“You left your lover in—” I was kicked in the back before I had a chance to finish, her bare but somehow still sharp foot against my spine. I found myself on my hands and knees on the floor. No one ever said freedom came without pain.
She hopped out of bed on the other side. I watched her from the corner of my eye, squinting to blur her nudity but keeping tabs on her location in case she came in for a second attack. She disappeared into the bathroom.
I hurriedly got dressed and bolted from the room as fast as my injured body could carry me. The hallway looked a lot different when Frank’s hand wasn’t spot-welded around my arm; sunlight was shining in through windows on either end of the hall, illuminating carpet that was the color of old blood. I walked over to the dark wood banister that circled the otherwise open level. All the floors were like it, rooms on one side of the hallway and nothing but a waist-high guardrail to keep you from falling on the other. I’d never seen a house structured this way, arched in a half-circle from the opening but square from the outside, tiered with each floor set further back than the one below like an opera house. This home was not childproof.
There was a clock ticking somewhere behind me, further down the hall from our room. But when I started following the sound I couldn’t find it. Everything seemed further away than it ought to have been, foreign in every sense of the word. And yet I could hear it, echoing in all that space.
I had gone halfway around the hall so I faced the front door, and the side of the home that was flat like a building should be. I could look all along the third floor and see not even a hint of a clock, just paintings and a few sculptures and some thriving indoor plants in ceramic pots. I spread my hands along the smooth, polished banister, dulling the shine with my palms. It felt like glass. Who cleaned this place? Frank probably would’ve taken the job when he lived here, although probably not wearing the French maid outfit I was visualizing.
Then I got an idea. I leaned over the banister, gripping it so I wouldn’t fall. I could see just a little of the wall on the second floor. There was some sort of wooden cabinet, quite possibly the base of a grandfather clock.
I stood back up, tracing my hand along the banister as I walked the rest of the way around toward the far staircase. It must’ve still been early. There was no sound in the home apart from the ticking.
Just as I was starting my descent to the second floor I heard a door open. Instinctively I crouched behind a pedestal, only then remembering that I wasn’t supposed to go anywhere without Frank or Bella.
Frank was known to be paranoid and over-protective of me, but he had good reason. And he wouldn’t have issued that kind of warning if there wasn’t danger involved. I held my breath and listened. It would be next to impossible to hear slipper-footed steps on the carpet, and the acoustics in the place made it difficult to determine where any sound came from. I waited with my back to the pedestal for several minutes, then slowly crawled out from behind it.
There was no one to be seen on the third floor. I couldn’t see anyone on the first or second floors either, unless whoever had opened the door was underneath me. I stayed close to the wall as I walked back to the center of the third floor, where I could see the staircase I’d stood on. The clock kept ticking. Nobody was there.
A hand came down on my shoulder from behind, too violent to be friendly. I didn’t have to turn around to know I was in trouble. “What did I tell you?”
“But you’re right here, Frank,” I said, turning slowly. He had a look that might be misinterpreted as wanting to push me over the banister. “I was looking for you.”
I could tell he didn’t believe me. “Where’s Bella?”
“Putting on makeup. I hope. She was a mess.” I shuddered at the memory. Scarred forever because my husband was a morning person.
“We’re going to be here awhile. You have to obey me.”
“I will. I’m sorry. What time is it?”
He took his watch off his wrist and strapped it, roughly, to mine. Without giving me a chance to look at it, he pulled me by the hand back to our bedroom and flung me onto the bed. The bathroom door was still shut. “Stay put. I’ll bring you breakfast.”
I had no problem with breakfast, or lunch and dinner in bed. But I had a feeling I was never going to see the kitchen in this place. Or any other room, for that matter.
I was just about to dig through Bella’s purse for something to play with when Frank’s cell phone rang. It was Maggie. I was almost afraid to answer it, but Frank had a sixth sense when it came to his loved ones being in danger, and if something bad had happened to Casey, apart from Bella yanking his heart out through his ribcage, he would’ve known about it before Maggie could dial our number.
