Roma
I stare down the scope of the rifle and see her. She looks incredible in a sparkling red dress with a flower pinned to her shoulder. Her hair is bound up in her high ponytail and her cheekbones are flushed. I watch as she walks across the room and slides into a group of politicians. She’s watching somebody. I swivel the scope and see Daniel, Mr. Black’s bastard nephew. He’s nervous, glugging champagne like all he wants to do is get shitfaced. I return to Felicity. She’s watching Daniel, I realize. Damn, she’s quick.
Two men stand behind me. One of them is the asshole from the truck, the one who threatened to torture me if this goes wrong. I glance over my shoulder. He stands directly behind me, hand squeezed around the grip of his pistol. His name is Cleft, I’ve heard, though I have no idea what it’s supposed to mean. The other man stands slightly back with a pistol of his own. Both of their faces are hard, implacable. I know they’re just waiting for me to screw up so they can lay into me. The hunger in their eyes is animalistic.
“Have to wait for the ambassador’s speech,” Cleft grunts. I guess he assumes I turned to him for advice. That’s funny, because I’ve been doing this for a damn long time, longer than either of these pricks. Sure, they’ve been to war. But war has officers and orders and protocol. War is nothing like the bloodshed on the streets.
I nod. “Sure.”
I keep waiting for Bear to crash into the room and headshot these men. But Bear only came back because Felicity was in danger. If he’s smart—and he is—he’ll be long gone by now. He’ll be on his back under the sun somewhere, under a pretend name, soaking in the rays and forgetting about this madness.
I look down the scope again and watch as Felicity follows Daniel into the bathroom. Smart, I think. But then, she is the smartest woman you’ve ever known, isn’t she?
I want to tell myself that this decision is cut and dry. I don’t need to think about it. But the truth is more complicated than that. The truth is I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I’m not good for Felicity, that’s the truth. She’d be far better off with somebody else, maybe one of these clean-cunt politician types, maybe with a friend from the gym, maybe with anybody else. I swivel to the ambassador. He laughs, throwing his head back, exposing his neck. I could pull the trigger and end it all now. But I have to wait for the speech.
Behind me, something clicks. Then Cleft presses his gun between my shoulder blades.
“You look shifty,” he says. “You planning something?”
“What the fuck could I be planning?” I snap. They haven’t given me food or water. My body aches all over from the three-day imprisonment. And my skin is dry and cracked from so long in the darkness.
“We’ve heard about you,” Cleft says. “The little kid who was taken off the streets by Bear. Bear was the hardest motherfucker in the game before he went soft. But he’s not too soft, is he? ’Cause I saw what he did at the factory. If you’ve been trained by a man like that, you probably think you’ve got an ace up your sleeve. Well, let me tell you.” He nudges me forcefully with the pistol. “You don’t have shit. Nothing. You kill the man or you die, it’s as simple as that.”
As simple as that, I think numbly. If only that were true.
I tell myself that I don’t know the man, have never met him in my life. But that holds little weight when I’m in love with his daughter. But surely she doesn’t need me. She’s young and beautiful and capable and intelligent. She’ll get over her father’s death and go on without me. She’ll fall in love and have children and one day, long from now, she’ll tell her husband all about the mad few weeks she had. She’ll tell him about a man named Roma and how mean and bloodthirsty he was. And her husband will wrap his arms around her and hug her close and whisper into her ear: “He sounds like an awful man. He sounds like a demon.” Where will I be? Maybe the leader of the organization, Mr. Black’s successor.
I’m jolted from my thoughts when Felicity jogs from the bathroom, alone. I watch as she jogs across the room and toward her father. I swallow. She’s going to tell him. She’s going to tell him and if she tells him, Secret Service will descend like a murder of crows. I take a deep breath and aim the rifle directly at the ambassador’s head. Felicity seems to take an age to get across the room.
Cleft nudges me with his weapon. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I have no damn clue.”
“Yeah, right,” Cleft snaps. “You better make something happen or me and my boys are gonna have a damn good time with you.”
Felicity reaches her father and takes him by the arm, leads him away from the group. My forehead is sweating, the idea of shooting a man so close to Felicity bringing on nerves unlike anything I normally feel. I lean my head back to wipe sweat from my head. As I do so, I happen to glance across the street. My heart thuds.
Standing in a room a few levels higher than mine, in a building off to the right, is Mr. Black. Not one of his cronies, or one of his goons, but Mr. Black himself. And he’s holding a scoped rifle just like mine.