he’s going with this.
“Pizza’s my favourite, it’s Two’s as well, but Three won’t eat anything that isn’t 99% sugar. I once saw him eat a chocolate bar, doused in cream, then dipped in melted chocolate, and then covered in sprinkles,” One says, sounding more than a little disgusted at the mention of Three’s odd food choice. A small smile sneaks its way across my face.
“Are you related to the twins?” I ask. I doubt it from their looks, but he seems to truly care about the two slightly-younger men.
“Not by blood, but we’re a family now regardless.”
“The family that slays together, stays together, huh?” I remark.
“You seem pretty focused on the killing part of our lives,” he comments.
“You’re assassins, is there another part of your lives?” I ask.
“That’s what I’m trying to show you.” He sighs, getting up off the bed and heading to the bathroom. “Don’t go anywhere, but I can’t wait a minute longer for a shower,” he calls over his shoulder as he walks in, and I turn back to the ceiling.
Sure, why not, I’ll just wait in this boring hotel room by myself. It’s not as if I have anywhere else to go… and it’s not like I have anything to do while I wait here. Maybe I should try reading his book, it could be fun attempting to make sense of whatever language it is?
When the shower comes on, it sounds surprisingly louder than I expected. I glance over, and my eyes widen as I see that he’s left the bathroom door wide open. And he’s already started stripping... I sit frozen, staring open-mouthed for a moment, in what I try and convince myself is shock horror, but if I’m honest, is mostly just me checking him out.
Regardless of his chosen career path, I must admit, he’s nice to look at. He’s turned away from me as he continues to pull his clothes off, and I get to see a tattoo covering a large portion of his back. I’d need to be closer to see it properly, but whatever it is, it looks damn good. His body is well-toned, muscular, but not ridiculous.
“I left the door open so that I could keep an eye on you, not the other way around,” he calls over his shoulder as he’s walking into the shower. I know I should look away, but I seem helpless to do so, watching the water crashing over his body as he steps underneath it.
Despite his words, he makes no move to cover himself as he showers, going so far as to leave the sliding, glass shower door open too, leaving him in my direct line of sight. Not even so much as a little fogged up glass between us.
What kind of person spies on an assassin in the shower? Spies on anyone in the shower? And why the hell does he seem totally okay with it?
As he lathers up using the shower gel provided by the hotel, I get comfy and decide that considering he doesn’t seem to care, I won’t let myself either. Apparently, I’m the kind of girl who spies on a hot assassin in the shower, even if he is an asshole. As he rises off the soap and leans his head back into the flow of water, letting it run down his face, I decide that I’m okay with that.
Chapter Fifteen
“Scarlett?” Caleb’s voice lures me gently from my sleep, but I try and resist, snuggling back underneath the covers. “Scar, get up,” he insists, and I feel a hand shaking my shoulder.
“Go away,” I grumble, batting my brothers hand away with my own. It takes me a few seconds for the fog of sleep to clear, but the moment it does I bolt upright and pull Caleb into a quick hug.
“You’re okay!” I exclaim, still feeling half-asleep as I pull back, only realising it’s a stupid thing to say once I’ve said it. I throw off the covers, and look down at myself, still fully dressed other than my shoes.
After what had happened with One’s personal shower show, I wasn’t going to be taking any chances. And somehow, I’d convinced myself that if I stayed fully dressed, nothing else weird would happen between the two of us. It had somewhat worked, after the shower he’d stepped out, telling me not to leave under any circumstances. I’d stayed up as long as I could take the boredom, but eventually sleep had lulled me into its clutches.
“Did you think I wasn’t going to be?” he asks, his brown eyes flooding with concern.
“No, of course not. I just had some weird dreams. What are you doing here?” I ask him quietly, my eyes flickering around the room, noticing that we’re alone.
“They’re all in the room next door, but they’re getting ready to leave. They found something, but I don’t know what.” He shrugs, clearly not too interested in whatever they’ve found, unfortunately I am.
“Wait here,” I direct him, before shoving my shoes back on and darting out of the room. It only occurs to me once I step outside that I can’t remember which room it is. Luckily for me, my brother doesn’t listen to my command and follows me out into the long, hotel corridor.
“It’s that one,” Caleb says, pointing at the door to the right of our room.
“Is it worth me trying to ask you to stay here again?” I ask him seriously. He shakes his head and shoots me a mischief-filled grin. I roll my eyes. “Fine, but stick close to me.” I knock on the door and wait.
Theo opens the door a moment later, giving me a slightly sheepish look at having been caught in here with them. “Hey, Scar,” he greets awkwardly, blocking the door.
“What’s going on?” I demand. He licks his lips nervously, before looking between me and Caleb. He sighs. “They figured out a link.”
“A link?”
“Stop talking in the fucking doorway, come in or get out,” One barks from inside. Theo begrudgingly steps out of the way to let me and Caleb in.
“What’s going on?” I question as soon as Theo shuts the door after us. I’m surprised when Caleb walks straight in and sits down next to Two looking almost happy to see him again. What did he do to my brother?
