I grip myself harder as I lean back on the couch, the tension travelling from my shoulders down to my back and into my belly. I force it lower, so that when I start jerking myself faster, I can rid myself of this fucking stress.
Gritting my teeth, my breathing speeds up, and I close my eyes. The centerfold doesn’t do much for me. Most women don’t.
So instead, I just focus on the feel of my hard cock, pulsing like mad in my hand. This is what life should be made of. Pleasure exploding in my brain as I get closer and closer to the edge.
And when finally I burst, my entire body empties. It’s not just my balls as they tighten and spurt their cream over my abs. It’s not just my mind that clears of its fog.
My entire body feels lighter for that perfect, pure moment of orgasm, and I’m ready to do my job tonight. There’s no room for error. There’s no fucking this up.
Tonight, I’m a killer.
The group of revelers spills out of the limousine. All but one are men, dressed in expensive tailored suits, ties mostly loosened. They look like they just came from Wall Street, pretentious and full of themselves and whatever perceived victory they’d just been celebrating.
Some of them hold bottles of ridiculously expensive booze, but it’s clear that a few of them are on something much harder, looking wired. But it’s the sole woman in the group that catches my attention once the others are tallied.
I hate excess casualties in my line of work. It’s an increased risk, and one I don’t care to take. The other men are all on my list, but this woman? A young blonde, in high heels and a red dress? She’s stumbling a bit but somehow managing to make it look gracefully natural. She’s had more intoxicants than she’s realized, I can tell. I’ve seen that vaguely confused look before.
By my reckoning, one of those shit heads has slipped her something extra into her drink before they head up to the penthouse for the real party.
All targets accounted for, and one extra person isn’t too much for me to handle, not even close. But there’s something about her, that bright smile upon her face, the twinkle in her eyes. She doesn’t strike me as the usual sort of drugged-up bimbo these sorts of guys haul back for their debauchery. There’s a spark to her.
I push her from my mind though. I have to, there’s no other option. Civilian casualties are sometimes an unavoidable thing. I’ve seen that firsthand more often than I care to remember.
It isn’t long before the group has all vanished into the posh hotel, their security detail trailing behind. They do a good job looking like part of the group, for what it’s worth, but there’s no way for them to match the drunken, drugged-up gait while doing their job effectively, so it’s easy to tell how many I have to deal with.
Six armed guards. I was expecting eight, but it seems two remain with the vehicle.
Now it’s my turn.
There’s no rush. My movements are casual. The last thing I ever want to do is stand out on a mission like this, so while I have plenty of time, I don’t hurry. I make my way around back, down into the subterranean parking lot.
I sight the two guards at the vehicle; one’s smoking, the other’s talking on a phone. They look casual too, but it’s a ruse. They’re alert and dangerous, like me. I stay far enough away that I never draw their eyes. My target is the door leading up.
Through the stairwell, I make my way to an employee’s only hall. The key card lock is easy enough to bypass, and I just move on through. It winds through a laundry room, but nobody pays me any mind. The hotel is far too bustling for me to stand out, dressed in a black sweater and pants. I look like just another employee coming on or off the job before getting into uniform.
I swipe an access card from some manager, too busy berating an employee to notice its loss. This is something I could’ve done earlier in preparation, but that would have ran the risk of it being noticed. And while I doubt it’d have affected the mission, you never know with people.
But me? I know I’d have no issue getting what I need when I need it.
A service elevator takes me up, the stolen key card granting me easy access to the penthouse suites on top.
The doors open, and I walk along a narrow service hallway before peering out into the elite foyer. There, I see two more of the guards outside a door. Not that I needed to know that—it was easy to figure out which room they’d be staying at ahead of time.
I grasp a cleaning cart and roll it out into the hall to one of the rooms. It’s unoccupied, and the two security men pay me little heed as I disappear inside. I suppose I look like a janitor in their eyes, harmless. Someone weak and easy to ignore, with my head and shoulders hunched, ID card dangling from my belt.
