Page 5

ERO

“ E ro!” Circe’s voice echoes down the hallway in my wake.

And so my bullshit continues. I storm out of her hotel room, down the stairs, out onto the street. Too much. All of this is too much.

Seeing her, touching her…

Flashes of a life I don’t want to remember run through my aching head.

None of it feels real, none of it feels like me. But who the fuck am I anyway?

And what am I thinking getting tangled up with this hit woman, con woman, ex-who-the-fuck-knows-what-else woman?!

The evening wind blows my coat back, tosses my hair, cools the heat in my cheeks. Half of the scalding fire in my chest is anger, the other half is raging desire. Fuck, I want her.

About as much as I can’t stand her.

Everything about her attitude, her cocky nature, raises my hackles. Probably because she reminds me of me and my twin. What I can remember about him, anyway. Headstrong, flippant, snarky, and she knows just how hot she is, just like us.

Not that I feel like much these days.

You have to have an identity to look at yourself in the mirror and make an assessment, make a judgment whether you hate or like what you see. All I see is a stranger.

Maybe that’s why she gets under my skin too.

Every time I’ve met Circe she’s been wearing a different disguise. A new face, completely changing aspects of herself to avoid detection, to trick me, to manipulate me.

Gotta give her credit, she’s damn good at it.

What she’s not good at is making me trust her. Maybe I’m just broken that way.

Doesn’t change the fact that I can’t shake the look in her eyes, that ache in my chest, and the feeling of her skin under my fingertips.

She haunts me through the nighttime streets of Prague, ghosting in the shadows and keeping pace with my headlong escape. Not that I know where I’m going.

I realize somewhere past the cluster of bars I pass that I still have a bottle of beer I swiped from her fridge. Downing the brew, I chuck the bottle into a dark side street, sucking a cold breath through my teeth at the fizz.

I’m considering turning back to one of the bars when it registers.

The bottle didn’t break…

Never breaking my stride, I strafe toward the wall of buildings, letting my steps look loose, maybe a little drunk.

As soon as I make it out of sight of the alley, I duck back, under an alcove, hopping and muscling up to the overhang.

Three side steps along the ledge take me back to the corner and I peer down at the silhouette crouched next to the dumpster my bottle should have hit.

Called it.

Now, are you cop or crook?

One way to find out.

“Talk about gettin’ the draw on him…”

“It’s ‘getting the drop,’ you nitwit.”

I shake the echo of my brother’s voice away. With a little shrug and a nod, I step off the edge, straight down.

A strangled yelp accompanies my elbow connecting with the back of his head. Rolling with the fall, I hook my arm around his neck, twisting around and letting my momentum drag the sneaky fucker with me, right into a choke hold.

Shit.

Probably should have kept him awake for questioning…

His body slumps to the concrete, a wet gurgle warning me I may have overdone it.

I’m a lot less worried about it when I pat the guy down.

He’s dressed in high-quality leather, expensive shirt and pants.

But it’s the knives, the three pistols, and the garrote that tell me he wasn’t waiting to give me a pat on the back and buy me a drink.

Taking the small arsenal for my own, I find a slight pep in my step as I leave the darkened nook, heading back toward the neon glow of the bars. Something about an assassination attempt really gets me amped up.

Or maybe it’s the lack of direction, the whirling thoughts of Circe and my past that drive me straight to the bar top and through four shots of tequila before I can chill out and let the chronic knot out of my upper back and neck.

Soon enough, the music has me tapping my toe and I’m side-eyeing the blonde waitress that hasn’t taken her eyes off me since I arrived. Definitely have no interest in that kind of indulgence tonight.

Not sure why.

But it’s nice to feel pretty.

“What would you know about being pretty, Ciro?” I mutter unconsciously, sipping another beer.

Even as I hear the words absently, the twitch of a smile tugs at my lips. It’s almost like I don’t know how to smile or something.

Like it’s a foreign concept to my lips.

Blondie bites her lip, sauntering past me as another song starts, some hard thumping pop-dance thing. I think about hitting on her or asking her to dance.

And suddenly I’m somewhere else in my head.

I know it’s New York, it’s late night and we’ve been at it for hours, hitting one club and another.

Ciro bumps my shoulder, winking at me, flirting his ass off with some out-of-towners.

Across the bar, another familiar face gives me a flat look, his eyebrows raising slightly like he’s seen this all a thousand times before.

Like he’s there to keep us from burning the place down or something.

His name flickers on the periphery of my mind…

My brother. He’s my older brother and he’s?—

Beer shoots out of my nose, shattering the image, slapping me back to the brightly lit bar in Prague. Now.

The memory shreds, tattered, floating away like so much wet garbage in a river.

It leaves me cold, hollow. The girl’s still eyeing me, but she’s not…

She’s not the one I want.

Slapping some cash from my would-be assassin’s wallet down, I shove off the bar, ignoring the disappointed look on googly-eye’s face. Ignoring the signs of her glancing toward the back of the place, nodding her head.

I’m a block away when goosebumps rush down my back.

My feet surge into a trot, into a run without my urging. My flight reflexes have never failed me before, and pretty quick, I realize why.

I’ve got a tail. Someone to the left and back, another across the street. Through the gaps in the buildings I catch more movement, parallels mirroring me on both sides.

Shit. Double shit.

I lose count after five. And they’re not working together, at least not all of them. Different trajectories. Not quite in sync. But they’re all pros.

Everything’s a little blurry through the mist and the booze. Lights streak slightly to my eyes, kaleidoscoping as I run.

