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But it’s just a dream. A bloody fairytale. Because I could never go up against the entirety of the Hands of Peace alone and hope to win.
So I tear my gaze from the people strolling along the street and instead glare into the shop window so that I won’t have to see their stupid smiling faces.
That is a mistake, because the window belongs to a jewelry shop. Earrings and bracelets and necklaces glitter from swirling silver stands. And there, displayed right in the middle, is a beautiful necklace that makes pain slice through my insides like burning knives.
It’s made of silver. A delicate chain leads down to the pendant. In truth, there is nothing particularly remarkable about the pendant. It’s just shaped like a ring made of flattened silver. But it still makes me want to shatter the whole glass window just so that I can hear something break. Something other than my heart. Because on that thin flat ring, a name has been engraved.
Isabella.
I feel like the universe itself is mocking me. Tormenting me with what I can’t have. What I can’tbe. A real person with a real name.
Heartache and longing tear through my chest as I stare at that necklace. Because by all the gods, I want it. I want that necklace so fucking badly. I want thatlifeso fucking badly. A life where I can own things that are mine and mine alone. A life where I don’t have to constantly wear someone else’s clothes and decorate my home in someone else’s style. A real life. My life.
And if I could have that desperate dream, I would begin it by buyingthatnecklace. I would change my last name, because I don’t like Johnson. I only picked it because it’s the second most common last name in the US. But I would keep Isabella. I like the sound of it. And it’s the first and only name that I have ever chosen for myself. So I would buy that necklace. And then I would live.
But I can’t. Because the Hands of Peace are coming. Two truly vicious hitmen out for blood are now in the same state as me. And if I make one careless mistake, I’m dead.
So after whatever it is that Rico has planned for us tonight, I need to break things off with him.
Apart from my brief visits to check my phone, I can’t keep coming into town like this. I can’t go out to waffle restaurants. It’s too dangerous. Too great a risk of being spotted. I need to stay hidden behind the walls of Blackwater as much as possible.
So this is it. One more date. Then he will either have to let me go completely or go back to trying to drag the truth out of me by force. No in between.
After this, our stolen moments of a shared life, areallife, are done.
Enemies once more.
26
RICO
My intention was to get there first so that I could see which direction she came from, but even though I arrive twenty-five minutes early, Isabella is already there. It sends a ripple of amusement, rather than annoyance, through me.
She is staring into a shop window as I approach, and she doesn’t turn around when I close the final distance. It feels very unlike her. I frown as I sweep my gaze over the window. But right as I’m about to announce myself, she speaks up.
“You’re early,” she says, her back still to me.
I give her a knowing look as she at last turns around. “So are you.”
“Yes.”
For a few seconds, we just stand like that. Holding each other’s gaze in silence as if we’re confirming to each other that tonight is going to be one of those nights where we don’t outright lie to each other, but we don’t tell the whole truth either.
All around us, the streetlamps cast pools of glimmering golden light on the dark cobblestones while people stroll up and down the street. A pleasant murmur hangs in the warm evening air.
“Come on,” I say, jerking my chin. “There’s something I want to show you.”
She falls in beside me as we start down the street. There is little we can say without lying, and we have decided not to lie tonight, so we just walk in silence. But I steal glances at her, watching the way she studies the area and the people around her. Watching the way her hair ripples when she moves. The way her eyes glitter every time we pass under a streetlight.
I lead her away from the busy city center and in the direction of one of the more rundown parts. Her shoulders tense slightly when she realizes that, and she flicks a quick glance at me. I suppress a laugh. What does she think I’m going to do? Lead her down a back alley and jump her with a broken bottle?
I wait for her to ask me about it.
She doesn’t.
So we walk in silence until we’ve crossed the edge between the rundown part and the much nicer one that we have passed through now. I take a left between two tall buildings. And then we’re there.
Isabella raises her eyebrows in surprise as we walk right into a park. Slowing her pace, she looks from side to side. And I know what she sees. Because I thought the same thing the first time I came here.
