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I grimaced. “Okay, yeah, I shouldn’t have said that. Lee’s an old pervert and I just wanted him to do the job.”
She stared at me and I couldn’t read her expression. But then she strode into the room and sat on the couch.
I smiled, grabbed a glass from the food cart, and filled her up. She took it, sipped it, and stared.
“Start talking,” she said.
I paced in front of the coffee table. The TV played one of the Avengers movies. I couldn’t tell which one. Didn’t really matter. They were all the same to me. Bunch of superheroes whine at each other then beat up the bad guy in the end. Boring.
“Me and Bennigan, we’ve been work associates for a while,” I said. “You could say we came up around the same time.”
“Rivals?” she asked.
“Not really,” I said. “Not in any meaningful way.”
“So what, then?”
“I got assigned this job,” I said, then stopped and drank from the bottle. “Job was to kill this Russian guy. I forget what he did, stole or maybe fucked someone’s wife, maybe daughter, I don’t know. It was years ago.”
“Messed up how you can forget that kind of detail,” she said.
I shrugged and kept going. “It felt like a routine hit. Guy had set patterns, you know? Did the same shit every week. I ghosted him for a little while, shadowed him around town, got to know his habits. Eventually, I went and made my move. But then things went sour.”
“Sour, how?”
“Bennigan showed up at the same time. Except I didn’t realize it was him, and he didn’t realize it was me. We tried to kill each other, tried very hard. I shot him in the leg, he shot me twice, once in the shoulder, once in the gut. I got lucky it didn’t kill me.”
“What happened?” she asked.
“Eventually we realized we were both trying to kill the same guy. Apparently the asshole that hired me also hired him and didn’t tell us about it. Ever since then, we haven’t exactly gotten along. You can’t shoot a guy and end up best friends, it just doesn’t work that way.”
“So let me get this straight. You guys accidentally almost killed each other, and now you’re in some sort of… feud?”
“Sort of,” I said. “Something like that, yeah.”
“This is personal for you then.”
“I wouldn’t put it that way.”
She shook her head and drank half her glass in one long sip. “You realize how insane this is, right? You have some kind of rivalry with the guy that’s trying to kill me, and I’m pretty sure you’re making decisions based on that rivalry.”
“How?” I asked, gesturing at her with the bottle.
“You want to bait him into coming here,” she said. “That’s the only reason I can think of why we’d stay in this room if he found us already.”
“It’s safe,” I said.
“You keep saying that, but I kind of don’t believe you. Then you’re on the phone talking to some random guy about how you slept with me, but also trying to find out where Bennigan is right now.”
“If I can get the drop on him—”
“I think you want to show him that you’re better than he is,” she said. “You don’t care about keeping me safe. You want to win this little… rivalry. Maybe it started out about me, but now it’s about you.”
I shook my head, at a total loss for words. “What the hell were you doing in that room?” I asked. “Because you must’ve lost your mind in those sheets.”
She stared at me and finished her champagne. “This isn’t a game to me, Tanner. This is my life and I’m starting to think you’re not in it for the right reasons.”
I put the bottle down the food cart and walked to her. I saw a flicker of fear in her eyes as I loomed over her then dropped to my knees.
She leaned back on the couch. I swear I could see her heartbeat in her neck going wild.
“I’ve already given things up for you,” I said, my voice soft and even. “After this, the Leone family is going to hesitate a long time before hiring me again. My professional reputation won’t be the same.”
“Boo hoo,” she said. “Poor hitman.”
I let out a snarl and grabbed her knees. I clenched them hard and her eyes went wide.
“It’s not a joke,” I said. “It’s my fucking life. I’m going to keep you alive, because without me, I’m pretty sure you’d be dead already. But if you’re going to accuse me of being selfish, or of doing this for the wrong reasons, then maybe I will just walk away.”
“Go ahead,” she said. “Walk.”
I stared at her, clutching her knees. She didn’t move. Her chest rose and fell.
I leaned forward, reached out, grabbed her hair, and kissed her.
She moaned into that kiss. I bit her lip hard and pushed her back onto the couch. I pinned her down and she struggled a little, but I pressed her down hard with my body.
