Chapter Four

DANIIL

RG: 3 Via dei Artigiano, Toscano, IT 50021

I glance at the screen again and then tuck the phone away in my pocket. It’s quiet in this little villa, where most of the residents are in the town’s square, celebrating a Christmas light festival this Friday night.

The sole occupant of this home is one of the few residents still in her house. From my perch in the belfry of the small country church next to the home, I can see the woman sitting on a couch with a wineglass in one hand and flicking the TV with the remote in her other hand.

I lift the sight to my eye once more and take aim. Just as I’m about to shoot, she jumps up. I pull back and stare into the room. Someone’s called her on the phone. I watch as she leaves the living room and moves to parts of the house that I cannot see.

Shit! I have ten minutes left to complete this job before I need to catch my flight back to the States. I wait patiently for two minutes before she returns to the living room. Looking through the sight again, I watch as she grabs the glass of wine.

I wait for her to sit down on the couch again, but she doesn’t. Instead, she pulls the glass doors to her patio open and steps out onto it, giving me a wider angle at which to shoot. This is a serendipitous moment. I couldn’t have asked for a better shot.

Her long hair flows behind her, and for a single moment, I’m captivated by her elegance and poise. Her curves are outlined in the late evening as a gentle wind sweeps over the farmland, causing the sheer pink nightgown she’s wearing to conform to curvy hips and the outline of what appears to be a voluptuous ass.

She bends for a moment to scratch her ankle, removing her foot from one of the delicate pink slippers she’s wearing.

Looking into the sight again, I take my aim. The woman stands and sips from the wineglass, swaying slightly, making me wonder if she’s drunk.

The wind blows again, and she pushes her hair back from her face as she turns and looks over her shoulder.

When she looks up at the church toward the belfry, I know that she can’t see me, but what I see takes the breath from my lungs. I pull away from the gun and grab my binoculars.

I have to be crazy. There’s no way in hell that could be her. Yet, I see every delicate detail of her oval-shaped face. From the angular, high cheekbones to the squared-off chin, everything screams that it’s her.

But that can’t be right. I adjust my binoculars just enough that I can see every feature so clearly as if I were standing in front of her. The glossy lips, the missing earring from her left ear, and the little scar on her left eyebrow.

It is her. The woman who has plagued my dreams for so long. The woman whose body curves, smiles, and screams I cannot erase from my mind. The woman who slipped away without a thank you or a goodbye three years ago.

What really sets me over the edge are the teardrops sitting in those beautiful, sloe eyes.

I pull my phone out of my pocket and look at the text message again.

“RG. RG. RG,”

I whisper.

I search the files of my brain. Although I met the man, we never exchanged names. I pull up the Internet and type her name into the search engine. When I click “Images”

there are several of her throughout the years, but a few of the pictures are of her and him together.

The man that I met is her husband.

RG is Royal Gallo.

“Fuck!”

I look into my sights again and see her still standing there, sipping from that wineglass, now swiping tears from her eyes.

Anger rockets through me, burning a hot trail of fury through every part of my body. As quickly as the fire shoots throughout me, it dissipates into ice. Every part of my body becomes numb, along with my emotions.

It’s a different numbness than I held before. That numbness was a neutral feeling, keeping me detached from the target. I don’t see race, gender, or anything else when I go after a mark. The only thing that I see is a mission to accomplish.

The numbness that’s inside of me now has me singularly focused on a new mission. Rescuing the mark and turning this fiery ice that flows through my veins like venom onto a new target: my client.

It takes me less than thirty seconds to pack my gear, and within twenty seconds, I’m no longer in the belfry. I run down the hill to the edge of the property where my car is parked. Stowing my items inside the rental, I run back up the hill to navigate the trees before breaking through the tree line.

Slipping around to the back of the house, I keep to the shadows, staying out of the line of the security cameras.

I’m no less than six feet away from her when I hear her crying. That shit breaks my heart.

“Esmé,”

I call out gently in the dark night.

She gasps, her head jerks up, and the glass slips from her delicate fingertips.

“Who’s there?”

she calls out frantically, backing up towards her door.

“It’s Daniil,”

I say, stepping from the shadows just enough for her to see me.

“Daniil?”

Her eyes widen with recognition.

“We have to get you out of here.”

“Why?”

“Who was on the phone?”

“My husband, who’ll be here soon. Why are you here?”

She cries out as I grab her hand and rush into her home.

“Grab your purse, a change of clothes, and passport.”

“Daniil! Are you crazy?”

she asks, following me as I run up the stairs in the direction I presume the bedrooms to be.

“I’m assuming you’ve done something to cross your husband,”

I say, pushing one door after another open.

“What?”

she cries out. “My husband loves me!”

“He sent me. If I were to follow his instructions, then you should be dead right now.”

“What do you mean I should be dead?”

“Esmé, I was sent to eliminate you.”

“Eliminate…”

she searches my eyes for a moment before hers go wide. “You’re an assassin?”

Slowly, I nod.

Those dark brown eyes in that beautiful, chocolate skin widen even more. Despite her mixed-race heritage, Esmé is a dark, beautiful princess. Her father’s dark Italian ancestry and her mother’s black heritage gave her a beautiful nutmeg hue.

She’s a Mafia princess fluent in Italian, English, and French, thanks to her mixed parentage and growing up in her mother’s hometown of Le Lamentin, Martinique, for the first thirteen years of her life.

We didn’t just have sex those few days we were snowed in together. We had intimate and amazing conversations.

“I don’t understand.”

“Your husband placed a one-hundred-grand hit on your head. Understand now?”

“He wouldn’t do that!”

“He wouldn’t?”

I ask, glaring at her and stepping so close to her that our toes touch. I smell the sweet aroma of lavender, vanilla, and coconut. “Tell me this, Esmé, what did you do to betray him so badly that he wants you dead?”

I see the look of fear in her eyes. I show her the text with her address.

“Where do you think this came from? He’s on his way back to make sure that I did the job. I’m sure that he’ll be more than happy to complete it himself if I fail to.”

“Then why wouldn’t he have done it at first?”

“No complications. No fallback on him. Get the Russian mafia to do it and his hands are free and clear! Now that I know who you are, I’m beginning to think this was a setup. Use the man who had his wife and caused her to be late marrying him to do his dirty work.”

Esmé finally runs to her bedroom that she’s shared with this svoloch′ for the last three years.

If that bastard did not want her, he should not have forced her into marriage. He should have saved her for a better man. I am not that man, but still.

Now that I have her again, I will never let her go. I don’t care how many wars I start or what empires are crushed.

Esmé Dawn Allegra is mine to keep, and I’ll never give her up.