I get up before dawn, my eyes opening into the darkness as if I’d never slept.

I’ve been a light sleeper all my life, but my job kept me from ever falling into a deep sleep. Last night was more tense than usual, listening for every creak of the house.

If Eva escapes, if she tells anyone what she’s found here, then I’m going to have a lot more attention than I need. Cops will be the least of my problems. Once the mafia finds out my location, they will send every freelance hitman my way, wanting me to pay for my sins.

But the night was silent, nothing but the sounds of the woods.

Silent footsteps carry me to my wardrobe, where I dress warmly: a sweater under a heavy jacket, a simple gray scarf, gloves, and sunglasses. It helps me stay anonymous as well as warm.

I head to the kitchen and pour myself a cup of coffee to wake myself up, but as I try to drink it quickly, I hear the creak of a floorboard behind me. I don’t turn around, because I know she’s there, her sky-blue eyes watching me curiously.

“You’re leaving,” she points out. Without turning my gaze from the window, I nod. There’s a pause as she stares at me before speaking again. “Can I come with you?”

I shake my head.

“Why not?”

I don’t respond at first. With another swig of the steaming coffee, I finish it and set the mug down before I turn to face her.

“Not safe,” I say simply as my dark eyes meet her form. Even in the dim light of the kitchen, she seems to glow, her blonde hair and blue eyes making her stand out like an angel. Her hair is tied back in a messy ponytail, and she looks tiny in my oversized shirt and boxers, knees together and hands wringing the edge of the shirt.

She looks scared already.

“Please,” she says, daring to take a step closer to me. “I-I’ve been alone for almost a month, I just want someone to be able to talk to. I won’t be a bother.”

I give her a long, stern stare.

“It’s not safe,” I repeat more slowly, like that will help her to understand the seriousness of my words. Her face falls. I’ve grown hard to the sadness of others over the years, but her face makes even me feel a twinge of guilt at twisting the knife into her.

She struggles to find words, any words that could change my mind, but she just opens and closes her mouth a few times, failing. Instead, she just looks at me desperately. I draw in a deep breath and let it out slowly, striding over to her and looking down at her sleepy face.

“I won’t be long,” I say simply. “We need supplies. Food for two.” I reach to her shoulder and pluck the shirt hanging on her shoulders. “And clothes.”

“Shouldn’t I come pick some out? You don’t even know my size,” she says, a feeble smile on her face. I have to give her credit for trying.

“I do.”

Her eyelashes flutter.

“Wait, what? How?”

“I’m a good judge,” I say, and I move past her, taking the keys out of my pocket. As I open the door, I turn and give her a meaningful look. “Stay inside.”

“What if I don’t?” she asks, the shadow of a pout in her tone. I stare at her long and hard, and she seems to shrink back.

“Then I cannot protect you.”

She opens her mouth to protest, but my look silences her, and she nods.

I shut the door behind me and lock it, pulling my jacket tighter around me to blunt the sting of the cold winter air. This one has been especially brutal.

I can’t encourage her need to be around me. I’m not the type of man she needs to be around right now. But neither of us have a choice. She might feel free, but she’s just as trapped as she was beneath the bunker, she just doesn’t realize it.

True freedom, for her, would leave us both buried in an unmarked grave, or tossed into the freezing cold Atlantic Ocean.

And I wasn’t lying when I said it would be too dangerous for her this morning.

It was true that I needed to make a supply run. I got into my car and pulled out of the driveway, winding through the wintery morning and out onto the road toward Rochester.

My list included construction materials for the renovations on the house as well as enough food and clothes to take care of her. I’m a man with simple needs: I can live on rice and beans for a long time. But she’s spent the past few weeks locked away with nothing but the bland canned food the wretched old man left for her.

I still don’t know what I’m going to do with her. For now, I’m going to see to it that she’s well fed and feeling... safe, before I decide. Right now, she can’t leave. I have a little house of cards, and she could easily blow them all down.

She’s my captive. She just doesn’t know it yet. To her, I’m the man who saved her from a far worse fate. But while her kidnapper was evil, even he doesn’t have the blood on his hands that I do. And when she eventually pieces it together, what happened to him...

No women. No kids. Those are my laws, the only laws I’ve ever listened to.

But I’ve never had a problem with a woman like this one. I once heard a saying that when you think like a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. A gun and a bullet has always been my weapon of choice, but the saying remains true.

And those options are off the table.