It takes me a while to meander my way on up, but still I have ample time.
I pull a knife from beneath my pant leg and slide it into my belt. I give the gun in my pocket a final check. It’s small, but it’ll do the job. The silencer from my other pocket screws on, and I slide my mask on down over my face. Then that’s it. No time like the present.
But it’s not the door I go for. That’d leave two corpses in the hallway while I do the rest, and I’m a professional. Leaving dead bodies in plain sight is too risky, especially with the risk of those security cameras actually being monitored.
I head to the window, sliding it open to go onto the posh balcony, and the ledge I’m counting on is right there to the left. The wind up here is cold, and I let it bite into me. Distract me from the ridiculously long plunge below. One unexpected gust, and I’m a splatter on the street. I don’t feel afraid, though. I never feel afraid.
I can’t see the windows and balcony to the party's suite from here, I have to round the corner. But to get that far, I have about three dozen feet of clinging to the side of a skyscraper.
The key is to not think about it. As in all things, I let myself run on practiced instinct. Skills and methods honed through repetition.
The ledge holds as I creep my way along to that corner and peer around the edge.
It’s all clear. And I carry on, winding about the corner of the building towards the first window. The curtains are shut still, thankfully, so that makes my job easier. Even assassins have to be grateful for small favors.
But then the doors to the balcony open, about a dozen feet away. So much for luck.
One of the security guards steps out, and I go still as a dead mouse. He looks around the cityscape and lingers a while, so my hand creeps down into my pocket, slowly—so slowly!—pulling the gun out, keeping it at the ready, aimed for him.
Time stands still, quiet but for the wind. There’s about twenty stories between me and the ground. Long enough that if I fall, I’m going to have plenty of time to regret it. I focus my mind forward onto the man, let that cool calm grip my heart. My finger tenses on the trigger.
Then I hear him mutter seemingly to himself.
“Check in. All clear,” he says into a headpiece that’s all but invisible.
Now I have about five minutes, max. Then the next check-in will occur, and the men in the car would realize something’s wrong, impeding my getaway.
The guard meanders a while longer before turning, heading back in, and shutting the door.
I lower my gun, slip it back into my pocket, and carry on, sidling along until I can climb up over the railing onto the balcony. I can peer in through the glass doors, into the hallway there. The suite beyond is massive, I know: I looked into it ahead of time. But the hallway is guarded by that lone security man.
Slipping the knife from my belt, I ever so carefully open the door, which I earlier jammed so that it never quite locks, though it appears to. The sounds of laughter and music from the partiers immediately fill my senses.
With smooth, quick motions, I simultaneously wrap my gloved hand around the guard’s mouth and slide the blade into his back. I pierce his flesh right between his ribs, the long blade puncturing his heart then slicing through it and his lung.
He’s dead, can barely even kick befor
e it’s all over. I don’t take any time to revel in my victory. He’s just one on a long list of guys who I’ve snuffed out. He wasn’t even important enough for me to know his name.
I drag his body back out onto the balcony, wiping the blade off onto his blazer before I slip back inside. Time is of the essence now, the clock is ticking. But I can’t hurry this, can’t do anything more than carry on at my precise killing pace. If I rush, something will get fucked up, so even as I silently keep count of the seconds as they tick by, I stay calm and practiced.
Another guard walks into the hallway, rounding the corner, and I’m on him quick and smooth, hand over his mouth as my blade slices through his breast, ending his life. Ending lives is what I’m best at, and now I’m in my groove. It’s not really a rush so much as an energy, feeding off these bastards’ deaths.
Two guards down, four more to go.
I drag the body into the bathroom, stuffing him into the tub, pulling across the shower curtain. Before I can leave, one of the partygoers comes in. He’s tipsy, doesn’t notice me as I keep pressed to the wall behind a recess. He unzips, and I hear the sound of his pissing.
