Page 7 of High Stakes and Soulmates (Fanged Mistakes #3)

EZIO

Past

I sit on the rock right outside the tavern as I hear music floating through the air. People are getting rowdier as the night goes on and they get drunker with each passing moment.

I hear footsteps but still, I don’t bother turning my head. I just really can’t find it in myself to care.

“Ezio.”

Slowly, I look over at my commanding officer. “Yes, sir.”

“What the fuck are you doing out here?”

“Waiting for my next order,” I say as I stand at attention even though the person doing the ordering is my brother, which is likely the only reason I can get away with half of the shit I do. That, and they believe I have skills that are necessary for them to complete a job.

He jabs my chest with his finger. “I should not have to wander around to find you. I get that you don’t like killing, but you’re the best at it in the group.”

“Then I’ll just have to make myself worse at it.”

“What, so they can kill you first?” Lorenzo asks. “We have been tracking this asshole down for months. He’s killed countless innocents. He does not deserve a trial. We are to discreetly dispose of him.”

I know it’s not just the “innocents” that he’s dying for. It’s likely something he knows that we’re not privy to since the higher-ups like to keep us in the dark half the time.

“Discreetly,” Lorenzo reminds me. “One of the others will flush him out. You will tail him and kill him in his home. There will be a ledger in his belongings. Take it with you and don’t leave the house until you find it.”

“Yes, sir,” I say as I start toward the tavern. It really doesn’t take long for the man to flee. Knowing my brother, he didn’t send anyone in there as a soldier, but something less imposing so he wouldn’t run far and we wouldn’t draw attention to ourselves.

It's all very questionable, what exactly we’re doing. None of us have worn a uniform since we set foot in this place. Instead, we were instructed to blend in and pretend like we were part of a merchant crew simply traveling through.

I’m well aware that I’ll likely never know what we’re doing, but it doesn’t mean that I won’t be a pawn in their game.

Soldiers don’t sneak into men’s homes and slaughter them in their beds.

But this one is supposed to.

My target isn’t hard to trail. He’s had a bit to drink, and while he’s obviously paranoid, looking every which way as he walks, he never sees me.

He hurries over to what really couldn’t be called anything more than a run-down hut on the edge of town that he slips inside.

I wait long enough for him to settle down before I reach the door.

I pull at it, but there’s some kind of small bar latch on it.

It takes very little for me to slide a thin rock in and jimmy it until it unlatches.

Carefully, I pull it open as the hinges of the old door creak, but it doesn’t seem to be enough to wake him. There’s enough light from the moon creeping in that I can avoid any of the sparse furniture while I make my way to the corner where I see his bed and the lump inside of it.

There’s one other door that must lead to the second room in the hut, maybe a kitchen or storage, but beyond that, it seems like most of what he owns is in this room, so hopefully finding the ledger won’t be too hard.

The floor creaks as I move closer to him and I grimace, knowing that it was loud enough to disturb the man who’d just fallen asleep.

The man wakes, startled, but he doesn’t see me until I’m on him.

He manages to get a “Wha—” out before I slide my knife across his neck, silencing him.

It’s quick, honestly much quicker than if they’d dragged him to a trial where he would’ve died anyway… but it still doesn’t feel good. Even knowing that he’s a bad man who the army needed eliminated, I feel a twisting pain in my stomach.

I try not to look at the way his body twitches in death, the way the blood pools out, the way my hand shakes as I clean the blood off my blade using the blanket on the bed.

Wanting to get out of this room as quickly as I can, I hurry over to the desk and start pulling things from it while I search for the ledger.

It’s nowhere out in the open, but I’ve seen my fair share of tricks to know that one of the drawers in the desk isn’t deep enough.

I just have to figure out how to open it.

Finding the thin hidden latch, I press it and it releases the hidden drawer.

What I don’t expect is for the ledger to fall out and hit the ground, startling me.

Grabbing it, I start toward the door before I hear a noise coming from the other side of the door leading to the other room.

No one told me there was someone else in the house. How would my brother not have known he was interacting with another? Haven’t they been watching him for days?

The door begins to swing open, and since it’s closer to the door leading out, I’m stuck in this small room until they move on. I sink back into the shadows, having little other choice in the tiny hut.

But what I see makes my stomach tighten. A child of about twelve rushes right over to his father’s bed as I have this fucked-up desire to grab him and drag him out before he can see what I’ve done.

“Father? Father… no! Father!” His screams tear through me and I feel like I can’t breathe.

Using the sounds of his despair to mask my footsteps, I turn and slip through the door without him even noticing.

But I can’t escape from the child’s cries echoing in my mind.

I’m shaking and I know that I have to get away in case he did see me, but I’ m finding it hard to run. Hell, it’s hard to even breathe.

What have I done?

Why couldn’t anyone else have gone in there? He was a drunk, defenseless man. It took no skill to kill him, so why did it have to be me? Why do I have to keep killing these people? I just want to run, but I know they’ll hunt me down if I do.

The screams of the child echo in my mind while I grab my head. What the fuck have I done? And now that child always has to have the last memory of their father be that…

Nausea roils inside me as I rush around a corner and slam into someone.

I’m so caught up in the scene that took place in the house that I can’t even find my feet and end up crashing to the ground.

