Les Recidivists (Chance Assassin Book 2) Read online

  Bella looked around with her nose up. “Well, this is very…rustic.” She shrugged off her shin-length fur coat, which Casey caught obediently with a move that might have been considered athletic if performed by someone else.

  “You’re late,” Frank said coldly, then turning to Vincent, added, “We already ate.”

  Vincent’s eyes narrowed, his exquisitely plump lips protruding into a childish moue. If there was one punishment he did not enjoy, it was going to bed without supper.

  “Don’t you be mean to him,” Maggie said, giving Frank a dirty look. “There’s plenty.” She’d starve before letting one of her kids go hungry, and apart from blood, V was as much of her son as Casey.

  Bella facetiously asked, “Can I stay for supper, mum?”

  Maggie bristled, but said, “Of course you can,” as if it had been her idea to begin with.

  “I’ll give you a tour,” Casey offered enthusiastically, prying his eyes away from her cleavage as he stood behind her, holding the carcasses of Gautier only knew how many white rabbits. Frank wondered whether it would make a difference if he told him that the only thing giving Bella breasts was the miracle of structural engineering she called lingerie.

  “That’s okay,” she said snobbishly, offending Frank and her admirer simultaneously. But while Casey would forget his wounded pride at the first hint of a favorable glance in his direction, Frank would hold it against her for the rest of her ever-shortening life.

  “I’m gonna go…” Vincent paused, smiling up at him, “Wash up?”

  If he thought he’d get off that easily, he was very much mistaken. “Don’t take long. Your dinner will get cold.”

  “Something’s cold,” V murmured. He brushed past him on his way upstairs, bumping into him just hard enough to get himself in deeper trouble. It took all of Frank’s strength not to reach out and grab him by the hair.

  “I have some bags in the car,” Bella said, dropping her keys over her shoulder. Casey caught those as well, with an expression like he’d just won a prize by being permitted to act as concierge. Frank could not wait to tell her that the only available place to sleep was the sofa, and she would have to fight Hugo for it.

  “Casey, come set the table,” Maggie said, addressing her son but looking right at Bella.

  Frank winced, closing his eyes in anticipation. Challenging Bella was a serious mistake. He had to do something, and quickly. “Vincent, get down here and bring in what I told you not to buy!” He grabbed the shotgun they kept in the umbrella stand by the door to reinforce his authority. “Casey, go help your mother.”

  Vincent slid down the banister, something he had been chided for on multiple occasions. It was bad enough having to live with the fear of him passing out on his way down the stairs without worrying about him falling on his head mid-slide. One more brain injury could kill him. If he kept disobeying, a brain injury was going to be the least of his troubles. “Bella bought—”

  “Go,” Frank said sternly, giving him a look. This was not about shopping. He was trying to avoid a hurricane.

  “Your present is in the car anyway,” Vincent said, never one to be submissive in public. He took the keys from Casey, finalizing the temporary armistice. Casey sulked into the kitchen after his mother, and Frank grabbed Bella’s arm as he’d done at the gallery, pulling her toward the library where he could get in a quick word before they ate.

  “I think your friend likes me.”

  “Bell,” he said warningly.

  “He looks better without green hair.”

  “I will say this only once. These are good people. Silva taught you manners. Use them.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Where’s my room?”

  Frank flung her onto the sofa. “Enjoy.”

  Bella cringed, glancing on either side of her tightly clothed narrow hips at the dog hair she must have sensed more than seen. But her vengeful streak came to her defense. “You trust me with your books?”

  “You remember what happened the last time you hurt one of my books?”

  “I threw it out the window of a moving car and you crashed on purpose.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And then I beat the shite out of you for ruining my Lamborghini.”

  He shrugged and sat beside her. That portion of the story was not part of his point. “Be nice, Bell. They’re my friends. My family.”

  “I’m your family,” she said possessively. “What happened between us, Frankie? We used to be so close.”

  She wouldn’t have figured out that he was giving her the silent treatment on her own. Vincent must have said something to her. “You were reckless with a life I care about.”