She said, “Vincent, honey, put Frank on the phone.”
I rolled my eyes. When would she figure out that I wore the pants in our relationship and anything she could say to Frank should rightfully be filtered through me? “He’s busy.”
“I understand that he’s busy, just put him on for a second.”
“I’m not busy.”
“Fine. Put Bella on.”
She must’ve heard me scoff. Frank would’ve heard me scoff from the kitchen, wherever that was. She’d spent weeks doing her best not to speak to the woman, and all of a sudden Bella was Miss Popular? “Why?”
“Because it’s important for me to speak with one of them.”
One of them. Grown-up talk. No kids allowed. “Phone’s cutting out. We must have a bad connection.”
“What do you mean there’s a bad connection? I hear you just fine. Don’t you dare hang—”
Hopefully the call had nothing to do with Casey. I’d be in the biggest trouble of my life if I failed to relay a message about his whereabouts. The phone rang again, and what should’ve been a pleasant surprise by speaking to Maggie’s wayward son himself, ended up pissing me off even more. He also asked to speak with Bella, without even saying hello, and I hung up on him too. Then I took the battery out of Frank’s phone so they couldn’t call back.
It was so unfair! What made Bella so important? I’d killed just as many people as she and Frank had. Well, maybe not just as many, but probably close. I’d killed some, anyway.
And I could take care of myself.
I got up and pulled open the door, only to have Frank standing right there, giving me that look he got when I did sweet things for him. It really was too easy to sweep him off his feet. He fell for gooey, romantic shit that even teenage girls weren’t susceptible to. And when my nearly being truant resulted in doing him a favor, he wouldn’t question why I was yanking the door off the hinges just to let him in.
His hands were full, holding two coffee cups and balancing a plate of what looked like dry toast on top. It wasn’t exactly a breakfast worth opening the door for. “We’ll have to go shopping,” he said in response to my clear disappointment.
Bella came forward, dressed and primped, though nowhere near as heavily made-up as she’d been at our house. She took her coffee cup, and stole my toast right off the plate. It may not have been edible in the first place, but I was sad to see it go.
“That was for him,” Frank said.
She flipped us off and went on past, heading toward Silva’s office.
“How long are we gonna be here?”
Frank turned his head suddenly, tensed and ready. I expected to see some projectile, like Bella’s empty coffee cup flying through the air. Instead I heard the scariest laugh on the planet, gruff and vicious, like it had passed through the gates of hell to get to us. Frank’s free hand had dropped to his side, fingering his gun.
The voice was scarier when it spoke. “Hiya, Frankie.”
Frank raised his gun. “That is close enough.”
A lot of children are afraid of the dark, but turn on the lights, and the boogeyman becomes a coat draped across a chair. It’s the unknown that’s frightening, your imagination working against you to increase your terror. But when I stepped forward to sneak a pee
k at who’d put Frank on alarm, I wished I’d stayed in the dark.
The man was twenty feet tall, with a lean, wiry upper body exaggerated in a tight wife-beater that would undoubtedly live up to its name if someone actually married the cretin. Despite being so muscular, his face was gaunt like he was slowly starving to death and his ice blue eyes were sunk deep in his skull. He had light hair cropped close to his head, and his leathery skin had a yellowish tint like he was experiencing liver failure.
He laughed again and pointed at me, flicking his eyes back to Frank before saying something in Russian. Or demon. Or both. I try very, very hard not to get intimidated by people bigger than me. It usually works because I have a gun and they don’t. But regardless of how he was armed, I was ready to run and hide under the bed. It was the expression on Frank’s face. With all the fucked up shit Frank and I had seen over the years, he’d never looked like that. I could tell that he was genuinely disturbed by this guy.
Frank held his ground, barely breathing, his gun aimed and ready. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that he’d shoot this fucker if he took another step toward us. And I didn’t doubt the fucker would just keep on walking right through the gunfire.
