"Are you sure there's nothing more you'd need?"

"I didn’t really have much to begin with," I admitted, a little sheepish. "But I had papers waiting for me and that’s really all I need, right? I can buy everything else."

I only took a few things when I left home and enlisted. I left the army with even less. The photo of my family and a few personal effects that I hid somewhere nearby every time I moved.

She didn’t have any more than I did, but then she probably had more wherever it was she called home. I let her get our tickets, standing by with our single bags until she came back.

It was still very early in the evening after everything went down, and neither of us had really slept. There had been too much to do, after all. The bodies had been found, but no news about the identities had been leaked to the press, yet. I'd spent the day trying up loose strings, and Elda had insisted on helping. But both Elda and I knew we had to run before Greco's family got over the shock of his death and sent out search parties.

I'd dumped all the clothes I'd had before, so I ended up buying a few outfits and I also bought a new smartphone. It was my first time having one, and Elda almost laughed at me when I told her. I couldn’t drag my weapons around, but she'd told me of someone trustworthy, to either hold onto them or send them to where we would be going securely. It was the last thing we had settled before we made our way to the airport.

After all the stress of the past forty-eight hours, and the rounds Elda and I had gone through last night instead of sleeping, my body was feeling weighed down. She was only marginally better than I was. I could keep going, it was only long enough to get on the plane, but I could use some coffee anyway. She must have seen the grumpy look on my face.

"We have some time, long enough to get a coffee. Honestly, I'd like one, too."

So, we did that, sat at a café in the airport and had a quick drink. There were people around, so we didn’t have much of a chat.

The plane boarded maybe ten minutes after we got back, and I followed her onto the aircraft.

We were both on our way out to Italy.

We settled in with our meager luggage and waited for the plane to take off. She sat at the window, and I took the aisle seat. A part of me still expected something to come up, I was a ghost, but I'd shaved my facial hair and I couldn’t recognize myself in the mirror that morning because it was the face that had been plastered on the news after my family was murdered. More than just wanting to hide, I hadn't wanted to look at that face again.

No one else seemed to recognize me, either. As big news as it had been five years ago, this wasn’t Ireland where it got a lot more coverage and public attention. Most of the locals probably wouldn’t even remember, if they'd done more than paid cursory glance at the passing news.

After everyone had boarded, and the pilots went through a few flight checks, we were off. I breathed a sigh of release, then, tension leaking out of me, leaving me even more exhausted than I already was.

Still, I couldn’t sleep. I glanced down at Elda sitting next to me, her head leaned back against the headrest with her eyes closed. I knew she wasn’t sleeping, though. I took her hand on the armrest between us and squeezed, and she opened her eyes to look at me.

"What is it?"

"You never did tell me your story."

I'd been curious, too. It was hardly the place to be talking about it, even a small murmur carried, but most of the people around us were already asleep, the ones awake had earphones on. No one would be paying attention to us.

"Greco was my father."

Even though I'd guessed, it was still a surprise to hear it said so bluntly.

"I didn’t get any of this information until four years ago, on my twenty-first birthday." She took a deep breath and seemed to be bracing herself.

"Years ago, when she was still young, my mother met a man, back in Italy. They didn’t meet much at all, because he lived in the States, only visiting once every couple of months, or so. But she was smitten. That man was called Greco. My mother never knew he was already married at the time, or that he was part of the mafia. She fell in love, believing she was loved in return. So, you can imagine, to her, the news that she was pregnant was a joyous one. He had been away too long, but she waited for him. Until one day he returned. She told him about the baby."

He wouldn’t have found it particularly happy. Neither would his family. Even though they were somewhat more relaxed, Greco's family was extremely strict, especially when it came to heirs. It was a disgrace to have a mistress, to not be properly married. Even though they were relaxed, it was only to the point of sleeping around, so long as no one got pregnant out of wedlock, or a wedding would happen. I could just imagine what it would have been like, twenty-five years ago.

"When he found out, he disappeared for a while. My mother couldn’t reach him, he no longer sent her letters. She thought he had run, scared, and she was devastated. But then he sent people to Italy to kill not only my mother but me as well, while she was still pregnant. We got lucky, though. The details got fuzzy there, no one wanted to tell me exactly what happened. I do know there was help from some local authorities, though. But we lived through the ordeal, and my mother and her parents knew who they were dealing with. The only way they survived was by going into hiding."

She stopped, swallowed.

"I spent the last four years training and getting ready to come to the States to avenge the one man that wanted to kill my mother."

"But your mother didn’t survive. Or you wouldn’t be here, right?"

"Right. My mother had a stressful pregnancy. When the time came for her to give birth, none of them really expected her to survive. I was born, and my mother died, because she couldn't even go to a hospital to boost her chances, Greco's men were everywhere. But her parents were still likely in danger, and me too. I believed I was raised by my grandparents, but it turned out they were just friends entrusted to look after me while my real grandparents hid.

"I only got to know them once I was much older. On my twenty-first, when I went back home hoping to surprise my grandparents, only to meet them there with a few unexpected surprises in the room. Everything I learned that day made me hate Greco. This man that I never knew became my worst enemy, even if he was my father."

"And your solution was to turn into a hit woman," I murmured slowly.

"All I could think was that I wanted the man dead. From that moment onward, I stopped studying. Stopped training to be the lawyer I had aspired to be. And trained how to be a killer. It wasn’t hard, with my looks to hook up with some guys in the mafia. It wasn’t difficult for them to show me what artificial beauty could do, and with the right training, I could be a killer.

"So, I trained to kill."

She paused and blinked, then looked at me. I couldn’t judge her, considering the turn my own life had taken. It was likely I'd killed more people than she ever had, even though she was only a couple of years younger. It still made something shrivel in my chest, just hearing her. She didn’t deserve what had been done to her, all because the bastard couldn't keep it in his pants.

"I even took some contract killing jobs, just so I could be ready when the time was right to kill Greco, and I needed the money to do the job..."

"And the wedding was your opportunity."

She nodded.

I thought back to conversations I'd had with Greco. He had three children, all of them sons. I had guessed Elda was his daughter when I realized their eyes were similar, the one he said he could have had.

"Greco talked about his past at times," I murmured. She was looking out the window, and she turned back and met my eyes. "He would talk, sometimes, about his foolish youth and actions he regretted."

She rolled her eyes. "His regret wouldn’t have brought my mother back. I'm not sorry he's gone. Once my true grandparents know he's gone, they'll know they can stop hiding, stop looking over their shoulders all the time. They're already old, and they've been carrying that kind of burden for the past twenty-five years. I'm lucky that they stayed alive long enough for me to meet them."

I could see the wet sheen in her eyes, and I didn’t say anything more, squeezing her hand.