Chance Assassin: A Story of Love, Luck, and Murder

by Nicole Castle

  “Where do you think he ran off to?” I asked.

  “He’s at his hotel,” Frank said plainly. “He wouldn’t have gone anywhere. He’s waiting to hear from me.” He paused and sighed. “He tried to convince me to leave you. He was outside, smoking a cigarette like everything was fine while you were in there with…he said you were already dead. And he came in after me, to see if I’d killed him. To tell me I was wasting my time calling for help. Charlie took your gun with him. And the body. He told me to come see him when I got out of jail.”

  “Are we gonna kill him?”

  “No.”

  “Are you gonna kill him?”

  Frank rubbed his face. “Yes.”

  “He didn’t think your brother would hurt you,” I said, so surprised that I remembered something that it didn’t occur to me I was defending Charlie until it was already out of my mouth.

  “But he told him to hurt you,” Frank said. “It’s time, V. He knows it is.”

  “You’ll miss him.”

  “Not as much as I’d miss you,” he said, kissing my mutilated head.

  “Who’s gonna be your handler now?” I asked, stepping back so I could look up at him. His eyes were resolute. He was done. “Retirement?”

  He nodded.

  I didn’t know what to say. I’d gotten into this to be with him, to experience what he experienced and learn how to be strong like him. To feel strong. But I’d never realized how much I’d enjoy it, the thrill of killing, and the satisfaction when I got revenge on my projected adversaries. And now here I was, weak again, and damaged. Right back where I started. “What if I’m not ready to retire, Frank? I’ve only been doing this a year.”

  He gave me a look like I’d just told him I wanted to see other hitmen. “It’s all gone bad, Vincent. If it hadn’t been for that job, for me being afraid of that job, I would’ve known something was wrong a month ago! Not suspected, known. And you sensed nothing!”

  I turned away. I hated when he was angry at me. Especially now, when every emotion felt so overwhelming. “I was having bad dreams.”

  “And what did they tell you?”

  “That Charlie’s sister looked like Susan Lucci with an L-shaped neck.”

  Frank cocked his head. He had no other response to that.

  “Does she look like Susan Lucci?”

  “Who the fuck is Susan Lucci?”

  “Nevermind,” I sighed.

  “Marry me,” he said. “Now.”

  What he said was romantic. What I heard was a concrete opportunity to keep him from leaving me for fucking everything up, which I was pretty sure was the reason marriage was invented. “But I look like shit right now, and I don’t think they sell tuxes in this town, and anyway I thought you wanted Casey to be there. Maybe we could even invite Bell—”

  “Forget the ceremony, V. Be my husband. Right here,” he said, and took my hands in his. Then we just stood there, staring at each other, neither of us sure what was supposed to happen next.

  The only wedding I’d ever been to was when I was eight. It was the second wedding of my mom’s best friend. Her son was the ring bearer. Bobby Wilson. I told him I’d give him a kiss if he gave me the ring. They kicked out my entire family and didn’t let me keep it. Her friend never spoke to her again.

  Frank had told me that the only wedding he’d ever been to had been a job. He killed the groom for the bride’s father. There wasn’t much of a ceremony, before or after. Soap operas weren’t much help either. Weddings were usually interrupted by some ratings-increasing crises or another, and I’d had more than enough of that kind of excitement to last the rest of my hopefully long life.

  But it didn’t matter if our ceremony wasn’t formal, or even really a ceremony at all. I could’ve gazed into his eyes forever. My husband. My home.

  Frank leaned down, tilting his head toward mine, gentle with me instead of manhandling me like a caveman the way he usually would, caressing my face, his ring warm against my cheek. I kept my hands between us, skipping the romance for the long overdue consummation. He was actually hard. And it had been weeks!

  I backed toward the bed holding his zipper, pulling him with me. He held my arms so I could sit carefully on the bed when the backs of my knees bumped the mattress, and he climbed on top of me, unbuttoning my pants with one hand and slipping them off easily, sliding over my shoes like I was barefoot, over the fading rope marks on my ankles. Frank didn’t even bother taking his pants off, grabbing the first thing he could get his hands on for lubrication; the leftover sun block from our last job. He understood that there was no time for foreplay.

