Page 9

9

STEFI

M y travel companion, Fatima, and I part ways at Basel, where I change trains. It’s almost ten in the morning by the time I reach my apartment in Paris.

A cheery voice greets me the moment I open the door. “Good morning,” Charlotte Bellegarde says in French, holding up a cup. “I made coffee.” She grins wickedly. “I also logged into your work so Lynda wouldn’t bitch at you. You’re welcome.”

Ah, yes. My unwanted teenage house guest, the reason I was forced to go to Venice and abduct Alina Zuccaro.

Three months ago, I arrived in Paris to kill René Vannier. I broke into his apartment and found the sixty-year-old former prosecutor in bed with a seventeen-year-old girl. I told her to get the hell out and shot Vannier in the head, but to my surprise, she didn’t bolt. “Take me with you,” she begged. “Please. If you leave me here, my stepfather will just pimp me out to someone else.”

I should have walked away. But seventeen-year-old Charlotte had been failed by every adult in her life, from the stepfather who first raped her when she was thirteen and pimped her out to his wealthy connections to the mother who refused to hear the truth about her husband and pretended nothing was happening.

So, I took her with me. The only way to prevent her stepfather from coming after her was to take him out. Unfortunately, he was a high-ranking soldier of the Cosa Nostra, and to get to him, I needed Vidone Laurenti’s help.

But Laurenti was a scumbag who wanted me to abduct his adult daughter from Venice and bring her to Sicily.

His daughter, Alina Zuccaro.

I didn’t want to do it. I balked when I found out what the job was. Alina hadn’t done anything to deserve this. Even worse, to get access to her, I had to pretend to be her friend, and Ali was nice to me. She showed me around her gym and made me feel welcome, and when I gave her some bullshit story about my mother dying to get closer to her, she was genuinely kind.

In a different life, I would have liked to be friends with her.

Assassins don’t form friendships, a voice inside my head says, a voice that once again sounds very much like Bach. They can’t afford to.

I hate my sadistic ex-trainer with every fiber of my being, but he was right about this. Attachments are weaknesses, and weakness will get you killed.

“Gotta say,” Charlie says, her voice dragging me back to the present, “I’m surprised by how easy it was to get into your computer.” She smirks. “Newsflash, Stefi. abc123 isn’t the most secure password in the world.”

“It’s not meant to be.” My French used to be rusty, but spending time with a native speaker has brought most of it back. “The online help desk job is a cover, and my real laptop is encrypted.” Suppressing a sigh, I take the coffee from Charlie. “For the hundredth time, you don’t need to wait on me. I can make my own coffee.”

“I don’t mind,” she responds brightly. “Are you hungry?” She doesn’t wait for me to respond. “I didn’t know what time you’d be back, so I made chicken stew. It reheats better than roast chicken, you know? Do you want some? Or if that’s too odd for breakfast, there’s some bread left over from yesterday.”

“The stew is fine,” I say tersely, cutting her off. “It’s after nine. Weren’t you supposed to meet someone about a place to live this morning?”

Her smile falters. “I didn’t feel good.” Her gaze slides away from me. “So I canceled.”

Bullshit, I want to say, but I keep my mouth shut. Charlotte is clinging to me in an effort to feel safe, and after everything she’s been through, I can’t really blame her for it. But the sooner she learns that I’m not her sanctuary, the better. “I have this apartment for the rest of the month,” I tell her. “That’s it. I’m leaving Paris after that.”

Her face falls. I feel like a jerk, but there’s no helping it. I shouldn’t have gotten involved in her life in the first place. When you’re an assassin, you don’t form friendships, and you certainly don’t have relationships.

“Where will you go next?” she asks. “Once you leave Paris, I mean.”

She’s staring at me with puppy dog eyes, and it’s obvious that she wants to come with me. I square my shoulders and set down my mug on the counter. “Stop making me out to be some kind of angel,” I tell her bluntly. “I’m an assassin. Hang out with me, and you’re going to get killed.”

Her mouth sets in a stubborn line. “I don’t care. You killed René. You killed my stepfather. My mother is searching for me, I know she is, but she doesn’t give a shit about me. Please don’t make me—” She stops talking abruptly, her eyes running over my face. “Stefi, what’s wrong?”

Damn it. Charlie is too observant for her own good. “Nothing.”

“Your eyes are red. Have you been crying? What happened? Did you get hurt?”

She’s staring at me with so much concern that a lump rises in my throat. I’ve always told myself that my quest is worth the cost. It’s the right thing to do. But the road I’ve chosen is a lonely one, and being in the right doesn’t keep me warm at night.

I stay away from people. No one has worried about me for a very long time. Not since. . .

“I saw someone,” I whisper. I shouldn’t burden this teenager with my problems, especially when she has so many of her own, but I can’t seem to stop the words from spilling loose. “Someone from my past. Someone I thought was dead.”

“Who?”

“My husband.”

Her mouth falls open. “You’re married?”

“I was. I guess I still am.” Are you still married if you’re declared dead but turn out to be very much alive? I have no idea. It doesn’t really matter what the legalities are—in every way that matters, Joao will always be my husband.

“Was he your target? Did you have to kill him?”

“What?” Okay, that’s not entirely a crazy question—I am an assassin. “No. He’s an assassin, too.”

“And he was there for the same target?”

I shake my head. “He said he was there to protect me.”

“That’s so romantic,” Charlie says wistfully. She catches sight of my expression. “What? It is romantic. Do you still love him?”

I don’t know how to answer that question. “I thought he was dead, Charlie.”

Her reply is practical in a way that only the French can be. “Well,” she says. “He’s not. Are you still in love with him?”