His life is ended in the blink of an eye. Never even had time to make peace with whatever god he prays to, poor sap. Not like a prayer would do guys like this any good.
Back in the hall, I head towards the private bedrooms. A guard waits outside two of them, and there’s no way I can approach him without him seeing me, so it’s time for the gun.
One shot. A soft hiss of air. He’s down, a hole in his forehead and a splatter of blood across the wall. It’s messy. This is why I prefer the knife. I rush in to grasp his body before he can hit the ground. I jab the blade up into his skull from beneath his jaw anyhow, making sure it’s done as I lower him down to the floor gently.
Then I listen at the doors.
One room is empty, the other, I hear two people inside. Sounds of moans, sex. They’ll be distracted, making the kills even easier.
I head inside casually, the door opening to show them at the bed. One with his pants around his ankles, the other man on his knees. No sign of the woman.
I fire a shot and that ends the man’s pleasure, but just as the other man realizes he’s now fellating a corpse, I end him too. It worked well; neither got to cry out in the brief time it took me to kill them. Small favors.
I only have moments to get the rest of the job done. A bullet to the head is no absolute guarantee—people have lived through stranger things, and I make sure they’re dead with my dagger once again before heading back out.
Nothing short of absolute success is acceptable to my employer. Nobody survives. That was the term of our contract. The stakes are too high for anything but.
Yet as I’m exiting the room, a guard arrives just in time to see the mess of his comrade splattered over the wall. That’s why I hate guns. So messy. I can generally control the spurt of blood from my dagger until I’m done positioning the corpse.
Everything would go to hell here and now, if I weren’t so well practiced at death. This is my life. I live it, breathe it. It’s what I’m good at. Before he can utter a word, my hand is at his mouth, grasping tightly. He’s reaching for the gun at his belt, but I stop him, seizing his hand.
The conundrum is that while I stopped him from sending warning to his fellow guards and getting his weapon, my two hands are now tied up as well.
He glares at me, a death stare. If looks could kill, he’d be as good an assassin as I am.
I let him push me back, though, and we’re backpedaling into the gory murder scene of the bedroom. This guy’s good. He’s not distracted by the scene at all as I hoped he would be. Maybe he’s born into death too. I have to up my game.
I head-butt him, and blood gushes from his nose. It’s enough to set him off balance, so I twist around, get behind him, then force him to the floor. My two hands are still occupied, and I can’t risk letting him speak or get his gun, so I make use of other limbs.
My legs get in around his neck, and I clench my thighs about him. I twist, using my hand at his mouth and my two legs to wrench his head back, suffocating him, straining that neck until at last… I hear it. The crack of bone.
His arms go limp, but he’s not dead. There’s still movement in his eyes. I’ve just crippled him, severed his spine. I end his misery with a knife at the back of his head, beneath his skull.
That’s four guards down. And counting the two outside the door and the two at the car, that’s all of them. But the job’s far from done.
I head back into the hall, avoiding the main party room and its boisterous laughter and music. I go to the main door, open it up, and take out the two guards there. The blood spray spreads wide and won’t be as easily noticed, so I haul them into the penthouse suite.
Now it’s my time to join the party.
There’s too many of them, even with how drunk and drugged they are. If I just walk in and start killing them, it’ll be a noisy mess. So I go to a small, hidden fuse box in the wall. Something you’d never know was there unless you were an employee. I pry it open, cut the lights, and all is dark. But the music still plays.
I hear voices of surprise, laughter, mockery. Anger.
But the darkness is nothing to me. I switch on the night vision of my mask, but I don’t really need it. I can still visualize them all where they were when the lights went out, pinpoint them by the sounds they each made. The guards took professionalism, skills, training to deal with. These rich and powerful men? They are like slaughtering hogs on the farm.
I walk in, and one by one, I began to end them. Grab, stab, slash. Grab, stab, slash.
It isn’t until there are only three of them left that they even begin to notice the silence of their fellows. Another is dead before worry sets in.
