Page 29 of No Words
The words echo in my head. She still believes I can change.
My vision blurs red. Hart gets redemption.
Hart gets love. Hart gets everything I never had.
The unfairness of it claws deep inside my chest. Hart gets to be regretful.
Hart gets to be forgiven. Hart gets to try again, while some of us never got a first chance.
I glance at the photo on the table, and my lips pull into a half smile, just thinking about how she has already become my greatest obsession.
“She’s all I have left,” Hart whispered.
Rage tears through me, primal and violent. The poison isn’t enough anymore. Anger bubbles up from the depths that I have spent years trying to drown.
My fist connects with Hart’s temple in a perfectly calculated strike, hard enough to disorient, angled to send him falling.
Hart’s eyes roll back, his body going limp as he topples sideways.
His skull meets the sharp corner of the conference table with a wet, hollow crack that echoes through the small room.
The impact splits open his scalp like a surgeon making that first incision.
Blood erupts from the wound, streaming down his face in crimson rivulets as his body crumples to the floor, his head bouncing off the floor more than once.
His limbs twitch once, twice, then go still.
The metallic scent of blood mixes with the earthy smell of the spilled wine, and Hart’s final breath escapes in a quiet, rattling wheeze.
Dark blood spreads across the pristine carpet in an ever-widening pool, soaking into the expensive fibers like ink into blotting paper. The room reeks of copper and spilled wine. My hands are sticky with blood, and the air tastes metallic.
I stare down at the body, the unused vial back safely away in my pocket. I’ve deviated from the plan, making it messier, riskier. But I can’t help it. I saw red. I kneel beside Hart, checking for a pulse I know I won’t find.
What have I done? My hands shake as I stare at the blood. This isn’t who I am. I don’t lose control. Ever. I don’t let emotion drive my hand. But seeing Hart’s love for Eleanor, hearing his regret... it cracked the walls I’ve kept locked away since childhood.
I work quickly, efficiently, my hands steady despite the chaos swirling in my mind.
A few adjustments to make it appear like Hart suffered a fall, striking his head on the table’s edge during a dizzy spell.
Just another tragic accident. An overworked man, drinking alone, struck down by stress. It happens all the time.
I position the body with clinical precision, scatter the speech pages to suggest a struggle with sudden illness, and place the photograph just beyond Hart’s outstretched fingers, as if the man has been reaching for his daughter’s image in his last moments.
By the time hotel staff find Dr. Gregory Hart fifteen minutes later, after a concerned donor mentions Hart’s extended absence, I am back in the ballroom, nursing my still-untouched champagne and watching Eleanor Hart’s world collapse in real time.
She stands frozen near the ballroom entrance as paramedics wheel her father’s body past, their urgent voices cutting through the sudden hush that has fallen over the gala.
Her composure holds for one heartbeat, two, then cracks just enough to let through a barely audible cry that somehow carries across the crowd’s whispered conversations.
She follows the paramedics out of the hotel.
Guilt twists in my chest, unfamiliar and deeply unwelcome. I tell myself it’s satisfaction at a job completed, but the feeling bears no resemblance to the cold closure I usually experience after an elimination.
“Tragic,” the elderly woman appears beside me again, tears glittering in her eyes. “Such a gifted man, and so young to have a heart attack.”
Heart attack. The story is already forming, spreading through the crowd like ripples in still water. By morning, the papers will report Dr. Gregory Hart’s sudden death from cardiac stress, another casualty of academic pressure.
Twenty minutes later, I stand in a parking garage three blocks away, my hands finally steady again.
The rage has burned out, leaving behind the knowledge that I’m not the controlled killer I believed myself to be.
I report to Ross through an encrypted phone that will be destroyed before I reach my apartment.
“It’s done,” I say, my voice steady despite the strange feeling inside. “Hart is dead. Appears to be natural causes, cardiac event, possibly brought on by stress.”
“Good. Any complications?” Ross’s tone conveys the sentiment of a problem efficiently solved.
I think of Eleanor Hart, of the way she spoke about redemption with such unwavering conviction. Of her father’s tender voice saying my girl , and the love in his eyes as he admired her photograph that made me crack.
“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” I lie, the first deliberate deception I’ve ever offered the Order.
“Excellent. Take a few days to decompress, then report for your next assignment. There’s a politician in Chicago who’s been asking uncomfortable questions about our shipping operations.”
The line goes dead. I stare at the phone for a long moment before crushing it beneath my heel and scattering the pieces into a storm drain.
As I drive away from the glittering hotel and its aftermath of tragedy, I know nothing about this job has been clean.
For the first time in my career as the Order’s most reliable enforcer, I’ve let my emotions cloud me.
For the first time, I’ve seen my target as more than an obstacle to be removed. For the first time, I’ve lied to Ross.
And for reasons I can’t yet name, the memory of Eleanor Hart’s passionate voice follows me into the night, her words echoing in my head: writing them off as irredeemable makes us complicit in their continued violence.
The predator has found his weakness.
Her name is Eleanor Hart, and she believes in redemption. Even perhaps for men like me.
I drive home with the taste of regret on my tongue. Tonight, for the very first time, I have discovered something worth protecting.
Even if she will never know I exist.
She will never know who I am the night her world ended.
Ghost - Book 1 of the Shadow Series