Frank smirked. That was a fucking relief. I wasn’t expecting to see anything short of a scowl for at least another hour. When Frank was upset about something, he could freeze water just by looking at it. “No.”
“Did you shoot someone? I mean, I wanted to shoot people when I was twelve, especially Bobby Wilson, he was my first kiss and he stopped speaking to me when we were about eight, that was after the kiss, obviously, but when we got a little older he started beating me up and I would’ve liked to shoot him just for being a dickhead but―”
Frank put his hand over my mouth. “Shh.”
“Sorry,” I sighed. “Fuck, Frank, twelve?”
“I didn’t shoot him,” he said, as if that made it any easier to comprehend. I could imagine a twelve-year-old shooting someone, but short of that, how could a kid be capable of murder?
“Was it an accident?” I asked, although I couldn’t say why. If it hadn’t been on purpose, Frank wouldn’t have counted it.
“He killed my mother,” he said, his eyes growing dark. I would’ve willingly let him change the subject, but somehow I felt this was part of my lesson. Like understanding that he was ordinary once upon a time would help keep me untainted by the blood I’d soon be shedding. “I crushed his skull with a pipe, the same as he’d done to her, and I cut him into pieces with a paring knife. It took fucking forever.”
I stared at him. He’d done this before, back in Chicago after Charlie had asked him to kill me. He’d tried to frighten me away from him. He was going for shock or disgust because threatening my life hadn’t worked. But I wasn’t disgusted. Not with him. And I wasn’t going anywhere. I wanted him to train me as much as before.
“I’m sorry, Frank,” I said, and then I got up and went to his duffel bag. He watched me, his expression a tragic mix of victory and helplessness. But I wasn’t after a change of clothes, something warmer to wear while I ran for my life. I grabbed my hundred thousand dollars and brought it back to him, dropping it in his lap. “Here. You don’t work for free.”
For just a second he flinched, his jaw clenching as he looked at me and not the money. The last time I’d refuted his attempt to push me away, he’d gotten angry with me. This time he had more at stake. He’d reopened an old wound and his plan had backfired, leaving him vulnerable in my presence instead of vulnerable and alone.
Having Frank trust me with his secrets made me feel even more protective of him. It was funny, because he had that effect on other people as well. Any information, regardless of how classified, could make a person want to take care of him. I’d once seen a waitress old enough to be his grandmother get this gooey look on her face like she was ready to adopt him, simply because he told her that he only drank his coffee black. Frank was, of course, oblivious. He probably could’ve guessed with ninety-nine percent accuracy how many cats she owned just by looking at her, but when it came to someone having a positive perception of him, he was clueless.
This was the biggest secret he’d ever told me, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to leave him exposed. “If you want to change your mind, I’ll understand. Just say so.”
He sighed and pulled out a gun from the back of his pants. Then he turned it around so the barrel pointed toward his chest, and handed it to me. “That was one of my first guns,” he said, breaking the silence since I was gazing thoughtfully at my birthday present. Frank got uncomfortable when I was quiet. He said it wasn’t natural. “It’s light. And there isn’t much kick.”
I nodded, breathing deeply. This wasn’t just a gun. It was a promise. A decision he hadn’t wanted to make. This was a murder weapon, and he was going to teach me how to use it. “Thank you,” I said sincerely, biting my lower lip because I knew it made me look innocent and unsure. I wanted him to know that Vincent, and even V, would remain sweet kids.
But Frank was one step ahead of me, as usual. He had his own plans for keeping me pure, even with a pistol in my hand. “You don’t get bullets until you’re eighteen.”
I pouted. Of course not. “Prick tease.”
“Pardon?”
“Are there really no bullets in this gun?” I asked playfully, moving closer to him and aiming it one-handed at the mattress between his legs, pressing my other hand into his chest and forcing him to lie back against my pillow.
