“Mmm, you seriously not going to eat? It’s so good,” I mumbled, bending forward to slurp the gravy off my fingers. Dimitri gave me a disgusted look, his nose scrunched up in repulsion. I got the feeling eating food without a knife and fork was a serious offence to him.
Mr Uppity was too good for that, apparently.
The roar of the engine from the private jet rumbled beneath my feet. The air smelt clean, the seats so comfy that I swear I could have fallen asleep right there and then.
I knew nothing good could possibly come from it. I didn’t know the guy—Talon, I’d heard Dimitri call him—but whoever he was, he must have been rolling in the cash.
During my time as a professional hitwoman, I’d been aboard a fair few private planes. This one, though, had to be the best by far. I didn’t own one, personally—the upkeep for something like that was insane. However, with the right identification and enough cash, it was fairly easy to charter one.
Over the course of my career, I’d only had to do it a handful of times. Mainly when the mark was in a different country, and there was a pressing time limit to adhere to.
Ordinarily, I liked to have at least a month or so to do reconnaissance. Learn the mark’s routine. It made it easier to achieve a clean, effective kill.
Every now and then, though, a job would arise as “high priority”, meaning it needed to be completed as soon as possible. I liked those jobs for one reason and one reason only…
I could charge more for them.
“You eat like a goddamn barbarian,” Dimitri commented, his nose high in the air with a very “hoity-toity” attitude.
He was sitting right next to me, strapped down in the seat by a mountain of chains, just like I was. A table sat in front of us, completely overflowing with food. All different kinds of meats, roasted potatoes, vegetables, salads. It was like a damn smorgasbord.
Of course, I was skeptical at first. What if it was laced with something? What if it was poisoned?
Rationality won out in the end. It didn’t make much sense for Talon to try and poison us when he’d just dropped five million dollars on us.
Well, Dimitri.
I still had no fucking clue why he wanted me, too. I’d never met the man before. Never even heard of him.
Something to figure out later.
I turned my head to look at Dimitri, reached forward to grab a huge leg of lamb and chomped down on it without taking my eyes off him, ripping into the meat like I was the very thing he described: a barbarian.
It had been God knows how long since I had eaten a proper meal. Damn straight I was eating like a fucking barbarian.
“You don’t want to eat, that’s fine,” I mumbled, chewing extra loud to annoy him. “But I do. So, shut your trap before I do it for you.”
“Go ahead and try it. You won’t live to see another sunrise.”
“Tomorrow,” I responded in between bites.
His frown was filled with irritation and annoyance. “What?”
“The saying is, ’You won’t live to see tomorrow’. Another sunrise just doesn’t have the same ring to it. Don’t you agree?”
He stared at me dead on, his left eye doing that weird, twitchy thing it always seemed to do when he was pissed off. Then, he slapped the lamb leg right out of my fucking hands.
“You old bastard,” I hissed. “I’m sick of your shit!” I didn’t have a weapon or the proper maneuverability to throw a punch worth a damn. My wrists were cuffed together, and that chain was bolted to the floor at my feet, allowing me only the slightest bit of movement left to right, but it was enough.
I grasped a chicken drumstick and smacked Dimitri across the face with it. It made this very satisfying splat sound, thanks to all the gravy. His eyes bulged wide in shock, mouth dropping open as if he couldn’t believe I had the audacity to slap him in the face with a piece of chicken.
The fact that there was now a big blob of gravy on his cheek made the whole thing even more hilarious, and I couldn’t help but snicker at the picture it all painted.
That was the catalyst for the events that took place next.
All hell broke loose.
Even though we were both restricted to the point where we could barely move, we still tried to kill each other.
His fist came flying towards my face. I leant back and it abruptly halted in the air an inch away from my nose, thanks to the cuffs. He growled and slammed it down on my thigh instead.
Pain shot through me, but so did anger, and that helped mask some of the sting.
I struck out with a swift elbow strike, hitting him in the cheekbone. He retaliated by ramming into me with his shoulder.
Fuckity, fuck, fuck. That hurt.
I shoved him back as hard as I could, but he outweighed me by at least 150 pounds, so of course, it barely nudged him. I tried to punch him, he deflected with his hand. He tried to punch me, I dodged. Back and forth, back and forth we went, grunting and snarling at one another as we tried to maim the shit out of each other.
I just need one good shot. One hit to show him I’m not going to sit back and take his fucking crap.
Strike, block, strike, block.
Fucking asshole—
“Enough!” One of Talon’s goons screamed at the top of his lungs, making Dimitri and I freeze in our attempts to kill each other. I had his wrist gripped with my fingers, and he had his palm blocking my elbow from hitting him in the face again.
The man marched the few steps and glared down at us. “I’m sick of hearing you two argue all of the time. You’re driving me fucking insane! Shut up! Just shut up! Your constant bickering and bitching… I can’t take it anymore! ’I’m gonna kill you’ this and ’you’re an asshole’ that. Blah, blah, blah. Just shut your goddamn mouths before I do it for you! Permanently!”