“Welcome home, Frankie,” he said.
“Karl,” Frank said, polite even to a man who was most certainly an enemy. That was his English side. French people in general would benefit greatly from having an English father. And living most of their adult lives in America.
Bella came out from Silva’s office and walked right by Karl as if he wasn’t a twenty foot scary monster standing in the middle of the hallway. He looked her up and down with mild disgust the way a person would watch a dog shitting on the sidewalk. I’d never seen a man look at her without one ounce of desire. Even I thought she was hot, as long as she kept her clothes on. “At ease, Frankie boy,” she said. “You know the rules.”
Frank didn’t move. There was no emotion in his eyes.
“Come on, Frank. Coffee’s getting cold.” I grabbed his arm at the elbow, where it could be considered heterosexual. Frank said something in Russian and allowed himself to be pulled inside. The door had two padlocks. I used both.
Bella said, “We can thank Malkolm for that. He must’ve called him last night.”
Frank kept his eyes on the door. He didn’t touch his coffee.
“Who was that?” I sat on his lap. Attention. Me. Now.
Frank laughed scornfully and rubbed his face. He only did that when something was greatly stressing him out. Mainly me. “You will not go anywhere alone, understood?”
“I said yes.”
He finally looked at me. “You said yes last night and did it anyway, Vincent.”
“That was before they unleashed the beast.”
He put his arms around me like he was relieved just to touch me. “Karl and I have a bit of a history.”
“No shit, Frank.”
“Don’t get lippy.”
“Can we go shopping now?” Seeing Karl had diminished my appetite, but by no means killed it. And I wanted to get away from this house. Every person I’d met had been scarier than the last.
“Bring my phone. We still haven’t heard from Maggie.” Frank gave Bella a dirty look. I kept my mouth shut. I could always use the excuse that I was trying to punish her for hurting Casey.
Frank took my hand—definitely not a heterosexual move—and led me into the hallway. Karl was still standing there. He hadn’t moved. “How sweet,” he said. Frank pulled me even closer, and pulled out his gun.
He kept it trained on the Russian until we made it to the first floor, then led me through mystery door number two. It was very dimly lit, the floor hard but not slippery like the marble surface we’d left behind us. Even with the limited light, I knew where we were. I could smell it.
Cars.
The lights were on a motion sensor, popping on bright white at our entrance like stepping through the gates of Heaven. Cars! Beautiful, gleaming, parked there just for me cars! Dozens of them, the smell of tires and new upholstery and faint exhaust, a garage the size of a dealership. What a strange place this was, where bad assassins came to get better, and good cars came to gather dust.
A whole side of the garage was in red, the cars noticeably parked crooked, Ferraris and Maseratis and motorcycles too, zero to sixty in the blink of an eye. “Are those all Bella’s?”
“Yes.” He pawed through a steel box on the wall, keys dangling on little silver hooks. There were far less keys than there were cars.
“I want to pick.”
“She doesn’t leave her keys downstairs.”
“I still want to pick.”
He sighed and stood me in front of the box. I felt like a kid in a candy shop, a crisp twenty dollar bill in my pocket. Daddy, can I have all of them?
Now I knew why Frank drove a BMW. It was the least obtrusive brand in the whole garage. There were keys for Lamborghinis and Porches, Bentleys and Jags, which he wouldn’t have chosen because they were British, and Mercedes’, which wasn’t an option because he hadn’t forgiven her for betraying Edmond Dantes in The Count of Monte Cristo. And there, the diamond in the not-so-rough, Ferrari.
I took the key, bouncing up and down in anticipation like I was on The Price is Right as I pressed the button to unlock the doors. Headlights flashed behind a black Jaguar and I ran to collect my prize. Frank’s competition for my love was an F12 Berlinetta in Tour de France Metallic Blue. I draped myself across the hood and wriggled my ass at him. “Fuck me on it!”
“Not here.” He snatched the keys from my hand. “Get in the car.”