  Bella laughed. “Young Vincent was never in any danger—”

  “I meant you.” Frank remembered getting that feeling, the shaky, prickling warm feeling he always got when someone he cared for was in trouble. It was a bad one, the worst he had experienced since the murder of his mother fifteen years before.

  He had veered across two lanes of icy freeway at a speed that nearly flipped his car, pulling a U-turn into oncoming traffic and speeding toward the nearest airport before Silva himself rang his line. Even now America was laid out like a roadmap in his mind; its roads still a part of his memory from repetition after not having driven them for years. Like those roads, Silva’s phone call could never be forgotten.

  Silva’s voice on the line was collected, but Frank could sense his panic. “Something has happened. Bella is in trouble. Come home. Now.”

  Bella did not work her hits the way Frank did; he watched. She acted. She relied on her handlers for escape routes instead of scoping anything out beforehand, and arrived in town the very day of the job. She would walk up to a stranger after only viewing their photograph once and shoot them through the heart, she rarely learned their names and knew nothing of their pasts, and she would have never understood the danger she faced until it was too late.

  The flight to Moscow took nineteen hours. Frank stared at the seatback in front of him and hated her for her recklessness. In his mind she was already dead. Getting angry was the only thing that left him feeling as if he had any control over the situation.

  Silva met Frank at the airport. It was the first time he had seen the old man leave his home in a decade. “Find her,” he said, and they did not speak again until he’d done it.

  Bella’s handler filled him in on the details. The trail had gone cold. Her intended victim, bodyguards in tow, vanished without a trace. Frank began with their extended families. Only children were spared. Great-aunts and grandmothers took little torture to discover their ignorance. That would not have brought them any mercy. Only time was on their side. Time Bella did not have.

  He got a lead off one guard’s mistress, a thin, brittle looking Estonian woman bruised up before Frank even got to her. She knew of a cabin. It was isolated. It was perfect.

  When he found Bella, the blood of twelve people was caked into the lines of his hands. The blood of two more was still wet. She had been wearing white of all things, a slap in the face to a man who wore black on and off his jobs to disappear into the night and conceal the ever-present possibility of splatter. It was not white any longer.

  Bella’s eyes were swollen shut, mounds of purple that shined like her normally powdered lids. Her lips were cracked, blood on her mouth and from her nose. She was unrecognizable save for her shape, her tiny, boyish figure broken like a porcelain doll, curled around herself. The insides of her thighs were wet, streaked bright pink with blood and semen. He thought she was dead. He stared at her for seconds that lasted years, until finally her ribs shifted with great strain. She whispered his name so quietly it was like exhaling and said, “I bet you caused some fucking havoc on these guys, eh?” Then she had started to cry, something he never thought he would witness, and as he’d lifted her ravaged body in his arms, he truly believed that her last words would be, “Those motherfuckers ruined my fucking dress.”

  “You’re not careful,”
Frank said. “Taking things slowly wouldn’t have killed you. But doing it your way nearly did.”

  “I never was as good at it as you were. Fuck, Frankie, some of the hits you performed are still being talked about. Don’t you miss it?”

  “How is he?” he asked, avoiding the answer to her question.

  “Not very good,” she sighed, looking down at her knees. Bella was still very much like a little girl, and there were times when Frank wondered whether Silva had not done her a great disservice by giving her this job. She could have spent the rest of her life being spoiled by him instead of earning her own money killing. But then, he’d frequently thought the same of Vincent and even now retirement was an unspoken fissure between them. “Silva wanted to see you again, before he…”

  “That’s not a good idea, Bell. You know it isn’t.”

  “Will you come to the funeral?”

  “Bella—”

  “Promise?” she ordered more than asked. The next step would be physical violence.

  “I promise.” He swore internally as Vincent entered the room with his arms full of shopping bags. If he had been a second earlier, he could have got Frank out of agreeing. “How much did you spend?”

  “I tried to tell you that Bella paid for—”

  “How much, Vincent?”

