Last Hit (Hitman) by Jessica Clare, Jen Frederick Read Free Book Online

my apartment, I pull my phone out, flipping it open and paging through my tiny list of numbers to see what he has put there. A personal message? Something flirty?
    Nick.
    Just Nick.
    I won’t have the courage to call him, of course, but I’ll think about it day and night. And when I touch myself tonight? It will be Nick’s face I’ll imagine. Tomorrow, I will borrow Regan’s laptop and research all I can about the Ukraine. I want to learn about him.
    There’s something about Nick that draws me to him, that makes me stare at his phone number in wonder. I have met a few other men this week, some for longer than the short conversation I just had. But no one has tried to kiss my hand or given me their phone number.
    It’s a personal connection, and I don’t have many of those. A personal connection with a tall, mysterious, handsome man? It is the stuff of my wildest dreams.
    It’s more than that, though. There’s something about Nick, and I lay down on my bed, considering. After a moment, I realize what it is. He has intensity. There is something so vibrant, so aware, so
alive
about him that it sings to me. I am drawn to it like a moth to a flame. Is it because my father has always been a shadow of himself and because he did his best to break me? Nick, I think, would never be broken.
    I like that about him.
    NIKOLAI
    Daisy. She reminds me of the paintings by an American painter from a city not so far away. The pictures are full of rolling hills and symmetrically planted wheat. Those images look pure, wholesome, and peaceful. Even her name evokes the same images. Whereas I am like the dark tormenter envisioned by Dante and made grotesque by Hieronymous Bosch.
    At fifteen, I was ordered to terminate an art curator who had a predilection for American art and American boys. It was a satisfying job, as I learned much about art from watching the curator. The order to put him down had nothing to do with his pedophilia and everything to do with money. Always about the money.
    It was the last hit I made under Aleksandr’s watch. I still didn’t know why he had released me, if it was the way I carried out the hit that made him decide I was too much of a liability or just that I was getting too old to control. It
was
rather messy. But after watching the curator for two weeks, I couldn’t merely put a bullet in his head. I rub the inscription on my chest again.
Death is mercy.
And those boys he’d kept had deserved their own revenge. Still the memory of it reminds me of how similar I am to this broken, run-down building with its bricks falling out and its interior filled with trash.
    "Can I—can I stand now?"
    I turn toward the thief. "Get up." I command.
    He struggles to his feet; he is maimed. His fortitude is impressive. He hasn’t pissed himself, and he was quiet for the most part. I decide to let him go with just a warning.
    "What is your apartment number?" I ask.
    "122," he says. He looks small despite his size. Now that I’ve had a moment to collect myself and look at him, I am surprised to see that he is about my height, but he has no strength.
    "I suggest you look for a new place to live. I do not care what you do with other women’s clothing, but you are not to be near her. You are not to touch her or breathe the same air." I’m still looking at the dryer. My lip curls at the thought of the animal’s hands on her clothes. I cannot allow them to touch her body. I spy a bottle of bleach, old and probably forgotten. It will ruin her clothes, but I can buy her new ones. Ones that haven’t been worn before; ones made of material as pure and precious as she.
    "B-b-but you didn’t even know her before you came down here!” the thief whines at me.
     I whirl around and pin him back against the machines with one hand to his throat. My earlier feelings of leniency have fled. I squeeze tightly. "I’ve ended lives over a lesser slight. Move and live. Don’t move. Die. Simple." I am puzzled by this man’s lack of