  I would’ve liked to have done it on my back, facing my new husband, but I was weeks away from that level of physical exertion. He took me from behind, slowly, a little deeper with each thrust, jerking me off as we rocked together on our knees.

  He’d always known how hard to do it, knew when to leave marks. To leave me sore. I gripped the sheets and moaned, even as I felt his restraint, felt him holding back, doubting himself, afraid he’d hurt me. And it felt so good to finally have him in me, with me forever after nearly losing him, that I didn’t allow myself to think it was broken, that what we had was gone because I’d done something I couldn’t remember, I’d gotten hurt when he wasn’t there. The rope marks on my wrists. On my ankles. The chair. Dizziness like swinging in the park when I was a kid, kicking higher and higher. Being afraid. Falling. I hadn’t waited for him. I hadn’t trusted him, and now he didn’t trust himself.

  I moaned louder, urging him on, needing it to hurt, needing the pain to be okay the way it used to be.

  Then the door was kicked in.

  Frank’s body shielded mine as he pointed the gun he kept under his pillow at our intruder.

  “Fuck’s sake, Frankie, I thought someone was being killed in here,” she said in a thick Scottish brogue.

  Frank was wrong about her being pretty. Bella looked the way the devil would’ve looked if he assumed a female form to lure all mankind into sin. She had flawless skin as white as mine, with bright red hair tied back in a painfully intricate braided bun. Her lips were painted dark red, her eyes powdered smoky gray, with striking green irises nearly as vivid as Frank’s. She was wearing a cream colored strapless dress that left little to the imagination, skin-tight and about as short as a dress could get without being called underwear.

  She put her gun back in her purse, a tiny leather bag that matched the color of her dress, and couldn’t have fit much more than her small semi-automatic. She was holding a pair of lethal looking stilettos in her other hand.

  “Do you mind?” Frank asked, his voice lilting habitually toward her accent. It was a good thing he was wearing pants, or he’d be mortified. As for me, I was more self-conscious at being seen bruised up than bare-assed.

  “Not at all,” Bella said with an evil grin. She bent down and strapped her shoes back on, giving a peepshow to anyone who was in the parking lot at the moment. She may not have been very ladylike, but she still looked like she’d stepped off the latest issue of Vogue. And she wouldn’t have had far to step. She was hardly my height in six inch heels.

  I wasn’t sure about her being tougher than she looked. She looked pretty tough to me, even though she was petite; no more than ninety pounds, if that.

  “Shut the fucking door,” Frank muttered, and he tossed his gun on the bed beside me.

  Bella shut it carefully, as if there was a sleeping baby in the next room. It was a far cry from kicking it in. “Who are you, then?” she asked.

  “Vincent,” I said, feeling insecure. Why did I have to look like shit every time I met a member of Frank’s surrogate family?

  “Finally get laid, eh, Frankie boy?” she laughed.

  “Yes, thank you,” he said politely. “Now please fuck off.”

  “We need to talk.”

  “Later.”

  “Now,” she said. Then she bent down to get a better look at me. She didn’t seem to care that I was half naked and im
paled underneath him. She was looking at the battle wounds. “You been beating the shite out of him, Frankie boy?”

  He shot her a look.

  “Junior found you then, did he?” she said, suddenly looking very serious. “Right. I’ll go get a cup of coffee,” she added, as if it had been her idea to give us some privacy in the first place. “Do you want any—”

  “No,” Frank grumbled.

  “I wouldn’t mind a Coke,” I said.

  She gave a small curtsy and walked out the door.

  “I’m going to fucking kill her!” Frank panted.

  I dropped my face to the mattress. I’d been so close. “Is it too much to ask for you to get your frustrations out on me first?”

  Frank laughed. “I knew I should’ve gagged you. You make too much noise,” he said, leaning over me sideways to kiss me quiet. He started thrusting again slowly, jerking me off with the same careful rhythm.