Frank raised one eyebrow, watching my face instead of where I put my gun. There was an unusual amount of trust between us for only having known each other six months, but Frank wasn’t stupid. Even if he intended on giving me bullets in the near future, he wouldn’t have given them to me in the gun. I was no more a threat to him than normal, though my actions still felt dangerous, and seeing him focus on my eyes while I held a weapon to his manhood turned me on in unimaginable ways.
“Boundaries, V,” he said warningly.
I moved away from him, sitting back on my heels and raising my aim to his heart. “Happy anniversary, Frank.”
In a flash, he had my gun away from me and I was flat on the floor with his boot against my throat. “You point a gun at me again, I will break your neck.”
I grinned and made a move to lick the worn leather sole. He took his foot away, grabbing my wrist and pulling me back to my feet, then returning the gun to my hand in one fluid movement. “Behave.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Can I say no?”
“Did I just pay you to kill your father?” I asked. He never really spoke of him, though I’d always taken it more as indifference than loathing. Surely if his dad had been the one to shatter his childhood, there’d be more hatred.
“My father had nothing to do with the death of my mother,” he recited, as if it was an exercise in forgiveness that he’d practiced many times. “He didn’t have much to do with her life, either. Though his wife died under suspicious circumstances, so I suppose he had it in him after all.”
I watched his face. In less than fifty words he’d run the gamut of emotions from rehearsed apathy to a scathing resentment, as though his dad had passed on some sort of genetic defect that made him capable of murder. No wonder Frank liked hearing me describe the plots of my soap operas. They were the only things more fucked up than his past. “He killed his wife?”
“It was never proven, but everyone knew. He’d married her for the money, why not kill her for it?”
“Do you hate him?” I asked.
“I used to.”
“Not anymore?”
“He’s dead, V. There’d be no point.”
“So is the first person you killed, but you still hate him,” I said.
He shrugged. “I never got the closure I needed.”
“Closure? Is that what you were going for when you chopped him up?”
He laughed. It disturbed me more than his story did to begin with. “Charlie said I was in shock. But that’s not true. I knew exactly what I was doing. I was enraged. I’d never been angry in my entire life. I didn’t even know what it was at the time, feeling so heated. I wanted to kill him over and over again. He was still alive when I started cutting.”
Frank had officially passed from the realm of sexy and slightly dangerous to cute and crazy. For a moment I wanted to hide from him, just so I would never again have to see the sociopathic glint in his pretty green eyes.
Even after seeing him at work, I’d never really considered him to be a murderer. He was a man doing a job. But now I was flooded with the awareness that vocationally or not, Frank killed people.
The moment of unease didn’t last long, and my desire for him returned stronger than ever. I looked at him, his head slightly tilted while he watched me. He was still smiling, the thought of repeatedly killing his enemy as pleasurable as finishing a classic novel for the hundredth time. “Remind me never to piss you off,” I said, grateful that his eyes had stopped reflecting madness. As long as he stayed on the proper side of the sanity street, I didn’t care how close to the fence he was.
“Then you’d better pay attention to what I teach you. If you get you
rself hurt because you weren’t listening, I’ll kill you.”
I grinned. I couldn’t help myself. It used to merely amuse me when he issued threats, but there’d been nothing but reruns on for weeks and I had to up the stakes to keep myself entertained. I’d created a mental dictionary of Frankspeak, so when he said he’d break my fingers it meant he cared about me, and I’ll break your neck was I love you. Threatening to kill me was the best. That translated to I want to fuck you on the floor right now, but I’m shy so you’ll have to tear my clothes off me first.
“This is serious, Vincent! You have to do exactly what I tell you to do at all times. No disobeying.”
“Okay,” I said gravely. If he knew what I was really grinning about, he’d probably say something I hadn’t deciphered yet. And actually mean it.
“You should do whatever you want today,” he said. “Make it good, because this is the last time you’ll have the opportunity. Tomorrow we’re starting your training, and it will not be fun.”
“I bet it will be,” I smirked.
