She pulls her hair up, twists it and puts a pin through it to hold it in place, the same pin she wore to the gala. But I notice this one is different from Juliet’s. It looks like it’s made from titanium and the end isn’t sealed like a knitting needle.
“Your hair pin . . .”
“Yeah, deadly poison on the end,” she says like it’s nothing, while pulling on a hoodie. It’s hot out but it conceals her identity.
“What—” my jaw drops. I should be scared but I find I’m intrigued. “What’s in it? You had it the night of the gala.”
“Yes, well, it’s always better to come prepared. If I couldn’t snap your neck or someone else came in, I could prick them with this. The poison, ricin, is encased in a substance that melts once it’s injected,” she turns to me with a stone-cold expression and continues, “the puncture is no bigger than the sting of a mosquito.”
Fuck me she’s gorgeous and brilliant. And deadly.
Just touching the wrong end of it could have killed anyone of us, at any time.
“Oh, and here.” She tosses me a small vial with a tiny needle in it, the kind used as a butterfly needle to draw blood but this one looks a little different. “That can cause anyone to have a heart attack and it’s untraceable,” she informs me, with a wry smile.
Here I believed I had her disarmed by my mastery of banking and computer skills not to mention my prowess in the bedroom. But this is Francesca, taking everything she touches to a new level. She’s more akin to a ticking time bomb. I believed I was safe with her in my house. Now it’s obvious she was letting us believe what we wanted. We were never safe. I feel deceived, duped, and I’m not liking it.
So why did she stay? Is she really working as a double agent? It wouldn’t be the first time. But I know the sparks between us are real. Now, I’m doubting if we’ll ever be free from our families, our careers, and our pasts to build a future together.
She renders me speechless at times. Can I trust her? I’m trained to trust no one and so is she. The situation’s outcome can’t be predicted and that makes me nervous. I need to shake all these doubts and focus on our mission.
“Does your family know about all of this?” I jump back into her state-of -the-art killing implements.
“Hell no, my greatest asset is that they underestimate what I’m fully capable of. It was no secret that Sofia was my friend, and you know what happened to her when her marriage deteriorated? Missing. That’s how divorce is done here. That’s why I’ll never be with someone in the mafia.”
Her words sting. No, it’s more like shrapnel ripping through my heart. I have my answer when I least expect it. I’m a fool to think she’d change for anyone, but I know she felt the chemistry between us. One can’t achieve the levels of intimacy we did without it.
For a moment, I feel like I’ve stepped out of a time machine and into a foreign country where women are sold as slaves and auctioned off for a herd of goats. Only this is my country, and my time. I never knew men did this to their own women, the mothers of their children.
It’s inconceivable and reprehensible and I want to make all of them pay just as much as she does. I’m all for doing what needs to be done but this goes against my fast, loose and dark morals.
“It’s true,” she says, throwing what looks like a tube of lipstick in her purse. She usually uses a pen to outline her luscious lips. Lips I’d kiss now if I wasn’t still annoyed at being played.
“Is that a new color?”
“No, it’s a gun, one shot deal.” She saucily looks over her shoulder to check my reaction.
“What the hell are YOU?” I groan.
I feel like I’m seeing her for the first time, half disappointed that she’s not separating me from the monsters she was raised with. The other half is from the fact that she constantly raises the bar on her spy and assassination craft which is so over the top I can’t help but be impressed with her no matter how much I might be pissed at her for her leaving me.
She gives a cute giggle that turns me inside out and walks to the door. Cracking it open, she checks the hallway, and motioning for me to follow before swinging it open.
Outside the hotel, we run into Matteo and walk to an obscure restaurant away from the crowds to grab a panini.
Sitting with her back against the wall, she asks the waiter to bring her another sparkling water and she nibbles at her sandwich, savoring every bite. She never takes her eye off the door, always on the lookout for anything suspicious. Our new guys have gained so much knowledge and experience just from watching her.
She trained me well in the few days we had at the house as well. I can hold my own better in a surprise attack and I can break a leg without a baseball bat.
I owe her freedom but who am I kidding? With her skills, she could have left at any given time. So why didn’t she is still the nagging question running through my mind when in the past it’s always been focused on my op.
And where did all these gadgets come from? Did she have them on her, or in her, when she was in the cellar? Her bedroom? Or did she have them stashed in a storage locker? Or a bug-out bag that most criminals keep for that what-the-fuck moment when they realize they need to run.
The only direction I want her to run is to me, not from me. But that conversation will have to happen on a different day, and I can’t let my disappointment that she doesn’t appear to have the same feelings for me interfere with our attack. This mission is too important for both of us.
19
Francesca