“Are you fucking shitting me right now? Vic? Fuck’s sake, you’re gonna take us all down if you carry on. Are you listening? Shelley’s looking into it, Vic. You’re being fucking careless and stupid, you dumb fuck.”
I see her lip go before she turns and runs for the bathroom.
“Fuck!” I walk after her, punching the bedroom door as I walk through it. She’s right. It is thera-fucking-peutic.
When I get to the bathroom, she’s locked the door, and I shake my head. I grab a coin from the dresser, slip it into the lock, and turn it. I walk into the shower, and she’s sitting on the floor of it, sobbing, and my heart fucking breaks. In all the years we’ve been together, it’s been us against the world. That’s the first time I’ve ever shouted at her and the first time since she was tiny I’ve ever seen her cry.
“Fuck’s sake, Vic.”
I sigh and strip off, climbing into the shower with her. I sit on the floor and pull her into my lap. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m just worried, Vic, you’ve never done anything this fucking careless before. You analyse, you think, you fucking plan, but this, Vic… Look at me.” I tilt her chin towards me. “What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking I was lonely, and you have Shelley, and I have no one, and it’s just a matter of time before you stay with Shelley, and I’m here alone, and I wanted that. I wanted to have someone. I wanted to have a nice guy. He was nice to me.”
“Fuck’s sake, Vic.” I pull her against me and rock her back and forth like I used to when we were kids. “Come on, let’s go to bed. We can figure it out in the morning.”
We climb into bed, and I wrap myself around her. She grips me tighter than she ever has before. “Promise you won’t leave me, Xav?”
“I’ll never leave you, Vic. I promise. We’re family always and forever, okay?”
“Promise?”
“I promise.” I kiss her neck, and she sighs, cuddling into me and shuffling back till she can’t get any nearer. “Just sleep, Vic, okay? Tomorrow’s a new day. We can figure this all out then. Don’t worry, okay? I will think of something.”
“Really?” She kisses my arm, which is wrapped so tightly around her. “And then I can really be with Jacob.”
Fuck’s sake. This is going to be harder than I thought. How do you tell a socially awkward, bordering on unstable assassin that the person they’re in love with doesn’t even know they exist and that they won’t want to be with them for all the fucked-up shit they’ve done? This is going to end so fucking badly that it might blow up in all our faces.
Vic
Chapter XIX
“Okay, so we have a plan with the whole you and Jacob thing, yeah?”
I nod. “You really think it can work?”
“If you do everything I said. I think you stand a good shot, okay? You just need to be careful. You know Father’s watching us closer than ever since your… altercation with him. You just need to lay low for a little while. Then we can start the plan for Jacob, okay? We need to do this job anyway, so it will give you guys some space.”
“Okay, so where do we start with this one?”
“It’s a definite kill. She is a Mafia queen, hiding in plain sight, passing herself off as a businesswoman. We can’t underestimate this one, Vic.”
“Erm… would this one be better for you to go in and do?”
He chuckles at me. “Nah, I have too much equipment.” He nods to his groin and winks at me.
“Argh, really.”
“Yup. You know you love it, really.”
“It’s not that, but when they’re high-powered women, they’re bitches in the bedroom. I’m not fucking her. I hate it when they grab your hair and slam your face into their vag. Fuckers. I will kill her some other way. What kind of work does she do? Maybe I can set up a meeting for something…”
“Actually.” Xav’s tapping away on the laptop. “She’s looking for an assistant. I can fit you in for an appointment… in two days.”
I nod. “Poison, something that will take a few hours to kick in, so she dies long after I’ve gone.” I think for a second, and we both grin.
“Ricin,” we both say at the same time and chuckle.
“So I’ll turn up at the appointment with a coffee for her and myself. I’ll need to find out what she likes and doesn’t like, but then it should just be a matter of watching her drink it, being a complete imbecile so she doesn’t want to hire me, and leaving. I will drop a bug on her when I shake her hand to leave, and Bob’s your uncle, Fanny’s your aunt, one dead Mafia queen, in sometime over the next seventy-two hours.”
