Chapter 1
Xander
Time…
What time was it?
What time is it?
For a man who didn’t have long to live I probably shouldn’t be so obsessed with the time. What did it matter really?
It wasn’t as if I could do anything. I was here, useless as shit.
Useless to everybody, including myself.
In my final moments I just wanted to think of her…
Jia…
Jia Marchesi, age twenty six, artist. Daughter of Giovanni Marchesi the Vegas Mafia King.
She was the innocent in the mix.
I was told that when I was given the mission brief.
Usually when we talked about innocents like that, it meant we weren’t to involve them. As agents we weren’t supposed to allow harm to come to them and most of all, we were supposed to be careful with them.
Be careful not to get them caught in the crossfire. Be careful of them getting close because the people we were targeting could sway them.
I broke every rule in the book with my innocent. I didn’t just involve her, I got involved with her.
I got involved with her and it made me reckless.
It didn’t matter now. I’d be selfish now and I could think of her for however long I had left.
I lifted my head and opened my eyes. There was a clock on the wall. I think Giovanni put it there to add to the torture.
I was attached to two metal pillars. Cuffed to them like I was in some risqué sex club,fuck, maybe that’s what it was, some kind of torture chamber.
Giovanni wasn’t the kind of man to like the risqué. But torture? Yes.
This apparatus I was attached to was definitely for torture. Torture to death kind of torture. Nothing more than that, nothing less.
The clock on the wall said it was three o’clock.
I just wasn’t sure if it was three o’clock in the same day, three in the morning, or three p.m. the next day.
If it was any of the latter, it meant I wasn’t thinking of her at a time when I knew she’d be thinking of me.
Jia.
She was going to Italy with Armand. She’d board a plane and fly off with him, out of the country. Far away from me. Far, so very far away from me.
I wanted to think of her at a time when I thought she’d be thinking about me. Boarding that plane. And looking out the window as it took off. That was what I imagined.
I imagined she’d cry and Armand wouldn’t comfort her.
He’d leave her to cry for me. He’d hate her for it.
