6. Julian #2
"Maddox," I say carefully, "what happens if I refuse to complete it?"
He sighs, and I can picture him on the other end of the line, rubbing his temples. "If you refuse, they'll send someone else. The target will still die—it just won't be you pulling the trigger."
I already knew that. Knew that backing out wouldn't save Isabelle, would only delay the inevitable. But hearing it confirmed makes something twist painfully in my chest. "And what happens to me?" I ask, even though I already know the answer to that too.
"You'll be marked." Maddox's voice is flat now, all pretense of sympathy gone.
"The Capetti family doesn't tolerate contractors who refuse their jobs.
They'll see it as disrespect, as a breach of professional conduct.
You'll be blacklisted from every organization they have ties to—which is most of them—and there's a very good chance they'll put a contract out on you as well. "
Of course they will. In this world, reputation is everything. And a contractor who backs out of a job, especially a job for someone as powerful as the Capetti family, is a contractor who can't be trusted. A liability. A loose end.
Just like Isabelle.
"How long do I have?" My voice sounds distant, like it's coming from someone else.
"I can give you forty-eight hours to decide.
Then you need to confirm the contract so I can give you the rest of the information, and you have a week after that to complete it.
" Maddox pauses. "Julian, I've worked with you for a long time.
You're one of the best in the business. Don't throw that away over... whatever this is."
Whatever this is.
A woman I've known for two nights. A woman whose last name I didn't even know until an hour ago. A woman who should mean nothing to me, who should be just another target, just another job.
But she's not.
She's Isabelle, and she looked at me like I was human, and I can't get the memory of her body trembling beneath mine out of my head. She made me come harder than I ever have in my life, and I'll spend the rest of it remembering what it felt like to be inside of her. And if I kill her, I…
I'll really be a fucking monster, then.
"I'll think about it," I tell Maddox, because I don't know what else to say.
"Forty-eight hours," he repeats. "After that, they'll assume you're refusing and act accordingly."
The call ends. I sit there on the edge of the bed, phone still in my hand, staring at nothing.
Forty-eight hours to decide whether to kill Isabelle Montague or destroy my entire life. Forty-eight hours to choose between the woman I can't stop thinking about and the reputation I've spent fifteen years building.
Forty-eight hours to figure out how the fuck I ended up in this situation in the first place.
The phone slips from my fingers, landing on the mattress beside me with a soft thud. I lean forward, elbows on my knees, and press the heels of my hands against my eyes until I see stars.
This is insane. This is fucking insane.
I've killed dozens of people. Maybe more—I stopped counting years ago.
Men, women, young, old, guilty, innocent.
It didn't matter. They were targets, and I was paid to eliminate them, and I did it without hesitation or remorse because that's what I do.
That's who I am. The Grim Reaper doesn't have a conscience.
Doesn't have feelings. Doesn't lie awake at night wondering if the people he killed had families, had dreams, had reasons to live.
But now I can't stop thinking about Isabelle's laugh. The way she threw her head back when she came. The way she clenched around me when my hands were around her throat, like she's just as fucked up as I am, deep down. Like we could be fucked up together.
What the fuck are you thinking?
I should have killed her then. But I didn't. And now if I don't, someone else will.
The thought makes me want to vomit again. The image of another contractor putting a bullet in her head or a knife in her ribs or their hands around her throat until she stops breathing. She'll die afraid and alone, and she won't understand why.
Unless I do it first. Which will be worse.
I could do it from a distance. A sniper rifle.
She'll never know it's about to happen. The thought feels poisonous, but it's also logical.
If I complete the contract, at least I can make it quick.
Painless. She won't see it coming. She won't suffer.
I'm the best in the business, I can make sure it's clean, and so fast she'll be alive one second and dead the next.
Bile rises in my throat again. I drop my hands from my face and stare at the wall across from me.
The paint is peeling slightly in one corner, revealing layers of previous colors beneath.
Beige, then pale green, then something that might have been orange or yellow once.
Each layer covering the one before, hiding it but never quite erasing it.
That's what I've been doing for fifteen years.
Covering up the man I used to be—the soldier who believed in honor and duty and protecting the innocent—with layer after layer of violence and detachment until I couldn't remember what was underneath anymore.
But Isabelle made me remember what it feels like to want something beyond the next job, the next payment, the next anonymous hotel room. And now I have to choose. Kill her and live with the guilt, or refuse and die knowing I couldn't save her anyway.
Some fucking choice.
I stand abruptly, needing to do something other than sit here drowning in my own thoughts. I pace the small room as my mind races, searching for a solution, a way out, anything that doesn't end with one or both of us dead. But there isn't one.
Mafia families don't negotiate or make exceptions.
They don't care about the personal conflicts of the contractors they hire.
Isabelle Montague is a problem they want solved, and they'll keep sending people until she's dead.
Even if I warn her—tell her someone's trying to kill her, tell her to run, to hide, to disappear—it won't matter.
They'll find her eventually. People like the Capettis always do.
And if I try to protect her? If I decide to play hero and keep her safe?
I'll be signing both our death warrants. I'm good, but I'm not good enough to take on an entire mafia family. No one is. They have resources I can't match, connections I can't compete with, and an endless supply of contractors who'll be happy to take the job I refused.
The smart move—the only move that makes sense—is to complete the contract. Take the payment. Move on. Forget Isabelle Montague ever existed.
I stop pacing and sink back down onto the bed, my head in my hands again.
Forty-eight hours. Two days to decide whether to destroy the woman I can't stop thinking about or destroy myself.
Two days to figure out how I went from being the most feared contractor in the business to a man who can't pull the trigger on a target he's already fucked twice.
Two days to accept that I've just thrown away fifteen years of careful reputation-building, of survival, of being the best at what I do—all for a woman I've known for two nights.
The worst part is, I'm not even sure I regret it.
I should. Should be furious with myself for letting emotion compromise my judgment, for allowing a pretty face and good sex to cloud my professional instincts.
Should be calculating how to salvage this situation.
But all I can think about is how she made me feel, for just a few hours, like I was something more than a weapon.
And now I have to decide if that feeling is worth dying for.
It's not. You know it's not.
This is the world I chose when I took my first contract fifteen years ago.
A world where mercy is weakness, where attachment is fatal, where the only rule that matters is survival.
I knew the cost. Knew what I was giving up—the possibility of connection, of caring, of being anything other than alone.
I accepted that cost because I thought I could save the one person who mattered to me, and when I couldn't, I assumed no one would matter ever again.
That I should do what I was clearly good at, and lose myself in it.
She doesn't matter. A woman you just met can't matter like that.
I'm empty. I've been empty for years, and no amount of money or power or fear can fill it.
She can't fill it, either, and I'm a fool to think otherwise, to put my life on the line for her.
She needs to die, even if it means I'll be left with nothing but the memory of what could have been if I'd been a different man, if I'd made different choices.
The cruelty of it is almost poetic. I finally find something—someone—worth caring about, and the universe hands her to me as a target. Gives me just enough time to know what I'm losing before ripping it away.
Maybe this is karma. Maybe this is what I deserve after fifteen years of dealing death without remorse. Maybe the universe is finally balancing the scales, making me feel a fraction of the pain I've inflicted on others.
If so, it's working.
I lie back on the bed, staring at the water-stained ceiling, and try to imagine a world where this ends differently. Where I find a way to save her, to save us both… but I can't.
Because that world doesn't exist.
Forty-eight hours. That's all I have left to figure out how to live with what I'm about to do.
Or how to die if I don't.