"Absolutely no promises."
"Fair enough."
The sun was high and the sea was endless and my sister was looking at me like I was a story she'd been waiting three years to hear.
So I told her.
18
Maeve
Prague - Over Nine months Ago
The wig was aproblem.
Blonde, synthetic, and aggressively determined to slide off my scalp. I'd bought it from a shop in Manchester that also sold costume swords and fake blood, which should have told me everything I needed to know about how this evening was going to go.
The coat was worse. White and fluffy, the sort of thing a film producer's mistress might wear to a premiere. I'd chosen it because Finn had a type. The type was loud. The type wasobvious. The type looked expensive and temporary and grateful for the attention.
I'd been his type once.
Now I was sitting in a cigar bar in Prague where drinks cost more than my old caravan, wearing a wig that itched and a coat that made me look like an extra from a music video, staring at a glass of vodka I had no intention of drinking.
Across the room, Finn O'Shea was laughing at his own joke.
Nothing new there.
Three men sat at his table. Big men in expensive dark suits who had a stillness that showed their intentions. I catalogued them the way I'd learned to catalogue all men in Finn's orbit. Determine the threat level, locate the exit routes, and run if they looked at me twice.
The one with black hair and pale eyes was the most restless, tapping a finger against his glass. The largest one, all bulk muscle and a scar cutting through his eyebrow, watched the room like he was memorizing it. And the one across from Finn, the one with the dark beard, darker eyes, the sort of presence that made the air around him feel occupied, was doing none of the talking and all of the listening.
Finn's business partners. It didn't matter. I wasn't there for them.
I was there because two years after a doctor had terminated the bond, my body still hadn't got the message. Phantom ache. That's what the internet called it. A polite term for the rolling, cramping heat that woke me at three in the morning with my teeth clenched and my stomach in knots. The bond was gone on paper, but my omega biology was a slow learner.
Finn had to die. That was the maths.
Not with a gun. I couldn’t afford it. I'd checked the prices, and black-market firearms in Prague cost more than three months of my rent. But a steak knife from a hardware shop in Žižkovhad cost me forty crowns. Eighty pence. I'd tested the blade on a tomato. It was sharper than my life choices.
The plan was simple. Lure him out. Wait in the alley. Finish it. Claim my body as my own.
I moved in the booth. The coat slipped off one shoulder. I caught Finn's eye and gave him a slow, deliberate look, the one that said,“I'm expensive and available and you're exactly the man to afford me.”
He didn't recognize me. Two years, thirty pounds, a wig, and more make up on my face than left in the cosmetic bag. The old Maeve had been meek. This one looked like trouble.
I planned to be lots of trouble.
His gaze flicked down my body, and true to form, lingered over my breasts. The expensive bra worked.
But the reason I was there came on worse than ever before. Just being in his vicinity.
It was not a phantom ache. And not the dull, familiar cramping I'd been living with for two years. This was different. Real. A wave of it, rolling up from my stomach and spreading outward until my skin felt two sizes too small.
I stood. Grabbed the coat. Walked and hoped he was following.
My heels clicked on the pavement, and I was counting steps until I was in the alley, back against brick, knife in my hand. The blade was cold. My palms were not.
And then I smiled when I heard footsteps at the mouth of the alley.
