Page 26 of Stalk (Assassin’s Kiss Duet #1)

Ren

I t’s been a few days since I met Mattia at the bar, and then joined him back at his hotel.

My mind has been constantly racing ever since, and not just about Catherine’s intentions or the pasts of my mother and father, even though all of that is enough as it is.

In between watching my back every few seconds for fear of my own assassination, I keep seeing Mattia’s eyes in my head.

Those dark, brooding eyes that love to scowl at me and watch me with an intense severity that makes my knees weak.

I strangely miss his company, but I also never want to be in his presence again. The way he watches me is unsettling. The way he talks to me feels… demeaning. Like he truly believes I’m incompetent. I know Mattia feels sorry for me, but more than that, I think he pities me, and I hate being pitied.

I know I should have looked into my mother’s death a long time ago.

Her death has never sat well with me, but amidst starting my new, forced life of working for Catherine, I hardly had time to grieve, let alone dig deeper.

I know I’ve been avoiding it, and that it’s time for me to find out the truth.

As for my father, it never really occurred to me to look into him.

I may have never quite believed Mamma when she told me he left us, but I wasn’t going to question her. Not while she was alive.

That’s one thing Mattia is good at—opening my eyes. I’m torn between despising him and his callousness and feeling grateful that we crossed paths in the unfortunate way that we did.

I shake my head from where I stand beside the kitchen island.

I lean on my forearms, hovering over a tall mug of steaming black coffee, trying to straighten out all the things going on in my brain.

For the last two days, I stayed in bed. I checked my messages in case Catherine changed her mind and wanted me on an assignment, but I’ve heard nothing.

Admittedly, I’ve also been checking them in case Mattia reaches out.

I’m eager to know if he’s found anything out about my parents on his end, but I also know he had an assignment of his own to complete yesterday, so I’ve had to force myself to be patient.

This morning, I finally tore myself out of bed.

The best place to start my own investigation is right here at home.

I only briefly went through Mamma’s personal belongings after she died.

I couldn’t bring myself to go through it all, because to me, that meant that she was really gone, though I already knew she was.

All I did was clear out her office in order to make it my own.

I boxed everything that she had in there up and shoved them in her otherwise untouched bedroom.

So, that’s where I need to start. First, I’ll go through the boxes from the office, then I’ll go through her bedroom and her bathroom.

Lastly, I’ll make my way down into the basement and check out whatever she had stored down there.

I only ever go down there to do laundry, but there are several large storage bins that could be full of anything.

The clock on the stove reads it’s nearing ten. Cleo will be here any minute. Once she’s here and we’re both fully caffeinated, we’ll get to work.

I’m not ready. I don’t want to know. But I have to. If nothing else, I’ll at least show Mattia that I’m capable of this much.

An hour later, Cleo and I sit cross-legged on the floor of Mamma’s bedroom, with several open boxes creating a tiny mountain in between us.

“The Tide” by Pale Waves plays loudly from Cleo’s JBL speaker she brought over atop Mamma’s nightstand, because according to Cleo, any kind of investigative work requires an upbeat soundtrack to keep us going.

That, and we can talk much more freely with the music going.

If my house or phone is bugged and Catherine, or whoever, is trying to listen in, it’ll be hard for them to distinguish what we’re talking about from the music.

Cleo sighs and tosses a yellowed Manila envelope to the side, then brushes up her hair into a messy bun. “Why would she keep every single utility bill dating back to 1998? Your mother was super OCD, Ren.”

I chuckle, because she’s right. Mamma was always, always overly organized. “Would you rather go through her large book of expired coupons?” I ask, throwing said book to the side.

Cleo groans. We’ve only gone through two of the smaller boxes so far, and all we’ve found are bills, checking account statements, a few old National Geographic magazines, and an old, ratty Bible. We empty out the last of those boxes, then I push a larger box between us.

“It’s literally all office supplies,” Cleo mutters.

I snort. “On to the next…”

Eventually, we go through all of the boxes from the office, then organize our findings into piles.