“No more gambling,” Frank said, and he gently slapped my cheek. The sharp sting of flesh against flesh caught my breath in my throat. Even though we shared a bed, the more aggressive physical contact was what I craved. He’d been keeping fairly busy with work, so we hadn’t had the time to do any sparring practice in months. Being knocked to the ground and having his foot pressed against my neck had simply whet my appetite.
My heart thudded wildly in my chest. “It’s a figure of speech.” I said, keeping my mind on other speeches to prevent the excitement from turning into noticeable arousal; award acceptance speeches, presidential addresses, a guy I’d lived with who liked for me to recite the Pledge of Allegiance while he sucked me off.
Frank gathered the cash and pushed it back toward me. “This was a sweet gesture, V. But I’d rather win it when you turn eighteen.”
“Right,” I said. I’d forgotten about our wager. Prior to this week, the idea of dying hadn’t even entered my mind since the night we made the bet, but thinking about it again, dreaming about it again, brought the familiar terror back to the surface. Being Frank’s apprentice would put me in the line of fire. And he was right. It was serious. I hoped to hell I was a better student now than I used to be.
“You have your father’s eyes,” he said, nodding toward the photograph.
My dad had stormy, blue-gray eyes that made him look deep in thought. The color matched, but I looked sleepy, not insightful. “He was really smart. Sort of moody, too. Just like someone else I know.”
Frank raised his eyebrows. I was hoping to get another smack, but the menacing expression would do fine.
“This was their wedding photo,” I said, remembering how my mom had carefully lifted it off the wall to show it to me after she’d caught me wearing her not quite white wedding dress. I touched the glass above her stomach. “She was three months pregnant with me. I accidentally told my grandpa about it and he had a heart attack. That was about the time I learned I talk too much.”
He grimaced. “Oh, V.”
“My parents said it wasn’t my fault he died, but it was,” I sighed. Frank winced, as if he’d been rooting for the old man to survive his Vincent-caused coronary. I started to laugh. Just a couple of minutes ago I was worried about his sanity for laughing at the dead, and here I was, in a fit of giggles. I wondered if I looked like a sociopath as well.
“Quiet down, killer. You’ll wake the neighbors.”
That made me laugh even more. Killer. Me. Having him call me that made me feel like a fluffy kitten with a spiked collar. I had never been in a fight I didn’t lose, and the two deaths I did cause were complete flukes. Still, if anyone could teach me to be lethal, it was him.
“Do you think I’m ready for this?” I asked, placing the photo on the nightstand and lifting up my gun.
“You will be,” he said confidently. It sounded like a threat.
My first day of assassin training began at four o’clock in the morning. I wasn’t used to getting up so early, but being tired was endurable considering that I’d finally gotten what I wanted. The anticipation energized me, and I watched Frank fervently for instructions.
“The majority of my scars were obtained during the first few years of my career. Until you learn to let your instincts get you out of trouble, it will be my responsibility to keep you safe. The most important thing for you right now is to trust me without question.”
“I already trust you.”
Frank backhanded me across the cheek so hard that I nearly lost my balance. I tensed all over and shrunk away from him out of habit, complete emotional shutdown. My whole face was burning, my cheek throbbing with heat. I kept my eyes diverted submissively. So much for trust.
“Look at me.” He grasped my chin and pulled my head toward him. The first few seconds of looking into his eyes after he hit me was harder than it had been to walk out Mark’s front door, fourteen years old, knowing I had nowhere left to go, and no one left to take care of me. But as I looked at him, my eyes already full of tears, I felt that calm again, the safety despite the danger that I’d experienced the moment I saw him. “It would be to your detriment if I went easy on you, Vincent, and I care too much about you to let you fail. You do whatever you need to remember that, because we cannot be friends while you’re my student.”
I nodded, not sure if the gag order had been lifted.
