Chapter Eleven
Forgive your enemies,
but never forget their
names.
John F. Kennedy
present
For someone with a five million dollar bounty on his head, my life is pretty damn boring. It’s been a week since Vincent informed me of the three-point-five million dollar increase on my hit, and I haven’t seen any action yet.
To be fair, I’ve been camped inside of my brownstone, hiding like a little bitch.
I tell myself that it’s because it’s not just my life on the line. I have my security guards to think about. Being in public, out in the open, puts them at risk and also the lives of anyone around me.
But a few minutes earlier, when the door of a car slammed shut and I immediately straightened up, I knew I was bullshitting myself.
Who the fuck am I trying to kid?
I had been indoors, doing nothing on a pleasant Saturday afternoon, because I had been waiting for her to come back.
And at the sound of her car, I peeked an eye out of my window curtain, catching sight of her dark red hair, the soft curls blowing gently with the wind. I took a moment to consider what I was doing.
I was staring like an awestruck teenage boy.
Was I embarrassed? Absolutely.
Would I stop? Fucking unlikely.
I got another ten seconds of her bouncing up the steps to John’s place before she let herself in with a key and was out of my sight. I sighed and returned to my office.
Now, not even a minute later, I’m still sitting idly at my desk, tempted to look her up on the internet.
I don’t know her first name, but I caught site of her last name, Reynolds, on her sweater a short while ago, and years as a killer and recluse have gifted me with the opportunity to develop research talents comparable to the most infamous of stalkers. For a brief moment, I hesitate, my fingers hovering closely above my keyboard.
I can pull up security footage from my cameras outside of my place.
I can grab a still of her face.
I can run it through every facial recognition software known to man.
It would be easy.
I can do all that… but then I would be sinking to a new low.
The truth is, after talking to her a few times, I know deep down that she’s not involved in the hit, yet I want a reason to look into her past—into her. But…
She’s not a target.
She’s not marked for death.
She’s a nobody.
And I have no fucking clue why I’m so fucking interested.
I sigh, staring at the ceiling, focusing on a smudge, where the corners of the walls intersect. When I painted the walls gray, I accidentally left a light gray dot of paint on the bright white ceilings. I could have fixed it, but at the time, I kind of liked the idea of the imperfect.
It was a tangible, visible flaw, and it was mine.
It was me.
But after a while, I started to resent it. I even named it Asshole, because like an asshole, my imperfection mocked me every day when I stared at it with nothing else to do with my life.
Laying low day after day gets boring.
Redundant.
Monotonous.
Wearisome.
Sometimes, when I would get so stir crazy, I would succumb to the insanity tugging at the fringes of my brain, and I’d talk to my Asshole on the ceiling. After the third time or so, I realized that I was talking to an inanimate object, referring to a speck of paint on the ceiling as my asshole, and stopped.
At the time, it was an all-time low.
Since then, I’ve sunk even lower.
Like waiting around all day for a glimpse of fiery hair and a constellation of faded freckles.
Like considering whether or not I should cyberstalk a total stranger.
Like focusing my energy on a random hot chick because I don’t want to think about the fact that my little brother, who I still love and would still give my life for, wants me dead so much that he would pay five million dollars for it to happen.
Nope.
Not thinking about it.
I’d rather stare at my Asshole all day.
And I do.
I stare at the damn thing until the grayness of its color blurs into the white, and I’m not sure if what I’m seeing is a color that exists in any color spectrum.
I stare at the damn thing until my neck aches from glancing up at the ceiling, and my shoulders ache from carrying the burden of my neck.
I stare at the damn thing until the tiniest sliver of evening light left outside stretches into an all-consuming darkness, and my boredom doesn’t even register in my mind, because my mind has shut down.
Off.
Inoperative.
Out of order.
And when there’s a light thud of a door closing on John’s side of the street, the subtle noise miraculously registers in my brain, sending me out of my seat and flying toward the door. I shout for my guards to stay behind, assuming they heard me get up.
And for some damn reason, my boredom has reached its limit, and I open the door and ever so eloquently say, “Hi.”
I don’t even remember the last time I’ve greeted anyone with anything other than a bullet.
But hi?
It’s so mundane.
So normal.
So friendly.
In other words, it’s the exact opposite of me, and that makes me want to laugh. It’s only fitting that a woman that elicits from me a reaction so different than anyone else gets a greeting from me that is equally out of character. And saying hi, like I’m a fucking pre-pubescent teenager that has just barely found the confidence to talk to a girl for the first time after opening his first Playboy magazine or some shit, is most definitely out of character.
She stares at me, her petite face upturned into a pretty scowl. “What do you want?”
It’s her go to question, one that she always asks and I never quite seem to answer. And despite the I don’t give a fuck look I typically have permanently glued onto my face, the corners of my lips turn up into a genuine smile, amused in a way that I’ve noticed frequently happens when I’m around her. Only this time, I allow myself to show it with a brief smile, because what the Hell. If I’m saying hi like an everyday Joe, I may as well smile, too.
“Nothing,” I purposely reply in a tone that says I mean the opposite.
She rolls those emerald green eyes of hers and turns around, giving me her back. It’s a nice back, lean and trim, but what it leads to is even nicer. I take a moment to stare at her ass. Round and perky, it’s nestled beneath God’s gift to men—yoga pants.
Without hesitation, I eye her retreating body and make a dumb decision. Leaning back into my house, I grab two guns off of the entryway table, tuck them into the back waistline of my dark jeans, and chase after her.
The spontaneity feels like freedom amidst my perfectly planned life.
She glares at me, hostility and—dare I say—sadness extending from her in waves. “I’m not in the mood for this. What do you want?”
“I’m bored,” I say honestly.
“Bored,” she repeats drily. The word sounds foreign on her lips.
“Yep. That’s what I said.”
“What do you expect me to do about it?”
“You’re already doing it.”
And she is. Just being here with her, with someone other than myself and the two guards that man my security room, is doing wonders for my brain. Truthfully, it could be anyone, and I would be satisfied.
Seriously.
Anyone.
Except Asher, Vincent, Lucy, my guards, a Romano, an Andretti, my brothe—
She turns to me, stopping us both, along with my train of thought. “Stop. Whatever you think you’re doing, just stop.”
“Stop.” I play with the foreign word on my tongue, the sound of it unfamiliar to my ears.
I’ve never been told to stop before.
That’s a first.
And it’s sexy.
I like the word. I like the sound of it on her pouty lips. I like that she’s not giving me the time of day. And I should probably stop talking to her. It’d be for the best. And I will. One more minute, I mentally promise myself—and her. I need one more minute of this. I was being honest earlier when I said she was curing my boredom.
The corners of my lips tilt upwards again as I wait for her to say something else.
“Yep. That’s what I said,” she mocks me.
I’m about to reply with something that would have undoubtedly been smart when I hear a familiar clicking sound, and I spur into action, diving over her body and shielding it with my own.
Not even a second later, there’s a distinct whish sound.
A muffled gunshot.