One for bills and statements, another for miscellaneous things, and then another for office supplies.

The two things I’m most interested in from the boxes are the Bible and her old laptop.

After flipping through the Bible, I noticed some annotations which I will go back and read later.

They aren’t assassin-related, but it’s nice to have her thoughts written out like that.

Her laptop is obviously dead, and I don’t have a cord for it, so I’m going to have to find one in order to access anything on there.

I’m sure it’s got a passcode, so I’ll have to figure that part out, too.

We break for a quick lunch, and then we get back to it. We shove the piles we made in the morning against one of the walls, then decide to go through her dresser.

“I swear to God, if we find sex toys during this, I’m going to need a drink,” Cleo says with a whine.

I roll my eyes. “I never knew you to be a prude.”

Cleo kicks at my shin with her boot. “I have nothing against sex toys. But finding sex toys that belonged to my best friend’s deceased mother? That gives me the creeps.”

I snort. “Thank you for helping me with this, C. You’re making the process a lot easier for me to handle.”

She glances at me. Her features morph from a joking scowl to a sincere smile. “You know I’ve got your back. Just like you have mine.”

The top drawers are all underwear, bras, and socks. But, while sifting through some tank tops in the bottom drawer, I find something. “Cleo, look at this.” I hold out a Ruger semi-automatic pistol, still in its holster.

“Oh, shit. Is that the first weapon you’ve found of hers?”

I shake my head. “I found one gun for home defense after she died. I never really looked too hard for anything other than that, I guess… I have a feeling we’ll find a lot more as we go along.”

We spend the rest of the day going through Mamma’s room and all of the personal belongings she left behind.

Turns out, my mother did leave a lot left to be discovered, but everything of note was expertly hidden away.

I can’t blame her for that—especially when I was younger.

I know she wouldn’t have dared leave anything harmful out for me to find.

That’s just who she was. I should have known it would be like a scavenger hunt.

Either way, I’m glad we found what we did.

The gun was the only weapon in her dresser, but we found several journals in the bottom drawer, underneath pairs of jeans.

I haven’t been able to bring myself to read through them yet, but Cleo let me know that the journals date back to when I was a toddler up until the time she died.

I’m hopeful that her journals will give me the clues I need to move forward.

There were four storage bins under her bed.

Two of them contained extra clothes, but the other two might also help me with my investigation.

One bin was filled with old photo albums, a few letters from Mamma’s family members, and a lot of my childhood portraits from school.

However, we found one album that was my father’s.

The last bin included the deed to the house and a small lockbox with a keypad.

I have no idea how to open the thing, but I have a few number combinations I could try later.

Other than that, we found a shit load of weapons hidden amongst her clothes in her walk-in closet.

Some were in old shoe boxes on the top shelf above the hanging rack, one small blade was wedged inside of a boot, a small crossbody bag was tucked away inside of a larger purse and had small vials of various poisons neatly organized within the small pockets—the list goes on.

Shortly after we finish dinner, it’s time for Cleo to head out for the night. With a big yawn and a tired smile, she leans in and gives me a tight hug. “Well that was an interesting way to spend my day off.”

I hold her a few seconds longer, squeezing the daylights out of her. “Thank you so much, C. Seriously. It would’ve taken me days to get all of that done by myself.”

I let her go and she places her hand on the handle of the front door. She winks at me. “Anytime, bestie. Let me know if you find anything juicy, yeah?”

With a nod and a grin, I say, “Of course.”

“Cool. Love you! See you soon!”

She takes her leave, and I’m left alone.

My emotions overwhelm me almost instantly, probably since it’s the first time I’ve been able to sit back and pause long enough to register everything we found today.

I’m a weird blend of optimistic and stressed out.

I lean my body back against the door and stretch out my neck, moving my gaze to the ceiling as I let out a rough sigh.

There are still the storage boxes in the laundry room, but I think I’ve had enough digging around my deceased mother’s belongings for one day. I do want to start reading her journal entries, though.