So what do I do with the beautiful woman who tentatively trusts me? Who longs to be around me, until she finds out my truth and decides to turn me in when she runs to the cops?

She can never know the truth.

I let out a heavy sigh, staring at the road ahead. White all around me tries to dull my senses, but my mind is a hive of activity, and my eyes remain sharp as I mull over my options.

The sky ahead of me starts to turn purple as I drive, and along the side of the road, I see deer running away from the sound of my engine as I roar down the roads. I’ve never been much of a country person, but since being out here, I’ve come to appreciate the sights and sounds of nature before the world has woken up.

My eyes scan the roads to my sides as I roll through Rochester’s streets before the morning traffic has started in earnest. The fewer people that see me, the better.

I wonder how things have been going down in New York City since I did what I did. There is no other way to describe my situation—I am in hiding, laying low, and I haven’t had any contact with any of my old associates since I massacred my old bosses.

There are even some who might be sympathetic to what I did, but even if I could trust another soul, there is nobody I know well enough that I’d reach out to them. I’ve been a lone wolf most of my time in the mafia.

Hitmen often work alone, and my reputation keeps most at an arm’s length.

I expected to spend the next few years alone, in hiding. Perhaps longer.

That made discovering Eva all the more difficult.

As I pull up to the supermarket that’s open twenty-four hours, I think about the sight of her standing there in the doorway this morning.

What am I to make of this strange, broken girl?

She’s desperate, but she hasn’t made an attempt to run away yet. Is she hiding from something? Does she expect something from me? Perhaps my new captive isn’t as innocent as she seems.

Her eyes search me every time they look at me. I know that look from the people I’m about to kill, that searching gaze that tries to look into my soul.

She doesn’t know what to make of me, and I don’t know what to do with her. It’s a suiting enough scenario, but I can’t help but feel heavy in my heart as I consider my options.

Soldiers of the mafia who have spent time in solitary confinement say that even three days in a place like that feels like a month. No contact, just four walls and the loneliness of your thoughts.

It is impressive that this young woman is not completely broken. But her resilience could be a thorn in my side.

I get a variety of basics from the store. Pasta, canned tomatoes and sauce, rice, some spices, beef and pork that I can freeze and work with, some eggs, and plenty of canned vegetables. As I go by the cheeses in the deli, I pause thoughtfully. I’ve never been a man who cares much for luxury, but after a particularly hard job, I would sometimes enjoy the evening with cheese and good wine.

So, I add a wheel of brie, a block of manchego, and a slab of parmesan to my cart and grab a bottle of decent red wine before I move on to the clothes section of the store.

As soon as I get there, I frown, realizing I have no idea how to shop for a woman like her.

But I will have to keep her at the house for some time, so I decide a little bit of everything useful will have to do. All she had on her was the clothes she was captured in, with the little logo of some bar above the left breast. The only other clothes I found in the bunker were new lingerie that hadn’t looked touched, let alone put on. He was trying to wear her down into being his sex doll, and the thought makes me sneer.

I wish I’d known what he was doing when I killed him, so I could truly make that sick fuck suffer. If I could, I’d kill him all over again, this time as slow as he deserved. The fantasy of stuffing him, bleeding, in that bunker...

My pulse quickened, and a twisted smile came to my lips. I push the thought away. What’s done is done. Mink is dead, and he left me with an unexpected gift. An unexpected problem.

Going down the aisles, I pick out an enormous amount of socks and underwear, giving the funny little designs on the novelty socks a stony stare. I pick out five pairs of the warmest jeans and leggings I can find, raising an eyebrow at how thin the winter wear is for women. I stick a finger into one of the pockets and wonder how it’s possible for them to even carry a phone.

By the time I’m finished with the clothes section, I have a large, warm green jacket, a thick yellow sweater, a handful of comfortable t-shirts, two pairs of boots—one with heels, one without—a pair of mittens and a pair of gloves, a wide-brimmed hat, large sunglasses, and a gray scarf that looks similar to mine. It’s going to be a cold winter, and she’ll need all she can get.

I check out at one of the self-checkout booths to avoid dealing with a cashier, and after feeding the machine cash, I head out and drive to a home improvement store.

Half an hour later, I’m loading tools and wood into my trunk.

As I do, something catches my attention from the corner of my eye.

There’s a man leaning back against a black sedan two parking spaces down from me, smoking and pretending not to be watching me.

My jaw clenches. It wouldn’t be suspicious to an ordinary person, but I’m savvy enough to know what his presence means.