I held in the scoff that threatened to break free. Barely. Talon dropped five million on us—well, Dimitri, but whatever. I didn’t think we were as easily expendable as his minion was trying to make us believe. Nor that he even had the authority to do what he was threatening.
With one last glare, I shoved Dimitri away from me and turned to look out the window. Clouds floated by, so close that I felt like I could almost reach out and touch them. I immediately began to calm down, the motion of the wings of the plane cutting through the clouds relaxing me.
I’d always loved flying. Some people hated it. Feared it, despite the fact that there was about a one in an eleven million chance of something actually happening. Statistics showed that you were actually more likely to die from a car accident than a plane crash.
I was a stickler for statistics.
The man returned to his seat a few isles down, sitting next to another goon. There were twenty-four other people on board; two stewardesses, a pilot, a co-pilot and twenty guards to watch our every move and make sure we didn’t try anything stupid, like take over the plane.
The idea had definitely occurred to me. I contemplated it several times when they were loading us onto the aircraft. However, knowing how to fly a plane was not on the list of skills I possessed. That, and the fact that they had me wrapped head to fucking toe in steel.
Talon was nowhere to be seen. Mr Richy Rich just dumped us on the tarmac and took off without a word. Probably to go buy more people like they were fucking merchandise.
For that indiscretion alone, he’d made my list and moved to the top.
I glanced around the cabin for the umpteenth time, assessing. I need to prepare. Make a plan. Just because the odds of escaping were shit all didn’t mean I shouldn’t try.
The only shot I had was when we were disembarking.
I had to take it.
Or die fucking trying.
I knew what I had to do next…and I hated it.
Begrudgingly, I turned to look at the stupid fucker sitting next to me. “You know this guy, don’t you? Talon?” I asked Dimitri, picking at the food with dainty fingers. I couldn’t really go pissing him off when I needed his intel.
His gaze sliced to me from the corner of his eyes before looking back ahead. He just sat there with his perfect posture and aristocratic air, not even bothering to acknowledge me or the question I’d asked.
I pushed down my initial instinct to bite his fucking head off. I had to be calm—rational—if I hoped to get any answers out of him.
If I could make him see why talking would be in his best interest, too, he might be more forthcoming.
“Look, the idea of working together absolutely repulses me,” I whispered out of the side of my mouth so I wouldn’t be overheard by the guards. The grunt that followed told me that Dimitri thought the same thing.
Would you look at that? We actually agreed on something. Hell must have truly frozen over.
“But I don’t think we have any other option. The way I see it, we’re both in the same boat here. We’ve got more of a chance of pulling off an escape if we work together.”
“There will be no escape. Not from a man like Talon.”
A response. Oh my lord.
“You’re not even going to try?”
“There would be no point.” He kept his head forward, not looking at me as he spoke. “Talon is smart. With unlimited resources. Look what he’s done here. A twenty-person security escort for two people? Not to mention all of this.” He thrashed with frustration, making the chains wrapped around him rattle. “He’s not taking any chances with me. There’s too much history between us. Too much bad blood. He’s not going to risk wasting this opportunity. It’s just not going to happen.”
“You seem to know him well,” I observed.
“Well enough,” he said plainly.
My eyes narrowed with suspicion. “You know why he spent a small fortune to buy us from your brother, don’t you?”
“I know why he bought me.” He finally looked at me, staring right into my eyes. I felt like he could see into my goddamn soul. He had such a penetrating gaze, filled with so much darkness. It was a little eerie, having all his focus like that.
My heart thumped a little faster in my chest. He really was quite nice to look at. All those hard, sculpted lines of his face. The jaw that was so sharp, I could cut glass on it. Being a cunt didn’t make him any less attractive, unfortunately.
“You, though,” he continued, completely unaware of the thoughts flying through my mind—thank god. The last thing I needed was him knowing I was hot for him. “Well, that’s the real question, now, isn’t it? He looked right at you as if he recognised you.”
That wasn’t possible.
“I don’t see how. I’ve never seen him before. Never met him. Didn’t even know his name until I heard you say it.”
“And yet, here you are.” The suspicion, the skepticism in his voice put me on edge.
There he was, poking and prodding again.
I held his stare, refusing to cower. Oh, he had a powerful stare. Dark and dangerous. The kind of stare that said, “I’ll end your life without even thinking twice about it”. But I’d looked into the eyes of pure evil before. The kind of evil that made fear curl down your spine.
Dimitri was a bad guy, sure. But I didn’t think he was an evil guy. There was a distinct difference between the two.
“If you’ve got something to say, go ahead.”
“I don’t have anything to say to you.”
“Then stop fucking looking at me,” I snapped.
He held my gaze for a few more seconds, no doubt to let me know that when he did look away, it was because he chose to, not because I told him to.
Fuck. Him.
I’d figure out a way to escape on my own, and then, I’d leave him there to fucking rot.