I let my feet carry me on, let my instincts make the turns, double back, wait, move on.

An hour later, I’m dying of thirst, my head is pounding. And these guys just won’t quit.

Two more slip by and I’m flagging, wearing thin.

Deep gray floods the horizon as I scurry from another hiding place. Right into a leather-clad assassin who’s just as surprised as I am.

Block, stop his hand from reaching his gun, slap the knife away, duck, drop back. Gotta stay inside his reach, keep him from using his longer reach to his advantage.

“You’re not doing very well,” Ciro snorts, crossing his arms and leaning against the dirty brick wall across from me.

“You’re doing even worse. At least I’m not dead yet,” I growl, hammering my elbow down on my dancing partner’s back. He stumbles to the side, giving me a strange look and lunging again.

“Wait…I thought that was the point?”

“Fuck off, Ciro. You’re distracting me.”

“Ugh. Moody, moody. Here,” he rolls his eyes, tossing something through the air at me. Then he’s gone.

But, I kinda have my hands full, so…

Catching the knife, I flip it, slash, forcing the guy back. A swift kick to the face sends him sprawling and I’m on my way.

Three blocks farther, I look down at the knife, a little confused.

Not that I get the chance to think it through. I’m still being tailed. At least two gaudy-looking killers that likely work for the Triads, three sleek, suit-wearing Yakuza, a handful of tracksuit sporting gold chains from somewhere in Eastern Europe.

And worst of all, the two that no one else in the world could spot but me…

Long coats. A smear of red on the forehead of the skull masks both of them wear like a second skin. Somehow, I know it’s a fingerprint in blood.

Mocro assassins.

The most talented and ruthless killers in the world. A select group that my fractured memories tell me I was a part of a long time ago.

The sun rises.

And I keep running.

“Ditchface. Wake up.”

“It’s dickface, you fuckwad.” My voice echoes metallically, sounding distant to my own ears.

“Correcting me actually works against you this time, you realize that, don’t you?”

Grainy-eyed and aching to my bones, I shift against the freezing drain pipe at my back. How long was I out?

“Few hours.”

I raise an eyebrow, grimacing at my twin in the dim. Cars pass overhead, thumping the underside of the bridge above us. I mean me, above me.

“Ghost watch?” Ciro snickers, wagging his wrist.

Time loss aside, I know I’ve been running for three days.

And the odds have only stacked higher against me. Almost like every hit man on the freaking continent’s out to get me.

I made it out of the city, hitched a ride, hopped the border into Poland where it only got worse. Surrounded, I managed to vanish long enough to find a hole to hide in, one they would all hesitate to blindly follow me into.

“They’re all waiting out there.”

“I know.”

“You don’t have any bullets left either.”

“Thanks for pointing that out.”

“You’ve got my thoughts and prayers though,” Ciro shows me his teeth, grinning awkwardly.

“I remember you being funnier.”

Ciro’s snarky expression fades for a second, and I see myself sitting across from me, glaring. Then he’s gone.

Great.

I’ve completely lost it.

It works to spur me into motion though. I rise, stretching out the kinks. Time to end this, one way or another.

Creeping out into the fading blue of dusk, I don’t bother sliding the grate back into place. Too much noise. Especially because it’s way too damn quiet.

Every building around me is dark. Empty.

I take the alleyway on my right, senses on high alert. Focusing hard on any movement, I almost trip over the first body. Triad. Laying across from one of the Ukrainian guys.

Further along, I find another standoff, all of them dead.

Almost like they went after each other trying to decide who was going to be the last one standing to get to me. But a tingling little itch tells me I’m missing something.

Too bad it doesn’t matter.

“Do. Not. Move.”

Fucking hell. Her voice makes me want to put my fist through a wall. Just as much as it makes me wanna bend her over and…

I feel the tip of a blade prick the back of my neck.

“Thought I smelled your delicate perfume, Cirs.”

“How could you smell anything past your own stink?” she snarls in a whisper. “Stop twitching.”

“What do you want?” I mutter.

“Why are we whispering?” Ciro hisses, peeking his head around in the corner of my vision.

She sighs almost imperceptibly. “I want to stop chasing you. I want you to come with me .”

Ciro opens his mouth to comment, but I talk over him.

“And I want to be left alone.” Even if I can feel the heat of her body behind me, making my pulse race.

“And I wanna go sing karaoke!” Ciro chirps, licking his finger and poking it toward Circe’s ear. Not that she notices.

“Clearly someone doesn’t care about your wants , Ero. Enough to hire a mob of hit men to find you,” Circe explains, nudging me forward slowly. “I checked on the dark web. It’s a full blackout, free-for-all contract on you. Locations updating hourly.”

“Why? How?” I shrug, turning to face her and snapping her dagger out of the way. Circe cocks her hip, her posture tense, on edge. How does she do that with her hair? It’s like it’s got a life of its own. Wild, yet always?—

Focus.

“I don’t know. But they won’t stop coming. Whoever it is seems to know who you really are.” Her eyes harden, like she knows a little more about that than she’s let on so far.

“So, what? You came to rescue me? Or are you here to collect on the reward?”

“Ugh. Don’t tempt me. I have orders, okay? You were right, back at my hotel room. And I think it’s time you met my employer.”

“Maybe they can give me a legit reason why you’re such a pain in my ass.”

“Sure. Along with who’s trying to have you killed.”

“Fine. I’ll play along, for now.”

“Finally. I hope you’re also willing to fight along too. Cause we’ve got company.”