There aren’t many people in the parking lot this early, and I’m parked far out enough that nobody else is paying attention. In my head, I’m already planning out the different directions this could take.

The man makes brief eye contact with me. His cigarette isn’t even lit, just hanging in his mouth.

I decide a direct approach is best.

“Need a light?” I grunt at him, my face stony.

He doesn’t say anything. He gives the area a quick glance before he starts to approach me. I take a deep breath as I rest my hands on the top of my open trunk, and I put a hand down into one of my bags as the man gets near.

“Think you know we need to go for a ride, Sal-” he starts to say.

I cut him off with the ball peen hammer that I swing up, hitting his jaw with a sharp crack and sending him staggering.

Before he can fall, I catch him by the scruff of his collar and put his head down into the trunk of my car. I grab the trunk door and slam it down as hard as I can, and I hear another sickening crack of bone before he slumps to the ground and I shut the trunk in earnest.

It takes me all of two seconds to jump into the driver’s seat, turn the ignition, and drive away, leaving him on the ground alone.

My plan is to just drive out calmly as not to attract attention.

The sedan the man had been leaning against peels out, and I realize his backup has other plans.

I gun the acceleration and take off toward the highway leading west out of town, not wanting to lead them anywhere near the safe house. The black sedan is on me in an instant.

I weave through neighborhoods, heading for the more run-down parts of town where it’s less likely that the police will have patrolmen out to catch onto us. The last thing I need is the cops on me as well.

I’ve studied maps of Rochester, and it doesn’t take me long to get out of the city.

And as I expected, as soon as we’re out of a residential area, I hear the first gunshots.

My engine roars, and I weave in and out of the few other cars on the highway before I can turn off onto a wooded road. The sedan has a hard time keeping up with me, but once we’re on a long stretch of wooded road, they don’t need to—bullets start whizzing past the car, and I hear one hit the back.

I lower myself and get ready, and just as we come up to a bend in the road, I turn the wheel and grab the handbrake, turning the opposite direction of the bend.

The sedan slams on its brake, but they’re still firing at me. A bullet pings off the metal on the front of the car as the sedan zooms past me, and they cut left so hard that the car flips over and rolls once into the ditch off the side of the road.

Immediately, I grab the gun from my glove box and get out of the car, aiming for the sedan, and two men spill out of it immediately.

One already has his gun out, and he gets a shot off before he even has his bearings.

It’s a blind fire, but he gets lucky, and I feel a burning pain as it grazes my left arm. I don’t show pain in the slightest, though, even as I feel warm blood start to wet my clothes.

With machine-like precision, I set my sights on his head and fire once. A hole appears in his forehead, and he crumples to the ground.

The other man isn’t fast enough to get his gun before I’m at the car, and he dives behind it, dodging my shot.

I don’t give him a moment to recoup.

Hopping over the hood, I slide toward him, but he throws open the door to knock me off-balance.

I stagger, and he takes the chance to throw a punch at me. I lean back to avoid it, but the flash of light shows off his brass knuckles he has gripped in his hand, and the metal strikes me despite my dodging.

I feel blood run down my face.

When I come back in from the dodge, my own fist catches him in the stomach. He tries to get away, but I drop the gun and grab him by the brass-knuckled-wrist, squeezing it until it breaks as I use my other fist to start pummeling his ribs, feeling bones crack.

I don’t feel anger, just instinct.

I bring my fist up across his jaw, then throw him against his own car, giving me enough time to pick up my gun and point it at him.

“Fucking traito-” he starts to say, but I silence him with a single shot through the eye.

He slumps against the car and to the ground, leaving me alone with the sound of my breath.

I put my gun away, then check their cell phones to see if they’ve had time to message their bosses in the city. The last messages are from before I left the store.

I’m safe.

For now.

But soon enough, they’ll be noticed to be missing, and their boss will know where I am. Not precisely, but way too close for comfort.

Nonetheless, I take the time to load the bodies into the trunk of their car, gloves on, and I get the car moved into the woods, behind enough brush that it will be some time before their bodies are found.

With that done, I get into my car as if nothing has happened.

Killing is an instinct for me, nothing more. I feel no resentment for those men. I may as well have just been caught in a traffic jam.

But as I pull off and start driving back toward the safe house, it takes a few minutes for me to remember the bullet wound I got on my arm. The warm blood is soaking through my clothes, and before I know it, I start to feel dizzy as I drive.

“Fuck,” I mutter under my breath.

I need to get back. Fast.