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Twelve
Cole
Sitting in my car across from the gate to the Bianchi compound, I watched the minutes tick by on my watch. The changing of the guard was a strict schedule, and I would have only five minutes to get into the house, undetected.
Getting out would be messier, but as long as Giorgio Bianchi was dead at the end of it, I’d do whatever it took to get back to my sweet Adele. It was a relief to know she was tucked up in the apartment, safe from harm. Not that I would have let her leave, even if she had fought me on the resignation. But at least this way she could enjoy herself instead of being tied to a chair with a red and welted bottom for her troubles.
The thought had me grinning down at my watch as the hands clicked into place. Just as Mikey had promised, the guard manning the gate stepped out, heading around to the back of the house where he would be clocking out of his shift and the next guard would be clocking in.
Mikey never would have allowed for such gaps in my security, and I made a mental note to give him a nice fat bonus when I got home. He’d more than earned it over the past few months.
Stepping out of the car, I kept to the shadows, avoiding the streetlights lining the street as much as possible. The next shift was still nowhere in sight as I pulled Adele’s thumbprint from my pocket and pressed it to the keypad.
For a moment, nothing happened, and I realized with a flash of annoyance that they may have revoked her access already. An oversight on my part, and one I wouldn’t have made if I hadn’t been so focused on keeping her safe.
But just as I was judging my own ability to scale the tall, wrought-iron fence, the screen flashed green, and I was prompted to enter her code. With a wink for Lady Luck, and a quick prayer for her to continue by my side for the rest of the night, I keyed in what I was about eighty percent certain was Adele’s number, grinning when the gate eased open.
From my conversations with Adele, Giorgio should be in his study at this time of night, with a glass of thirty-year-old McCallan double cask and a cigar. Adele, under the pretense of talking about her day, had let that little gem slip when telling me she always saved the study for last when she was working the later shift in order to avoid… unpleasant altercations with him.
Other girls, I had gathered, hadn’t been so lucky. Or perhaps they knew exactly who they were dealing with and assumed his affection for them would provide some form of protection down the road.
I didn’t need Adele to tell me how wrong those assumptions had been.
The knowledge only added another log to the fire of my hatred for him as I followed the map in my mind through the front hall to the study. Footsteps on the marble signaled I was about to have company, so I ducked into the half-bath outside the study, leaving the door cracked just enough to make sure it wasn’t Giorgio leaving for the evening.
It wasn’t, but there was something familiar about the tall, flat-nosed man. Too polished to merely be one of Giorgio’s guards, but not high enough in the ranks for me to recognize immediately, I flipped through my mental file of the Bianchi organization, trying to match a name to the face. Nothing clicked, but there was no doubt I’d seen him before.
Tucking that mystery away for later, I waited for him to pass before slipping back out of the bathroom and making my way just a few more steps to the study.
My pulse thundered in my ears, as loud as the hoofbeats at the races my father had enjoyed betting on before he’d been imprisoned. Standing in front of the closed door, I unholstered my weapon, a gun my uncle had given me the day we buried my cousin. Along the barrel, there was a simple inscription: For Giorgio. And other than a single test shot, I had never fired it. Every bullet in the magazine was meant for one man, and one man only.
Eyes closed against the fresh wave of pain and anger, I pulled Natalie’s face into my mind. Although most of my memories of her had begun to fade, there was one image I knew would be burned into my brain forever. The night she died, taking her from my aunt, cradling her in my arms like a lifeless little doll.
As it had every day for nearly a year, my heart ached for the loss. Not only of the girl she’d been, but of the woman she would never grow to be. The greatness she would never achieve. The children whose cheeks she would never kiss, and whose nightmares she would never chase away. All of that, and so much more, had been destroyed with one senseless act.
Pushing open the door to the study, I leveled the barrel of the gun at the man behind the ornate, wooden desk, my hand steady, my finger curled around the trigger.
“Hello, Giorgio.”
Adele
Merde. What was that man thinking?
Dressed in my maid’s uniform, I watched him from the shadows across from the study. Watched as he paused just outside the door, the grief etched into every line of his face clear even in the dim lighting. A flash of silver glinted under the lights as he pulled the gun from his side and pushed the door open.
I knew what I should do. My training, my own personal sense of right and wrong could not allow for a premeditated murder to happen right in front of me without doing anything to stop it. Even if the man was someone as deserving as Giorgio Bianchi.
And still… I hesitated. Huddled in the shadows, frozen by indecision, I watched Cole step into the study, his gun aimed right at Giorgio’s head. A face flashed in my mind, young and sweet in her high school yearbook photo.
Then bloodied, eyes empty, mouth open in a silent scream in the pictures taken the night she was murdered.
Everything I had been taught, everything I believed told me this kind of vengeance was wrong. But I could not deny that a part of me, a darkness I tried to pretend didn’t exist, craved it. Cried out for it, an echo I felt in the deepest parts of my soul.
As I struggled with my own demons, one of Giorgio’s men crept up behind Cole, and everything else was forgotten. A second flash of silver as another gun was raised, this time with the barrel pressed right against Cole’s head.
Moving as silently as I dared, I searched the hallway for a weapon. Fortune smiled on me in the form of the treasures Giorgio so loved to fill his home with. Just to my right, a heavy ceramic vase, hand-painted with various erotic scenes, sat on a pedestal. It was nearly too heavy for me to lift on my own, but I didn’t need to carry it very far.
Or, I realized, at all. My original plan of smashing the vase over the other man’s head held far too much risk. For one, he was a solid foot taller than me, making the angles nearly impossible. And there was a chance I could miss and hit Cole instead.
All I needed, really, was a moment of distraction, just enough for Cole to have a chance at escaping. Preferably without spotting me, but I would cross that bridge if we came to it. My bottom clenched at the thought, already anticipating the punishment it seemed I was unlikely to avoid at this point.
Placing my hands on the vase, I took a deep breath, and shoved it to the floor.