“This is a very dangerous business you want to learn, V. I know what you’re capable of, and I will not push you past that point. I do need to toughen you up. I will leave marks, but I will not leave scars. I will do what is best for you, even if it scares you. If you get hurt, it is your fault, because you disobeyed me. Understood?”
I nodded again. “You will get up early every morning, and go running with me. No more staying in bed watching television. You will learn how to drive by the end of this week, and you will learn how to kill with your bare hands before you’re permitted a weapon.”
And I thought he was intense before. This must’ve been what boot camp felt like. “Can I speak?”
“Yes, you may.”
“Can I ask you questions?”
“If they’re work related.”
“Did you do this with Bella?”
“No, Bell was doing this professionally before I was. She taught me everything she knew about guns and explosives. She was big on noise.”
Having spent months listening to him sporadically use the past tense when speaking about his formerly beloved partner, not daring to correct and embarrass him, I finally made the connection. He’d threatened to kill me if I got hurt, and that’s precisely what she did. Bella was dead to him.
That made a lot of sense, considering he’d speak of Charlie in past tense when he was mad at him, and when Mario got himself blown up in a schoolhouse explosion on The Young and the Restless, Frank wouldn’t speak nor hear of him until he came back the following season as Mario’s amnesiac twin brother.
“She wouldn’t stand for what I’m going to put you through. She’d kill me in my sleep.”
“Who says I won’t kill you in your sleep?”
He smiled. “That’s the spirit. Let’s go.”
I pulled on the clothes he’d slept in. It was a testament to how tolerant he was that he never complained about my habit of sleeping in the nude. A lesser man might’ve found a naked homosexual beside him in bed to be intimidating, but not Frank. After the initial shock of seeing me without clothing back in Chicago, he no longer even noticed.
Frank always folded his clothes when he took them off. He was full of strange little quirks like that; compulsive behaviors that made me love him even more. Some of them he had no logical reason for, like changing his clothes all the time, but most of his idiosyncrasies stemmed from paranoia. Burning his trash, never leaving fingerprints and refusing to use the hotel’s sheets or towels, all of them were out of an irrational fear of being found. By whom, he wouldn’t say, but I imagined it was the same
individuals who might be waiting in the wings to attack him. That was why he was always armed to the teeth.
It had been a couple of years since I ran for recreation instead of fleeing for my life, and even when I was in tiptop shape, I wouldn’t be competing in a track meet before the sun came up. But Frank had reawakened my competitive nature, and I made it my mission to beat him by any means necessary.
Frank didn’t know that we were racing, jogging at a steady speed that was relatively fast nonetheless because his legs were so long. I caught up with him and stayed at his heels, paying attention to my heartbeat and breathing and making note of how far we were going. I wouldn’t be able to defeat him today, but I would come in first eventually. I always did.
That was how I’d met Mark. He saw me being chased across the field by three of his best students, and they hadn’t been able catch me. He’d promised to make them back off if I joined the team, touching my knee like I belonged to him already. I made him proud, winning races, humiliating my competitors and teammates alike, but I was only good at sprinting.
Mark used to scream at me until his face turned purple for not pacing myself properly during long-distance events. I couldn’t help it. I got easily distracted, and I lived for the win. If it didn’t come soon enough, I got bored and ran out of steam. Then he started fucking me, and I stopped winning altogether because I was sore all the time. It didn’t matter, since my grades had dropped so low I wasn’t allowed to compete anyway.
We jogged until I had to stop to catch my breath, and he was barely winded. Frank was a fucking machine when it came to physical exertion. His breathing was only heavier now because I’d been ahead of him for fifteen minutes and he was working to keep up with me, unaware of our friendly competition. I could’ve considered that a victory, but the concerned look on his face refuted any sense of accomplishment.
“You all right?”
I nodded, leaning forward with my hands on my knees. He smiled at me. At least he wasn’t grumpy anymore. “Is this what you do every morning?”
Chance Assassin: A Story of Love, Luck, and Murder Page 14