  “You owe me sixteen grand,” Bella said, playing peacekeeper and warmonger simultaneously. “In euros, of course.”

  Frank put his head in his hands. This was why their bank account had a two-signature requirement. The boy didn’t know the meaning of the word budget.

  Vincent forced his way onto his lap, leaning his head affectionately against Frank’s shoulder and handing him a roughly used paperback copy of Les Miserables. It could not have cost much, but somehow made Frank forgive the additional fifteen thousand nine hundred and ninety-something euro bill. He held it, and him, and momentarily ignored everything else. “Thank you, baby.”

  “They open doors for her, Frank,” he whispered in awe, showing the side of himself that would always remain the homeless child in worn clothes standing shyly at the window of a boutique. “Even though they were closed.”

  “She’s a valued customer,” he said warmly, kissing his forehead and giving Bella the first kind look of the evening. It was sweet of her to show V a good time. Sometimes he forgot how easily impressed Vincent was with the world of glitz and glamour, and how insecure he could get over his former social status when it was Frank who showed him around. As if Vincent were in any way undeserving of him; it was quite clearly the other way around.

  “This is a nice place, Frankie. Very…cozy.”

  Frank rolled his eyes. Bella could be a superb liar when she wanted, but she wasn’t even making the effort to be convincing. “Cheers, Bell.”

  “I like your apartment better,” she admitted.

  Vincent made an escape attempt, but Frank held him in place. “You took her back to the apartment?”

  “We could only fit so much in the car.”

  He let V go. There was no way he could win against both of them. “Shall we eat? Now that it’s,” he checked his watch, “two in the morning. We’ll talk to Gideon later. Find out what he knows. When’s the hit?”

  “Christmas.”

  Frank gaped at her. It was barely October. Since when did Bella take her time? “Why didn’t you say that earlier?”

  “You didn’t ask.”

  “They want Gideon killed on Christmas?”

  Frank grabbed V’s mouth, but not before hearing the sound of Gideon’s voice from the doorway asking, “Sorry, who wants me killed?”

  Chapter Three

  No one spoke at the table. Gideon kept sneaking worried glances at Bella like she was a snarling dog behind a weakening fence that he had no choice but to walk along. Bella looked pleadingly at Frank to do something about him, as if she were the innocent victim of a gross misunderstanding. Casey watched Bella with a grin plastered across his face, following every bite on its incomplete journey toward her mouth, only to be dropped back to her plate in disgust. Maggie focused her disappointment over her son’s lust at Frank like it was his fault Bella was pretty. Frank scowled down at his plate, hating having so many pairs of eyes on him when all he wanted to do was brood in silence. And there was absolutely no attention being paid to me.

  “Frank, this is the first time we’ve had enough guests to fill all six seats!”

  He flashed me one of his notorious this-is-the-best-I’m-physically-capable-of smiles and set his hands in his lap, as if sitting very still would make them forget he was there. Frank was not good at confrontation. At least, not the kind of confrontation that had survivors.

  After I’d once again opened my big mouth at the very worst moment and informed Gideon that his head was on the chopping block, he started cross-examining Frank like he was a witness for the prosecution. Frank had said repeatedly that we were taking care of it, and then gave up and went quiet when Gideon wouldn’t accept that as an answer. Bella had gone on the defensive for badgering the witness and told him, “If you don’t back off, I’ll kill you now.” Then she’d smiled as if she might’ve been kidding, and Casey had come in to ring the dinner bell.

  I clinked my fork against my water glass, trying again to rouse my audience. “Bella’s going to be staying with us for awhile,” I said chipperly.

  Gideon turned an unflattering shade of green and focused on the floor but Casey looked like he was about to explode with excitement. “She can have my bed!”

  “Not with you in it,” Maggie said, making the poor kid blush purple for probably the first time in his life. At least with all the blood moved to his face he’d be able to leave the table without further embarrassing himself.

  “It’s a big bed, I’m sure they could share it,” I said, trying to be helpful only to have Frank, Maggie, and Gideon glare at me like I’d offered Casey up as a sacrificial lamb.

