“So, you met Luca, became best friends forever, he changed your past and Maria’s, and funded your campaign. For a smart man, Owen, you’re very thick sometimes. He’s funded your campaign to do exactly what the Covenant has spent decades doing. Paving the way for the political parties they want in power. You are going to be his puppet, just like the current politicians are the Covenants.”
“You’re so tainted.”
“Being a realist doesn’t make me tainted.”
“Do you know what I still can’t work out? You sit there, trying to be all high and mighty, but you’re an assassin, Lucy. You killpeople for a living. Tell me, when you take your gun out and shoot a target, do you know anything about them?”
“I don’t need to know.”
“Of course not, because knowing might mean acknowledging something, and maybe question whether what you are doing is actually wrong. That the person you’re shooting is actually an innocent.”
“They won’t be innocent.”
“You can say that with 100% confidence, can you?”
“It’s not my job to question it,” I say. It’s lucky that he’s driving, because I really do want to sucker punch him in the throat, which would only make him crash the car. “We aren’t talking about me right now.”
“God forbid.”
“What made him pass the hard drive to you?”
“He trusts me.”
“Hmm,” I reply, letting the silence build between us as Owen drives us towards Maria’snewhouse and life.
Looking back down at his file, the car more illuminated as we drive through a small town, we stop at a set of traffic lights next to a petrol station. The lights from the forecourt shine onto the file on my lap. My eyes fall onto a sentence that makes me question everything.
Owen King sentenced to life imprisonment for murder – later exonerated.
What. The. Fuck.
Luca Knight is good, but to bury murder…
I glance across at the man who has my heart in a vice, and for the first time, I don’t know who I’m looking at.
He was supposed to be the good one. But all this time, is he just like me and Luca? One of the bad ones?
We pull up into the driveway of a small, detached cottage off a quiet street in Leatherhead, Surrey.
Owen turns off the engine and we sit in the loud silence of the car. The quaint little house sits unimposing in front of us, that Maria—no, not Maria—thatSusannow lives in. I can’t help but smile.
It’s perfect for her. It’s something that if I thought about where she would be, it would have been somewhere like this.
“It’s nice,” I finally say.
“It is.”
“Is she happy?”
“Yes.”
“I’m glad.” I smile tightly. “Does she know we’re coming? No, obviously not. Stupid question,” I say. shaking my head.Come on, Lucy, get your shit together.
“Ready?”
I let out a long breath and nod. “Yeah. Yeah. Totally. This is totally fine. Completely normal.”
“Need a minute?”