“We found a link between us,” Two answers.
“What do you mean?” I ask, looking between the three of them, not caring who answers as long as someone does it quickly.
“Our ex-handler. He used to hook up most of our work for us, but there was an incident, and so we started doing everything ourselves,” Three explains.
“What does your handler have to do with me?”
“Ex-handler,” One mutters unhelpfully.
“He met with your mother, and we think they’re meeting again tonight. So we need to go now and deal with this instead of wasting time. If it’s him that’s fucked us, we need to be careful because he won’t stop here.” Two stands up and starts pacing as he speaks, the movement unsettles Caleb who watches his back and forth intently.
“They’re meeting, and you know where?” I ask, glancing out of the window at the completely black, night sky. She could be with this guy right now, and this could be over tonight. Not tomorrow, or next week, or after even more years of pain and suffering, tonight it could be all over. For real this time. “When do we leave?”
“You’re not going anywhere, so don’t even try talking your way into it,” Theo announces.
“And you became the boss of me, when?” I question sarcastically, narrowing my eyes on my friend. He glares back silently.
“I have to agree with your friend. We’re going. Now. And you’re staying here with your brother and him.” One turns his attention to Two and Three. “I’ll meet you guys in the car, I need to grab something from the other room before we go. Before anyone can argue, he’s moving and out of the room in less than three seconds from when he’s finished speaking.
Two and Three share a glance, before heading towards the door themselves. Two pauses, before returning back to my brother. He pulls something out from his pocket and hands it to Caleb awkwardly. Is that an old Gamebo
y? Caleb’s face lights up as he switches it on, not even thinking to say thank you before playing. It’s not that he’s rude, he just honestly forgets.
“Thank you,” I say to him quietly as Two walks back past me. I don’t know what happened while Caleb was left in his care for the day, but whatever happened, Caleb liked Two. There are definitely better role models for Caleb to be around, but at least he isn’t traumatised from his time in the care of killers.
“I need to speak to One before he leaves,” I announce, leaving Theo to sit with Caleb as I follow the twins out of the room. I watch them both disappear down the corridor as I knock on the door of the room I’m staying in. I just had to leave my keycard inside.
An idea comes to me as I’m waiting for him to answer. I bend down, slipping off my trainers and looking at them feeling puzzled, until I notice a small sticker on the inside of the heel. I tug and it comes free. Curious, I run my fingers over it, feeling something hard inside of the sticker.
Can a sticker really be used as a tracking device?
I hear movement behind the door and drop my shoes, shoving my feet back into them, just as One pulls the door open. “Hey,” I greet him awkwardly. He steps aside to let me in, and I try and rationalise the plan in my head as I step inside and shut the door behind me.
“What do you want?” he demands.
Fuck, it’s now or never.
Without another word, I step up to him, biting my bottom lip nervously as my hands slowly reach up and rest on his shoulders. He gives me a curious look, but doesn’t pull away. I take a deep breath and try to expel the images of him in the shower from my mind, but it’s no use. I tug on his shoulders, pulling his head down to my level.
He takes the bait, his hesitance vanishing as he enraptures my lips with his own. I move my hands from his shoulders, running them over his body, feeling the toned muscles I’d seen earlier. I try not to enjoy it, but it’s impossible.
One backs me up against the wall, pinning me there with his large frame. I should probably be afraid, but I’m not. I sneak the sticker into his back pocket, but continue to kiss him, reasoning that I don’t want to call his attention back to reality the second I’ve slipped the tracker in there.
Finally, I know I have to pull away. I know either I stop now, and he leaves, or we won’t stop at all. “I just wanted to do that before you left,” I lie, hoping like hell I can fool him this time. I’m a little breathless, but I try to keep my focus. I need one more thing for this to work. For this not to have been pointless.
“That’s fine,” he responds quietly, looking a little too intensely at me. I turn away, hoping it comes off as me being shy or embarrassed rather than guilty. “I have to go, but we can finish this later, if you’d like,” he offers, his voice low.
“And here I thought you didn’t like me,” I joke, trying to keep it light. Why the hell is this so hard?
“I like you too much,” he admits, grabbing my wrist and tugging me back to him. He kisses me again, and then steps away. He snags a large bag from underneath the bed, and heads towards the door. I try not to worry about what exactly is in the bag, but my mind begins to roam regardless.
“Wait, do you have a phone I can use?” I ask, snapping myself back into focus as his hand touches the door. He pauses, before turning back and pulling one from the front pocket of his jeans and throwing it to me. I just about catch it with the tips of my fingers.
“The lock code is 5678 because Three set it, and he’s an idiot,” One explains in an exasperated voice.
“Thanks, I appreciate it,” I respond with a smile. At least I won’t forget the code. He pauses in the doorway, giving me an unreadable look. “What?” I prompt him.
“Goodbye, Scarlett. Stay safe.”
I watch feeling a little bewildered from the remark as he leaves, closing the door gently behind him. Unable to waste time dwelling on his strange behaviour, I unlock the phone and look for anything that could be a tracker app.
