Page 25 of Agency

He didn’t immediately sit down, though. Instead, he walked around and began to remove metal domes from platters of food. Caviar and oysters on ice, lobster, pasta, steak tartare with toasted baguette slices, salted and pickled foods. I had to fight the urge to yelp with excitement at each one being revealed, and instead settled for pressing my hands together in a way that kept me from applauding each new item.

“Oh my God,” I breathed, looking around at the miniature feast, hands still positioned as if I were praying. “This is amazing.”

“Thank you, thank you,” he said. “Though, I cannot take credit. I simply order and pay.”

“But, still,” I said, looking around to each dish while fighting the urge to pile my plate so high that they’d have to roll me down to my getaway car, “my clients don’t often provide meals like this.”

Chuckling lightly, he went around the table. “Clients, hmm?” He removed the champagne from the ice bucket, checked the label.

“Well, you know…”

“Of course, of course. There’s certain verbiage that’s always involved in certain lines of business. I’ve always heard them called dates, here. Champagne? Or…?”

“Champagne,” I said. “Please. Unless you want me to lose my head, of course.”

“Losing one’s head can be fun,” he said, but still began to unwrap the champagne’s cork. “Personally, the bubbles have never agreed with me. Far too effervescent.”

“They’re not for everyone,” I said as he untwisted and tossed aside the stopper’s wire, before directing the potentially explosive cork away from me. “But, you know, bubbles do make everything better.”

“Oh?”

“Trust me,” I said as he twisted and popped the cork with practiced ease, sending no projectile flying my way. “They make everything better.”

Smiling a truly genuine smile, he poured me a glass of champagne. I was about to take a sip as he withdrew the vodka from the ice, but he waggled his finger at me.

“Oh no. No, no, no.”

“No?”

“A toast, first,” he said as he poured himself a shot of vodka.

“Oh.”

“To the most beautiful woman to ever set foot in this room,” he said, raising the glass. “Far more beautiful than any of her contemporaries.”

“Oh,” I said, putting a hand to my chest as I felt the color rising to my cheeks. “That’s so sweet.” I blinked rapidly in the hopes I could keep the blush from my face, before taking a sip of my champagne. He really was a charmer, wasn’t he? And so genuine. And the meal? My God, the dinner looked so delicious and decadent.

Really was a shame that I was going to have to kill him after we finished eating everything.

Chapter Seven

Ambyr

Five long years as a contract killer.

Five long years where I’d learned a few things I’d never have imagined I would know.

Things like: killing a man with a pistol or rifle is the easiest. Two taps to the back of the head, or a single from more than a few city blocks away. Pull the trigger, you’re done. Pull the trigger twice, you’re even more done.

Those kinds of assassinations are cold, impersonal. Unless you’re looking for and striving to catch the moment, you never see the look in his eyes as the light fades and he transitions from human being to lifeless hunk of meat fit only for a morgue slab.

Poison in his food is the next best. You deliver the meal, and by the time he’s beginning to realize what’s happening, you’re long gone.

No time for second-guessing, no chance to see him clutch at his throat. You poison whatever he’s going to eat, then you’re gone and out the door, leaving the chemicals to work their own brand of dark, nefarious magic.

Grigori Smolensky, though? He had airtight security. His food was tasted by his guards.

Grigori was different. Grigori required extraordinary measures.