If Frank wasn’t looking around the garage like he was expecting the devil himself to materialize in a puff of smoke and carry me off to hell for an eternity of rape I might’ve taken offense to my rejection. I got in the car, contenting myself to writhe on the hand-sewn leather seats while Frank drove in as much silence as a V12 engine would allow.
We were on the road for long enough that I was starting to think we were on a hunt for somewhere isolated and he would actually grant my request, when he stopped at a sleazy motel. I wasn’t getting fucked on the car. I was getting fucked in a filthy bed! “You take me to the nicest places,” I said without any sarcasm, and I followed him to the lobby.
The clerk was sitting behind bulletproof glass, barely visible through thick cigarette smoke. Frank spoke with him briefly, but nowhere near as brief as it should’ve been just to rent a room for a few hours. When I saw the room, I realized why. “You just outed yourself to a bunch of assassins and you get us a room with two beds?”
“Not a room. The room. I wanted to show you where Charlie and I were staying before I began working with Silva.”
“Holy shit.” I walked around the room, trying to picture Frank as a seventeen-year-old amateur assassin and Charlie when he was actually younger than dirt. I didn’t get to visit many historic sites from Frank’s past, since he had a tendency to burn down buildings that disagreed with him. The décor was more than a little dated. With the two separate beds and an old analog TV that had a dial instead of a remote, it looked like a bedroom from a 50’s era sitcom. Being viewed in black and white would’ve been a massive improvement to the color scheme. “How much has changed?”
Frank briefly surveyed the room. “They replaced a lamp. And got a new door.”
“That’s it?” I could believe that there hadn’t been any upgrades since The Honeymooners but from what Frank had told me about the night he met Silva, both the room and Charlie had received some substantial damage at the hands of Silva’s men.
He pushed aside one of the beds to reveal a bloodstain on the carpet. “That’s it.”
“Gross!” I cringed, shuddering over a stain that was only slightly less disgusting than the man himself. That little piece of Charlie officially made this the nastiest hotel we’d ever visited. “This may be inappropriate, but will you please fuck me here?”
“Why do you think we stopped?” He pushed the bed back over C
harlie’s decades old blood, then gestured for me to hop on. I dropped my pants and jumped onto the bed, letting Frank pull them off the rest of the way. He tossed them toward the new door, then paused as he loosened his belt. “You disobeyed me this morning.”
“Yes, I did!” I said enthusiastically, tearing off my shirt and eagerly assuming the position: all fours in front of him.
“Promise you’ll obey and I’ll punish you for it.” Frank stared impassively at my ass, masking the emotion on his face as if he could stop himself from punishing me whether I promised or not. But his body said otherwise, and he no longer needed the belt to hold his pants up.
“You got yourself a deal, monsieur.”
He broke character with a smile that reached all the way to his ears, then cleared his throat and folded the belt over in his hand for better leverage. He lightly traced the belt up the inside of my thigh, and I felt my whole face flush as I grinned back at him. Frank winked at me and raised his arm to strike, then shook his head disparagingly when I had to lick the drool from my lips before he even had the chance to beat me. “You are shameless.”
“Just hit me al—” I gasped as he snapped his belt against the backs of my thighs. It hurt far worse than getting my ass spanked, and I started shaking as my heartbeat spiked with a rush of adrenaline. “Do that again!”
He cracked his belt over the same spot, my arms nearly collapsing under my weight as I trembled. Frank barely waited for me to reposition myself with my hands braced around the headboard before swinging again and again, making me gasp each time his belt made agonizing contact with my ass. Even though the welts wouldn’t be seen by anyone else in the house, it was becoming pretty clear that he was feeling possessive and fully intended to mark his territory. Maybe putting myself in danger was exactly what Frank needed to remind him how good he was at keeping me out of it. He seemed like he was practically his old self again as he throttled me. “You want another one?”
I took a deep breath and considered for a second, then said, “Three.”
Les Recidivists (Chance Assassin Book 2) Page 22
