"I looked out the window and saw the grounds," Luke said out of the blue.

I frowned, wondering what this had with what we were talking about. "Well, yes. The closest house is miles from here, it's why I loved this spot so much when I found it. It’s the best place when you want to have some anonymity."

If I was being completely honest with myself, when I bought the house, I hadn't imagined a time where I wouldn’t still be looking to take Greco's life, working for crime syndicates. It wasn’t all I thought, but it had been my reality when I first bought it. But I'd realized quickly I couldn’t rest there before he was gone, it was too far away from the action of the city.

"Is it your land, or…"

"It came with the house, actually, so yes. I don’t know the exact area, but I could equate it to something larger than a couple of city blocks. It wasn’t exactly cheap, and I worked my ass off for months, actually had to put my mission on the back burner so I could save up the money and pay it all off as soon as I could."

He hummed. "Did you plan to do anything with it?"

I bit my lip, hesitating slightly. "Well, I did have an idea one day, that I would build houses and rent them to holidaymakers. I'd have to separate what I want to be part of the house, and then divide the rest of the grounds into plots for each house. It would be the perfect spot for tourists because we're near the sea."

"Really?" he sounded partly surprised, partly amazed.

"Yes. The plot leads all the way up to a beach in the back. I bought the place for quite a hefty amount from the previous owner. The contract was fulfilled, all the money paid before he passed on. He didn’t want his money-grabbing family to have it, although I don’t know whatever happened to the money, and it wasn’t my business so I didn't really ask."

It had been a pure stroke of luck that I even stumbled onto the place. There was an ad on TV and it got me interested. I'd started taking gigs, small ones that included me working for some goons, luring people for whatever they wanted them for, still going through fight training. It was a year before I could master fighting on my own and start looking for assignments, then moving up to making kills and not just fighting.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" I startled out of my memories as Luke's sudden words.

"What?"

"It's your dream, right? Why wait? We could build those homes and make the dreams a reality. I mean, we both have free time on our hands now. And the idea sounds pretty interesting."

"Really?" I asked, and I could hear the hopeful tone in my voice.

"Yeah. I've never considered it, to be honest, but I'd love to help. We can start as soon as possible."

I looked up at him, but his eyes were closed and he was grinning to himself. The expression was goofy, but I was grateful he couldn’t see whatever was on my face.

"Just like that?"

"Just like that. It would take some planning, but if all you do is dream and never take action, nothing would ever be done."

Luke, I already knew but felt like I had yet to find out, was a man of action.

After we talked about my idea, we lazed around a bit more before we fell asleep. I woke up, several hours later to find he wasn’t in bed with me. I ended up searching for him, and I finally found him in the living room, on his phone. When I joined him, I realized he was Googling about building.

"We're gonna build a list," he explained, sounding distracted, eyes and fingers never leaving the phone. "Architects, the construction workers, the supplies. We'll have to work up a budget, too. It's better we start soon, right?"

I just sat, dazed, and listened to him as he built up a mental list.

He pushed me on it, even pulled up searches online, using an online translator to be able to read the website information from different local companies, vetting each for himself. His enthusiasm was catching, and soon he pulled me into working out the considerations with him.

He had funds stored in some secret account, and though I still had enough of my own, he offered to let me borrow some of it. We could always take a loan at some bank, but he thought it better to avoid the risk. With nine years’ total of working as mob assassins between us, we had both accumulated enough that it really wasn’t necessary, anyway.

He came up with the idea of building up half the plot first, and then focus on the second half after that.

"Why, though? Wouldn’t it be better if we just did the whole thing in one go?"

"Well, yeah, but if we do it like this, you can add some differences to the houses. And it would make sense to see how well the first half works, so we can minimize on doing a lot of stuff the wrong way. Say, like, we make a mistake somewhere, and we'll know not to repeat it again."

It was sound advice. As we worked out the plans, it was added in. But we wouldn’t wait for the first half to be done, once the foundation was down and some houses were going up, we'd start the second half, so the houses didn't finish so far apart. It was my condition for going ahead, and he agreed to it.

"I don’t know much about building, but I want to go around, looking at the grounds. I'd like to have a map of the area drawn if there's a way we can get that?"

I couldn’t help myself getting fired up right alongside him.