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Maybe it's finally time for me to stop living my life like a recluse.
Maybe it's time for me to live a little.
Besides, there's no doubt Dr. Martin is the perfect date. Charming, kind and a talented doctor, he's everything a woman would want in a partner.
I just need to ignore the nagging voice of doubt in the back of my head, telling me something's going to go terribly wrong tonight.3JasperMy little Petal leads such a boring life it should’ve turned me off — yesterday or the day before that.
Or the day I first saw her less than a week ago.
It hasn’t.
Here I am opposite her shabby building. The walls are badly chipped, as if they haven’t been painted since the place was built.
The security level is next to shit. Anyone can come in and out of that building without any problem. Even the guard is an alcoholic who pours vodka into his juice at ten in the morning.
I know because I watched. Correction. I’ve been watching for the past few days.
Since she smiled at me in that innocent, yet fake way, I haven’t been able to get my little Petal out of my head.
It’s not from the lack of trying.
I would rather be focusing on my next job, tracking Costa’s heir and finishing his miserable life, but no. Every morning, when my night research is done, I find myself here or at the hospital.
Rebecca Serrano took her daughter and left town as I told her to. After that, I had no reason to go back to the hospital or to stand near the parking lot, hovering over an ugly Honda, waiting for the one who drove it.
I followed Petal to her house that first day. Yesterday, I signed for the apartment right across from her apartment’s balcony. Mine is a newer and bigger building.
Finding a new apartment was one of my priorities anyway. I don’t live in one place for more than a few months. Being a creature of habit will only give my enemies a sure way to find and kill me.
Lucio Costa isn’t feared because of his wealth and his power, he’s feared because he kills efficiently and without hesitation.
Or rather, I do.
The reason Lucio’s enemies never catch up with him is because they can never catch up with me.
And not from the lack of trying. The moment they find me, my storage, my weapons, I’ve already moved along.
I’ve been called detached and cold. I would say I’m efficient. I get the job done better than anyone in my field and then move along.
Now, I live in this two-bedroom apartment that I forced the college student who used to live here to evacuate in twenty-four hours. I offered him the apartment downtown that Lucio had given me a few years ago. I never used it and I have no interest to.
Lucio’s shit was never my shit. I’m just paying him back the debt I owe. He pulled me from the clutches of death a long time ago and it’s with death that I repay him.
My apartment is opposite Petal’s but a little above hers so the view from my balcony is straight into her living room — if you can call it that.
Her blinds are open as she crouches and feeds her cat. Two, actually.
Someone is a cat lady.
A cat lady with a fake smile and little to no friends.
There’s something curious about Petal. The way she moves, how she talks to people, how she slips out at the end of her shift. It’s like she’s invisible, and the only way she makes herself visible is by thinning her lips and smiling in that fake way.
Fake smile.
Fake existence.
“What are you hiding, my little Petal?” I retrieve my binoculars and sit on the chair on my balcony with only the darkness as my companion.
She must be hiding something, or she wouldn’t have been so efficient at faking, at choosing to be invisible.
It’s a little over seven and she just returned from her shift. After she feeds her cats, she’ll prepare herself dinner, watch crime shows on Netflix, then read something or go through her laptop and then sleep.
It’s the first time I’ll get to watch the routine from this perfect position and not through her building’s fire escape, where I barely got any view to her living room.
She says something to her cats as they eat. Hmm. I might have to figure out a way to listen in on her.
Or I might forget the fuck about her and move on with my life. How about that?
I readjust the binoculars as she continues talking to her cats with a small smile on her lips as if they’re humans. She does that, talking to her cats, which means she’s not as lonely as I predicted — it’s way fucking worse.
She has two friends at the hospital, the Russian and the black woman. But even when she’s with them, she’s still a lonely little Petal.