It’s so simple to view the world through a seventeen-year-old lens. “I haven’t seen him in eight years. I don’t know who he is anymore.”

Charlie heads to the kitchen and bustles around to heat up the stew. “That’s not actually an answer to my question,” she points out. “Why don’t you call him and catch up? After all, you’re not dating anyone right now, are you?”

Dating. That’s hilarious. “No.”

She places a steaming bowl in front of me. “And have you dated anyone in the last eight years?”

“No,” I say again.

She gives me a triumphant smile. “Because you’re still in love with your husband.”

Enough. This isn’t a fairytale. I give my teenage houseguest an exasperated look. “I’m an assassin,” I tell her. “I don’t form ties.”

“Fair enough. If you didn’t want a relationship, you could’ve gone on the Internet for anonymous sex. Did you do that?”

“No.”

“Why not?” she asks smugly. Charlie obviously thinks that’s a gotcha question. Everything she’s hearing from me supports her theory that I’m still in love with Joao. But it’s not quite that straightforward. Nothing is. I haven’t slept with anyone else because it would have felt like a betrayal of my marriage vows.

And I’ve betrayed Joao enough.

“Hang on,” Charlie says slowly, looking as if she’s just realizing something. “If you didn’t date and you didn’t hook up, does that mean. . .” Her mouth falls open. “Don’t you miss sex?”

And that’s quite enough of this interrogation. I lift my head up from the delicious stew and fix her with a stern look. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?” I demand. “Don’t you need to look for a place to live?”

“Okay, okay, sheesh,” Charlie says. “No need to bite my head off; I was just curious.” She looks at my empty bowl. “You want more food?”

“Yes, please. I’ll get it.” I head to the kitchen and spoon more stew into my bowl. It really is good, swimming with tomatoes, herbs, and olives. “Where did you learn to cook?”

“Mama and I used to cook together,” she responds. “Before. . .”

Before her stepfather moved in. Her voice trails off, and I curse myself for my thoughtlessness. I’m not the only one who doesn’t want to talk about the past. “Have you ever thought about being a chef?”

She looks up, startled. “A chef? No, I couldn’t. I’ll have to go to school for that. It takes years to get certified. I’ll be almost thirty by the time I’m done.”

Ah, teenagers. Charlie is acting as if turning thirty is the most horrific thing in the world. Joao and I used to fantasize about that milestone. Less than ten percent of Henrik Bach’s trainees made it to thirty, and we were determined to beat the odds.

“Would it hurt to try? The years are going to pass anyway.” I finish my stew and wash the bowl. “You might as well spend the time doing something you love.”

I have three hours before I have to get up for work, so I head into my bedroom for a nap. Stripping naked, I get under the covers, but sleep is maddeningly elusive. Charlie’s question plays in my mind. Don’t you miss sex?

A complicated question. I don’t miss sex exactly. Most things are easily taken care of with a vibrator. But I miss intimacy .

Why don’t you call him and catch up?

It’s a tempting thought. As if the chasm that divides us can be crossed by a simple phone call, but of course, that’s not possible. I don’t even know Joao’s phone number—like me, he probably goes through burner phones like candy. Even if I was brave enough to reach out, I have no way of getting hold of him.

What about the chat room? My subconscious prompts. You could try contacting him there.

He’s not going to remember the chat room, I counter.

Would it hurt to try?

Damn it, it sucks when you lose an argument with yourself. I pull out my personal laptop, navigate to that dusty corner of the Internet, and log in, the username and password still as familiar to me as my own name.

Then my heart stops.

I haven’t logged on in a very long time. I wanted to, so many times, but I couldn’t risk it. If Joao found out I visited the chat room, he’d know I was alive. And if he knew that, he would come for me. I knew that with absolute certainty. He would have moved heaven and earth to find me, and he would have gotten himself killed.

But Joao has logged in, and he’s left me messages, so many of them. They started the day he learned about the fire that supposedly killed me.

I can’t believe you’re gone , I won’t . I refuse to imagine the existence of a world that doesn’t have you in it, Stefi, because if I do, I will drown. I refuse to face the fact that our kiss before you left was the last one ever. That our stolen trip to Prague was the end. No more carafes of cheap wine, no more extravagant toasts to the Summer Gods. That the message you sent me last week, the one where you yelled at me for taking stupid risks, is the last message you’ll ever send me.

Living without you isn’t life. It isn’t heartache—I can’t feel heartache without a heart, and you’ve always had mine in your keeping. No, this is terrifying emptiness, this is a deathly void, this is madness. Tell me I’ve been in a coma, and I’ve hallucinated your loss. Tell me it’s a lie. Tell me I’ll hear you laugh again and promise me you’ll whisper my name into my ear once more. Tell me this is a sick, twisted nightmare, and wake me up, little fox, I beg you. Tell me anything except this.

There are more notes in the weeks that follow, desperately sad notes that wreck my heart. Messages on what would have been our first wedding anniversary. My birthday. The anniversary of the day he proposed by forming a twist tie into an impromptu engagement ring. “I’ll get you a real one soon,” he promised.

But there hadn’t been time.

And then the messages abruptly cease at the same time as Joao supposedly drowned off the coast of Marseilles. Turns out I’m not the only one who stopped visiting this chat room after I faked my death. Joao did the same.

I wipe the tears from my cheeks. How can I reach out to him and catch up as if nothing’s happened? It’s impossible. He’s never going to forgive me for what I did. There’s been too much pain, too much hurt—it’s all laid out here in one heart-wrenching message after another—and there’s no coming back from that.

My laptop beeps. On the screen, words appear.

Hello again, little fox. I’ve been waiting for you.