Page 2 of Fastest Kill

He had sat down, despite planning on sitting next to Rodrigo and Giana. Afterward, they had spent the entire reception trading barbs and insults, and it had been the best conversation he'd had in months.

You are not thinking about the woman who killed your client while you were taking a piss in Rome. You are not thinking about how she looked when you drank wine with her on the terrace before she left Italy. You are not⁠—

"You're not listening to a word I'm saying, are you?" The woman was smiling, but her eyes had cooled. She could tell she had lost him.

Dario mustered an apologetic grin. "Sorry, güzelim. It's been a long night, and I'm terrible company."

"You're beautiful company," she corrected, sliding off the stool with the fluid grace. She was wise enough not to waste time on men who were already occupied. "But you're somewhere else. Whoever she is, she's lucky."

She would shoot you for saying that or laugh in your face. Maybe both.

Dario watched the woman disappear into the crowd, and the emptiness resettled around him like a coat. He should go. He should find a hotel, sleep it off, and fly somewhere new in the morning. Somewhere with fewer ghosts and cheaper whiskey.

His phone buzzed in his jacket pocket.

Dario fished it out, expecting Leo to be checking in or Rodrigo to be sending him on a job. Unknown number. Greek country code.

He frowned and answered. "Pronto."

"Mr. Colleoni?" The man's voice, formal, slightly harassed, speaking heavily accented English. "This is Sergeant Papadakis of the Heraklion Municipal Police, Crete. We have a woman in custody, arrested for disorderly conduct. She is... quite intoxicated, and she asked us to call this number."

Dario straightened on the barstool. "What woman?"

There was a pause, the sound of papers shuffling. "She says her name is Frederica 'Fuck you,' apparently. She won't tell us her last name. We were hoping you might know?"

The emptiness vanished. Just like that it was gone, replaced by something bright and sharp and alive that hit him like a shot of adrenaline straight to the chest.

You have got to be fucking kidding me.

"She asked you to call me?" Dario repeated, and he could feel the grin spreading across his face, wide and wolfish and entirely genuine for the first time all night.

The sergeant's voice took on a note of weary resignation. "She was very specific about the number, sir. She also said, and I quote, 'Tell the big idiot bear malakas dickhead he owes me a favor.'"

Dario laughed so loudly, it turned very head at the bar. The bartender raised an eyebrow. Dario raised his glass in a toast to him and knocked back the rest of the whiskey.

Frederica Alesci was drunk and in a jail cell in Crete, and of all the people in her life—her terrifying assassin mother, her legendary thief of a father, Altun Baruk, Kon, any one of a dozen mercenaries who would have come running—she had called him. He wasn't going to miss the opportunity to rub it in her face when she sobered up.

This, Dario thought, pulling out his wallet and tossing enough euros on the bar to cover his tab and a generous tip, is going to be fun.

2

The fluorescent light above Frederica's head had been flickering for forty-seven minutes. She knew because she had been counting. Counting was better than thinking, and thinking was what had landed her in this shit hole in the first place.

The holding cell of the Heraklion Municipal Police station smelled like bleach, stale sweat, and the ouzo she had spilled down her shirt three hours ago.

A drunk tourist was snoring on the bench opposite her, face pressed against the cinderblock wall. Frederica sat with her legs crossed at the ankles, hands folded in her lap, trying to doze. She needed to sleep because she couldn't remember when she last ate, and she had stopped counting her drinks six hours ago.

Frederica had been having a good time, and somehow, she had ended up in a jail cell. So what if she had punched a man in the throat for grabbing her ass in a bar? And then threw a boot at him? And then called the arresting officer a malakas to his face? Hardly jail-worthy crimes in her opinion.

Frederica was sobering up, which was worse than being drunk because sobriety came with clarity, and clarity meant she had to acknowledge exactly how she had ended up here.

The plan had been simple. Fly to Rhodes. See her parents. Eat her mother's baklava. Let her father delight her with his latest acquisition stories.

She needed to go through his files on Serapis, whom her father only knew under his other name, Lucius Foscari, to see if they could track him down. It was meant to be a quick and simple trip. She didn't want Serapis to think that her parents knew anything worth killing them over, so it was meant to look like a fun visit home.

Instead of doing that, Frederica had bought a ticket to Crete because a man had gotten under her skin.

You are a professional killer. You have ended the lives of thirty-one people across fourteen countries. You do not detour to Greek islands to drink yourself stupid over a man.