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“No more so than usual,” I reply, trying to appear cool, and managing to sound pathetic, I’m sure.
But his eyebrows frown deeper and he hides his face in his hands.
“Aren’t you afraid I’ll kill you?” he asks it in a super low voice, as if he’s afraid the walls might hear his words. As if he’s never said them before.
He sounds like a boy. A lost boy.
“Please, kill me?” I say. “You threw up after youthoughtyou might have injured a dog on the way here.”
And that’s when he loses it. He stares at me for a second, his eyes huge with shock, and then he collapses on the floor, laughing hysterically. I’m this close to joining him, because, to be honest, I’ve done everything else at this point.
“Jesus, Olivia,” he gasps. “What the hell did you just say?”
“It’s true,” I shrug. “You’re no killer. You lost your mind at the idea that you might have even touched that dog with your bike. And, remember? I saw you die. I saw you getting shot in cold blood, and you didn’t lift a finger to defend yourself.”
He waves his hand dismissively. “That’s different,” he says. “I did that for you.”
I raise an eyebrow. “How so?”
“If they killed me, then they would have no way of finding you,” he says. “I had gotten rid of your phone, remember? I was their last connection to you. So I went to that meeting fully knowing what I was doing. I went there so they could kill me, so you would be safe. I had covered our tracks thoroughly. No phone, nothing that could ever lead them to you. You’re smart and strong, Livy. I knew once you figured out, I wasn’t coming back, you would find your way to safety. Besides, I was out of options.”
“You…”
It takes a minute to process this. Is that why he buried my phone? Is that why we took off for two days, away from everyone? Then I think of the dead guards outside and my stomach heaves. He couldn’t contact anyone, could he? The guards he called for backup are proof. He asked for help, and boom, all of them got slaughtered.
And his bosses must think Marco dead, because he was dead. Because it took me minutes to reach him in that water, and by that time his killer must have left. Or he might have left. He might not have seen me rescue him. Might.
But still, it’s something.
The glimmer of a possibility takes hold of me and won’t let go.
They might not come here, I think. They assassins came once, found the guards, killed them. Marco checked, and there was no one lying in wait, so they must have left. We haven’t heard anything in hours. They might not come back. We might get away with this. We might hide away here, away from everything, forever, and be safe.
“I took the job,” Marco says slowly, in that tired voice of his that I hate, “so that I would be the one in charge of assassinating you. So that I would fail.”
“You…” I swallow. “You took the ‘job’,” the word sticks in my throat, and I almost choke on it. His eyes fly to my face, panicked at what he heard in my voice. Still, he doesn’t come closer, not even an inch. “You took the ‘job’ willingly, knowing that you would die?”
“Yes,” he said. “Otherwise they would give it to someone else, someone who would do it. Also, otherwise…”
“Yes?”
I am sitting on the floor, but I am also sitting at the edge of my seat, metaphorically speaking.
“Well, they threaten you, you know,” he says. “They threaten you with horrible things unless you agree to do as they say. Not many people would be eager to take on such a mission.”
“You’d be surprised,” I murmur, thinking of the death threats my family and I have received over the years.
“Writing ‘Die Princess’ on a shower wall is not the same as actually taking on the job of assassinating the Crown Princess,” Marco says quietly, and I jerk.
He knew about the wall? He… But of course he did. He was hired as my bodyguard officially, after all. He was hired by the palace. He probably was talking to Hector the whole time, up to the point that we left. That’s why Hector let me leave with him, although he freaked out later. He must have felt something was off when he couldn’t reach either of us.
Damn, Hector. He must be losing his mind.
“It’s not an easy job to do a thing like that and then survive,” Marco concludes. “You’re marked for death anyway. But some manage to continue living after killing. To evade the law.”
“Why were you chosen?”
“Because I was the best,” Marco says calmly, without arrogance. That’s a first. “And also, because they had a good reason to force me to do it. Someone close to me was about to die if I refused. And no, they didn’t threaten to kill my mom or anything,” his voice breaks. “It was a different kind of situation. I needed them, and they needed me. I just didn’t know what they needed me for until it was too late.”