  I moaned into his mouth as I came, feeling the well needed release like flicking on the lights after a bad dream. Frank wasn’t far behind, nearly falling on top of me, his body spent. Normally we’d stay in this position until he got hard again, saving time so he could start all over already inside of me. But my head was pounding, and I could feel my side aching from the strain.

  “That was Bella,” he said, moving off of me without having to ask. He helped me get dressed before buttoning his pants, feeling me up under my shirt since I hadn’t taken it off. His hands felt good over the bandage on my scar, mutated from a pretty white line into shiny pink skin, shaped like a crude, upside-down V. He kissed my forehead and gave me his knit skullcap to hide what we could of the damage.

  “Are you gonna tell her you quit?”

  He sighed. “She won’t take it well.”

  As if on cue, Bella walked back in, not bothering to knock. She pushed the door open with her shoulder, holding two coffees and a can of Coke, and kicked it shut behind her, balancing like a flamingo on one high-heeled foot.

  “Done already?” she asked facetiously, setting our drinks on the table.

  Frank got up, taking a seat across from her and handing me my soda on the bed. I propped myself up on both pillows and watched them. I’d been jealous before I’d seen how beautiful she was. Now I realized how little I had to be jealous about. She wasn’t his other half, and she never would be. She was his twin. They’d been through so much together they were bonded forever, regardless of how he tried to distance himself from her.

  Even with the starkly dissimilar hair and wardrobe, Bella looked more like his sibling than Henry had. They complimented each other.

  “I was worried about you, Frankie,” she said. Neither of them had touched their coffee. “Charlie called Silva. He told him you were in jail.”

  “Well, I’m not,” Frank said calmly, while murderous rage bubbled through me. Charlie had waited two weeks to send someone to spring him from prison. Two weeks to let him think about what he’d done. To regain control over his pet.

  “He said you had a brother,” she added, attempting one of my tried and true methods of prompting conversation.

  “I did, yeah,” Frank said. He wasn’t going for it.

  “He’s dead?”

  “What do you think?” Frank asked, glancing my direction as an explanation.

  “And Charlie?”

  “He’s next.”

  “Fuck, Frankie,” she said. “Do you want me to do it?”

  “We’re taking care of it,” he said. I couldn’t help but smile. We. It looked like I might get a last kill in after all. “We have to go to the pipe store.”

  “Eh?”

  Frank looked back to me for assistance. I raised my eyebrows, the right one stiff from my impending scar, and took a sip of my soda. I should’ve guessed he’d want to bash Charlie’s head in for sentimental reasons. “Hardware store?”

  He smiled at Bella. “Hardware store.”

  “You’re not coming back after this, are you?” she asked, looking him in the eye. He shook his head. She slapped him hard across the face.

  I had the gun raised before Frank had even righted his head, bringing his hand to the glowing red mark. For a second I thought he’d smack her back, but he just picked up his coffee. I set the gun back on the bed.

  “Sorry,” she said, paying me and my gun no attention at all. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” he said.

  She sighed and leaned back, lighting a cigarette with a lighter that had been hidden somewhere deep within her cleavage. “You want one?”

  “I quit.”

  “That too, eh?” she said, blowing her smoke to the ceiling. She stuck her feet on the table, crossing one smooth leg over the other. I closed my eyes after catching a full view of what she wasn’t wearing underneath her dress. No, Bella was not ladylike. Not even close. But she was a natural redhead.

  “You’ve just flashed my husband,” Frank said sternly.

  “It’s his fault for looking,” she said. She was as shameless as I was. “Listen, Frankie, I was in London when Charlie called. I went to Henry’s flat before I caught my flight. He’d wallpapered it with fucking newspaper clippings. And he had your file from Combley, fuck knows how he got it.”

  “You have my file?” he asked, sitting up straight. Combley must’ve been the juvenile prison. Charlie had never let him see his file. He’d told him it would be detrimental to his recovery, though Frank had always suspected it was really to keep a semblance of control over him.

  “Your criminal record doesn’t go with this outfit, Frankie,” she said, then got serious when he glared at her. “It’s in the car. In the trunk. Safe and sound.”