“I’m so sorry! I didn’t see you,” the young man says as he reaches for me. His hand stops and I can’t help but question what he sees on my face that makes him hesitate. “Are you okay?” He kneels in front of me. “Did you get hurt?”

“N-No, I’m fine. I’m just… ha… I just…” I just what? Murdered a man? Left his child to stumble onto the body and to be orphaned? What if he has no other family? What if he’s left begging and starving on the street?

The young man grabs my face in his hands and forces me to look up at him.

“Are you okay? What happened? Is someone after you?” He looks behind himself to check, but shouldn’t he be worried about me, not whatever is behind him? I’m the monster here.

“I’m fine. I’m sorry. I just… heard… some bad news and it… I’m just struggling to comprehend it,” I lie, hoping to cover up what I’ve done.

His face immediately fills with compassion. It’s such an odd expression when I feel like I’m constantly surrounded by such indifferent monsters. They can kill and head off to the tavern to drink and fuck and be merry.

And I… I’m left kneeling in the middle of the road being comforted by a man I’ve never met.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, voice gentle. “That must have been really hard. Come on, let’s at least get off the road. I don’t want you to get run over as well.”

When I make no move to get up, he takes my wrist and carefully guides me to my feet. Now all that’s left for me is to return to Lorenzo, hand over the ledger, and tell him what I’ve done. And he’ll praise me, as if anything I just did was fantastic.

But instead, the young man pulls me over to the grass beneath a tall tree.

He immediately leaves me but returns quickly as I realize he’s holding something out.

It takes a moment for the horror to set in that the ledger I’d just taken from the dead man must have dropped when I’d slammed into him, and I’d nearly left it lying in the road.

“Thank you,” I say.

“Of course.” He kneels down. “Are you feeling a bit better now?”

“Yes, I apologize.”

“What’s your name?” he asks, and I know I should lie because if it gets out that someone killed the man and was caught fleeing with a ledger, it’d lead them right to us, but what’s it even matter?

Maybe I want to get caught… but again, I’m with the army.

It’s not like I did anything wrong; I was following orders.

“Ezio.”

“My name is Arturo. Are you from around here?”

“No, we’re traveling merchants,” I say.

“Ah! You’re with the crew who just came into town, yes? My master was telling me about them.”

“Master?”

“I’m a servant at the Florian estate.”

I hesitate, not knowing what that is. I suppose I haven’t paid much attention to the town since I showed up.

Noticing my blank expression, he goes, “The giant mansion?”

“Ah. I did happen to see that as we came in.”

“Pretty hard to miss, eh?” Arturo asks with a smile. “I was running an errand before I bumped into you.”

“This late at night?”

“I sure was. My master seems to prefer the night. He says it’s when there’s the most life. And since I slammed into you, I happen to agree.”

“Trust me, I’m not normally this exciting,” I say. “While the rest of my group likes to drink and enjoy life, I tend to sit far out of the way.”

“Do you just creepily stare off into the distance?” he teases.

“I might.”

He’s grinning now, and it immediately puts me at ease. I feel like—for the first time since my father dragged me into the army where he dedicated his entire life and assumed I should as well—I’ve met someone who is more like me and less like them.

I know I need to get back before my brother questions if I died in that house with that man. But I find that I don’t want to move.

“I mean… a bit odd but it’s definitely not the oddest thing I’ve seen,” he jokes. “I’ve also been known to stare off into the abyss like ‘Did I start a fire in the fireplace on the far side of the house? Because I really don’t feel like walking all the way over there.’”

“Your thoughts are definitely more important than whatever I’m thinking about,” I assure him.

Arturo laughs. “Very important. I need to pick up a package and don’t want to be too late. You could walk with me if you’d like to? I mean… you don’t have to; I’m not doing much of interest.”

Everything he does is more interesting than what I have waiting for me.

“I would like that,” I say.

He stands up and holds a hand out to me. I take it, hoping there are no traces of blood on me, but I was careful… I’ve had practice. But the moment his calloused fingers slide across mine, I find my attention on them instead.

When I’m on my feet, he releases my hand, and I find myself missing the warmth.

It’s not exactly easy to find men who share my same…

interests without my unit knowing. And in bigger cities, when my unit wanders off to find brothels, I’m too nervous to seek the comfort of another man and end up holing up in my room instead.

But he makes me yearn for something I’ve always wanted. Hell, I yearn for everything but this life I’ve been locked into.

“How long are you here for?”

“Not very long. I assume we’ll be moving out shortly,” I say.

“That’s disappointing. Maybe we can meet tomorrow? If you’re still here, that is. I have to ride out to a town about three hours from here. I’ll have you back before midnight. It’d be fun to have someone accompany me.”

“If we haven’t moved on, I would enjoy that. Where should I meet you?”

“How about back at that tree at noon?” he suggests.

“Okay.”

“It’ll be our secret meeting spot,” Arturo says with a grin.

And while the memory of the child’s cries try to tear me down, his smile tries to pull me back up. I didn’t even realize how much I was drowning until he offered his hand to me.

“You okay?” he asks.

I nod. “Yeah. I want to be.”

“Come with me tomorrow and just push your worries back, even if it’s for a moment.”

And I will hang on to that moment as desperately as I can because I’m not sure how much longer I can keep going like this.