“Stop fucking around, where’d you guys go?” asks one of the two remaining, flanking each side of the drugged woman, her body lewdly revealed and left splayed upon the sofa between them.
Before I can kill another, the man on the left turns on his phone’s light, and it blinds me. But I don’t need my eyes and pain is nothing that can distract me. With gun in one hand, I put a bullet through his head, and almost simultaneously, I lunge into the man on my right, the dagger jabbing up beneath his jaw and into his skull, crunching through cartilage as I kill them both.
They’re dead. They’re all dead, but for the guards at the car. And this lone woman.
The light from the phone is still surprisingly bright, and I turn off the night vision. I’m now able to see her laying there, chest heaving as she looks up at me, glassy eyed but aware.
I point the gun right to her forehead. I’ve done my mission so far with no more than a low gurgle of alarm. I’ve done it all with pure professionalism, and more than that, I’ve done it all happily. I’ve not regretted or failed to enjoy a single death tonight. And while I keep a stoic facade, all business, inside, my heart’s racing with glee rather than anxiety.
No one lives. Or we’re all fucked, rings Gregor’s voice in my head.
What’s one more, anyways?
2
Alicia
I awake to a pounding headache, something worse than I’ve ever experienced. No hangover has ever approached this nightmare in my skull, and I’m pretty much the queen of bad hangovers. The light that ekes through my eyelids is already too much, and I keep them shut as I clutch my forehead.
How much did I drink? I ask myself, confused.
But no amount of nursing my skull is gonna make things easier on me, so I force my eyes open. The sun streaming in through the window takes a while for me to get used to, stars appearing behind my eyes. Eventually, I adapt, and I realize that the curtains are drawn, and it’s still a pain. The red drapes filter the light so that the Spartan, unfamiliar room is seemingly drowned in blood.
It reminds me of a nightmare I had the night before.
Me, lying there, blood spattering in the air as I watched some tall, dark, looming man pointing
a gun at my head. He was like a specter of grim death. Stoic, towering, broad, and powerful. Hidden beneath dark clothes and a terrifying mask, blood soaking into his clothes.
A terrible dream, brought on by the drinking, I guess. Though I don’t usually have nightmares.
The memory sends a shiver down my spine, doubly so as I try to understand my foreign surroundings. The cold concrete floors and brick walls, the simple bed that looks more like a cot.
What the hell happened last night?
I brush back my blonde hair, the strands still clinging to each other with leftover hairspray. My red dress is almost eerie in the strange light, and for a moment, for just a single moment, I wonder if I’m dead, surrounded in the color of blood.
I stand, my feet bare, my high heels tossed to the side. I can’t be dead, I tell myself. Dead people can’t feel this damn hungover.
Every beat of my heart sends a throbbing pain right to my temples, and I nearly stumble back to the bed, giving up in agony, but now I’m a bit curious. Did my boss take me somewhere?
“Hello?” I try to shout, but it comes out as a groggy murmur.
There’s nothing, only eerie silence. The place is so still. The pain in my head seems to plead with me to relax and take my time, but the unfamiliar place urges me to get up and get out. So I head to the dark metal door of the room and try the handle. I fear that it’s going to be locked, but a simple turn and it opens.
And more dreaded sunlight spills in. This time, it’s unfiltered by curtains, and it’s abrasive on my eyes. I feel like a vampire, or the walking dead.
“Where the hell am I?” I mutter, because last I remembered, I was with the congressman at some hoity-toity dinner. And this doesn’t seem like the kind of place that my rich boss would’ve taken me. Even my place is less grey and unremarkable.
I step out into the room and slowly force my eyes to adjust. I can see a table, a kitchen, even a sofa. And while all of them are crisp and clean, they’re once again simple. There’s no real personality to the place at all, not even in a hotel kind of way.
Hitman - the Series: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance Collection (Alexis Abbott's Hitmen #0) Page 38