  “Did you read it?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. I wondered what he would’ve done if she said yes. “You want to go get your pipe?”

  He checked his watch. “I should call and make sure he’s up. It’s still early.” Even on the day he planned to kill him, Frank let the old man sleep in. Now that was loyalty. “And we should wipe down the—” he stopped, suddenly looking lost.

  We weren’t hiding anymore.

  I didn’t know you could rent a Corvette. Maybe she hadn’t rented it. She certainly drove it like it was stolen.

  I sat beside Frank in the safety of his car, watching as Bella disappeared down the road ahead of us in a streak of candy apple red. He hadn’t allowed me to ride with her. I put up a fuss to save face; my father would’ve been rolling in his grave that his one and only son had been too afraid to fulfill his gear head fantasies of taking sex on wheels for a test drive, but I was grateful for it. Bella scared me.

  “Will you come with me to see Charlie? I don’t want you to watch, just come with me to say goodbye,” he said, using his turn signal to change lanes like a good boy. Bella was likely already there.

  “Of course I will,” I said. “I’d do it if you wanted me to.”

  He shook his head, and didn’t say anything else.

  Bella had parked across two spots, one of them handicapped. I was tempted to warn her about leaving her mail where someone could see it, but Charlie wouldn’t have enough time to send someone on her trail for taking his parking spot. She was leaning against her hood, a manila envelope I could only assume was Frank’s criminal record under her ass to keep her from dirtying her dress.

  He didn’t look at the file, he just carefully folded it and stuck it inside his coat where it would be safe from prying eyes. I wanted to hold his hand, but I’d had enough brushes with death to last a lifetime, and being queer near power tools was a bad idea.

  “Do you know where you’re going?” Frank asked as I took the lead.

  “If anyone does, it’s me,” I said. Frank had called it a pipe store, which proved how much he knew. And as for Bella, well, Minolo Blahnik didn’t design screwdrivers. It was nice to be butch, even if it was only by comparison. “Don’t ask for directions, it’s a sign of weakness.”

  Bella took Frank’s arm, her shoes clacking across the lin
oleum. Every man in the building was watching us. Watching her. I could just imagine what they were thinking. Two homosexuals, one of them gasp! French, and a fashionista. What in God’s name could we be after.

  “I dislocated my shoulder in a store like this when I was little,” I said. Even though it would make me stick out even more, I wished I’d remembered to put on some foundation. I must’ve looked like I’d already shown my pretty little face where it didn’t belong, and had enjoyed my gay bashing so much I wanted another. “Actually, my dad dislocated it. Not on purpose, but he got scared when I’d wandered off after he told me to stay put. It wasn’t my fault because there was this guy there asking me to come look at screws with him and I was too young to know what a sexual innuendo was so I followed him and my dad found me and yanked me away. By the arm. We told my mom it was an accident.”

  “Nervous, V?” Frank laughed.

  “Shut up,” I said.

  “It smells funny in here.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Bookstores smell funny.”

  He swatted me. I looked around to make sure no one saw, which of course, everyone had. Although, I didn’t know what I was afraid of. Frank hadn’t hesitated to shoot his brother for harming me, and was shopping for the perfect length of metal to bash his surrogate father’s head in for discouraging my well being. He wouldn’t even blink before defending me in here.

  “Pipes,” I said proudly, holding out my hands like a magician revealing a finale to his magic trick.

  Frank picked one up, smacked it in his hand, and put it down to try another.

  “We’re going to be here fucking forever,” Bella sighed, and took my arm. “Come along, Vincent. Let’s find some screws. We have much to discuss.”

  Frank glanced at us apprehensively, but said nothing as Bella led me away, her heels click-clacking our departure.

  “You’ll want to stay away from the brass ones,” I said, turning to look over my shoulder. “They’re too soft.”

  He smiled at me. It wasn’t until Bella was pulling me out of the aisle that I realized his smile had been one of pity. She was speeding up. She was leading us straight toward the bathrooms. Oh fuck, I’d put the idea of being molested in a hardware store into her haggis-filled head and she was going to do horrible things to me!