I pause over an icon of a cat and dog over a light blue background. They hadn’t mentioned pets. I click it, and a map pops up, with a little moving pinpoint getting further away from here. I grab Theo’s car keys, and head out of the door, creeping as quietly past the other room as I can while moving quickly.
Now I can find out what’s really going on with my mother, like hell am I going to wait here while this all happens. She’s a cockroach of a surviver, and I have to make sure they take care of this. If she survives, me and Caleb aren’t safe. We never will be.
If One, Two, and Three can’t, or won’t, kill my mother, then I will.
Chapter Sixteen
I’ve never been car sick before in my life, but I’ve been ready to vomit out of the car window the entire drive here. As I slowly crawl the car past the private drive that leads to the home where the tracker had taken me, I try to take a few calming breaths. There’s something familiar about this place that has set me even more on edge than I’d been on the way here.
I drive a little further down the road, and ditch the car beside some trees. It’s not exactly well hidden, but they wouldn’t be able to see the car from the house at least. I look around hopelessly for wherever it is that the guys have left their shitty Mercedes, but there’s no sign of the thing out here.
Biting my lip, I glance down at the phone screen again, making sure that the tracker’s signal is definitely coming from the home that I think it is. The last thing I want to do is break and enter into the wrong damn house.
Using the cover of trees and bushes that spread across the grounds surrounding the property, I make my way silently towards the house. Only the sound of my own breathing keeps me company. I’m lucky it’s so dark out here. There’s a bleak emptiness in the sky tonight, with all the night’s lights hidden behind thick, dark clouds. Only one faint glow shines behind them, but no moonlight’s being cast from its weak gleam, diminished too much through the clouds.
Finally, I reach the large, sprawling home, and again, a feeling of deja vu hits me. The nerves are probably just getting to me, it’s no wonder I’m not feeling great… The violent churning of my stomach is a completely normal reaction for someone to have when they’re planning to kill their mother, if the assassins they’d hired fail.
I creep around the edge of the large house, looking for a way in, surprised when one presents itself so easily in the form of a door left ajar. I shove my phone into my pocket and then ball my hands into fists as I approach the door. The lack of security around this place is terrifying. A home like this should have security, and the fact that it doesn’t, paired with the open door, can’t be a coincidence. After taking a cautious look through the crack for signs of life, I nudge the door open more with my foot and slip inside. I leave the door as I found it, and move quietly into the dark room, listening out for any sounds.
The sound of a familiar feminine laugh sets me on edge. The sound was faint, and I head towards the direction it came from, exiting the dark room and into a faintly lit entrance hallway, with a large staircase leading up. I stay close to the wall and glance around, attempting to figure out where the laugh came from.
Muffled voices come through a shut door on the other side of the entrance hallway. I bite my lip and debate approaching, when the door handle begins to turn. Adrenaline rushes through me, and I haul ass towards the stairs, rushing up them as quietly as I can while glancing back over my shoulder a few times.
Luckily for me, the person opening the door must have paused, as the door only just opens as I reach the top of the stairs, and dart down to hide behind the bannister at the top of them. I peer around the edge to try and spy on them. My mother stands next to a man, and One and Three stand across from them, at an angle to my position, putting me in neither of their direct lines of sight from my position.
“I don’t understand what the big problem is?” My mother’s voice complains from below.
“Neither do I,” a familiar voice agrees with her complaints. The rest of the conversa
tion is tuned out as my brain latches onto his voice. I know that voice.
He turns slightly, and I finally see his face. Air catches in my throat, and I have to fight not to choke and give away my position. The face I’ve tried to forget for the last year, and he’s here. With my mother, and with the guys.
Why are they just talking to him? Don’t they know he’s a monster, that she is, too?
Memories flicker through my brain, and suddenly all of the wounds feel fresh. The stitches that had been holding me together have been ripped out, leaving me hiding, huddled on the floor, quietly gasping for breath, all while trying to remain undetected. When I make the mistake of closing my eyes it’s as if I’m there again. I can feel the clammy hands, and smell his breath. I force my eyes open, staring at the floor intently.
Maybe they’re all monsters. Everyone here.
I look around, and I can’t believe it took me so long to realise where this is, and whom this house belongs to. I was brought in blindfolded, but I hadn’t been the entire time I was inside. Suddenly I find myself staring around me everywhere, trying to match up the present with my partially repressed memories.
It’s the memory I refuse to acknowledge on the occasions it attempts to rise up. But somehow it’s the one that drives me in everything I do. It’s reason that I know I have to get Caleb far away from here. Somewhere we’ll both finally be safe.
The memory of my seventeenth birthday…
Chapter Seventeen
Scarlett’s Seventeenth Birthday
I stare blankly at the wall, watching as a drop of moisture trails down the bleak, beige wallpaper. I’m paying so much attention to the slow racing trails as they make their way down, that I can barely notice the man fucking me from behind.
I barely even notice the way his clammy hands grab my hips, moving every so often to smack my ass, maybe even pull my hair unimaginatively. Or how the sweat from his body has brushed off against my skin and is clinging there repulsively.