  “I’m fine on the sofa,” Bella grumbled in annoyance, and silence resumed.

  It looked like I'd have to pull out the big guns. Once again abusing the four little words that I could use to get out of any situation, I said, “I have a headache.” With all eyes on me as they should’ve been, I stood and walked out of the dining room. I gave Frank’s collar a slight tug on my way, instructing him to follow.

  Kiki could jump through a hoop and Charlie fetched the remote control without slobbering all over it, but it was Frank who was the best trained member of the family. He told Maggie to leave the dishes and excused himself, following me obediently up the stairs. “Do you?”

  “No.”

  “One of these days we’ll stop believing you.”

  I stopped at the top step and turned around with him two below me. It made us approximately the same height. “No, you won’t.” Headaches were constant since the accident, but even a simple request for an aspirin was enough to put him in a panic. “Besides, getting one is more than enough punishment for lying about it.” And with the stress I had a feeling Gideon’s hit was going to cause, getting one was inevitable.

  Frank glanced back toward the kitchen, and a more manageable crisis than our marriage.

  “I want to talk to you about this.” I wanted to talk to him about a lot of things, but he was already pulling away from me.

  He quietly said, “I'm not comfortable leaving Casey alone with him.”

  “You think he’s guilty?”

  “You think he’s innocent?”

  “I don’t think it’s about him,” I said. That got Frank's attention.

  “You mean the family?”

  “Yes,” I said. Frank’s biological father had married into the wealthy Alcott family, then tried to give away their fortune to his bastard son. They put a hit out on Frank as if he wanted their stinking money to begin with, so Frank's boss sent him to America where he could kill people in peace.

  He shook his head. “They wouldn’t be able to find me.”

  “Your brother found you.” As if he ne
eded that reminder. Henry Jr. was the reason I had my excuse for leaving the dinner table.

  “He found Charlie. Charlie led him to me. To us.” Frank’s eyes went dark. Henry had actually found Charlie’s sister first. Then he pushed her down the stairs and waited for Charlie to come to the funeral. There was no doubt that he’d hoped Frank would join the old man, but Frank and I were too busy with our final hit to attend.

  If that hit hadn’t been on a boat, if Frank hadn’t been off his game, everything that happened with Henry might’ve been prevented. Frank had always had this spooky ability of sensing danger, especially when it concerned me. But the ability failed him and the danger found us, and now nothing was the same.

  “Everything we own is in your name,” Frank said. “They’d have no way of finding me. Unless…”

  “Unless they went through someone we know,” I said. Someone like Gideon. “But it doesn’t make sense. If he was working with the family, why would they pay to have him killed? And why go back to Silva when the first hit they ordered didn’t get done?”

  “They wouldn’t,” he agreed, actually seeming animated to have a conversation with me for once.

  “And if it’s not about you?”

  “Then it’s about him. And he’s guilty. I want to go back downstairs.”

  “Casey’s fine. Even if Gideon did something to piss someone off, that doesn’t make him a threat to Casey. Besides, Maggie’s there. And Bella!” I laughed. “She said you hired her to babysit him.”

  “Yes, I did,” Frank said with a smile. He gave one more glance towards the kitchen before giving in and letting me win. He continued his ascent, slinging me over his shoulder on his way up and carrying me to our bedroom. “We won’t be able to keep this from Maggie.”

  “And Casey?”

  “We are not telling Casey,” he said sternly, disallowing an objection I wouldn’t have given. His parents would also agree to keep it from him. Casey was too pure when it came to this sort of thing.

  “He and Bella would make an interesting couple.”

  Frank dropped me roughly onto the bed, a soft landing that was more luck than him being considerate. Judging by his expression, I could’ve just as easily ended up on the floor for that comment. He looked like he was ready to deck me. Not that he’d really hit me after my injury, but empty threats worked just as well when I knew what he was capable of. “Are you out of your mind? They would make a disastrous couple, Vincent. She would destroy him.”