Isabelle
Istare at the photograph in my hands, and my own face stares back at me. The pieces click into place, and I feel sick.
His skills. The weapons I've seen him handle so casually. His knowledge of the assassins hunting me. The way he always knows where they are before they arrive. The constant vigilance.
He knows all this because he's one of them.
I look up at Julian, and I see the guilt written all over his face. He doesn't even try to deny it. The photo is damning, and we both know it.
"You—" My voice breaks. I can barely form words.
"You were hired to kill me." My stomach heaves.
This man was hired to kill me. This man I just had sex with—who I fucked in Ibiza before this, who I've been falling all over since then like a pathetic idiot.
This man whose cock was inside me five minutes ago.
This man I've been trusting with my life, sleeping beside, falling for despite every warning sign screaming at me to run.
He was supposed to murder me.
The realization is physically sickening.
My hands shake so badly the photo flutters, and I have to grip it tighter to keep from dropping it.
My legs feel weak. My chest is tight. I can't breathe properly, can't get enough air into my lungs.
I think of his hands around my throat in Ibiza, that moment when he choked me and I thought it was something kinky, something that made me come for him, and I gag, stumbling backward.
Fuck. He was on the verge of killing me then. He almost killed me.
"Isabelle—" He takes a step toward me, his hand outstretched.
"Don't." The word comes out sharp and vicious. "Don't you fucking dare touch me." I stare at him. "You're no better than him." I point at the dead, cooling body. "You on your fucking high horse about how he was going to kill me, about how stupid I was, and I… you…"
He stops, and his hand drops to his side. The look on his face—the devastation and guilt —makes me want to scream.
"Did you know that you were supposed to kill me in Ibiza?" My voice trembles, and his shoulders sag.
"Not the first time." He swallows hard. "The second night. When you told me your name."
The second night. When I rode him and gasped out my name, and his hands moved to my throat like he was going to strangle me.
When I thought for one terrifying moment that he might actually kill me, and then he came and left without a word.
That's when he knew. That's when he realized I was his target, and that's why he fled.
Because for some reason, he chickened out.
He fucking came inside me while he was on the verge of killing me, and then he bolted.
And he's been lying to me ever since.
"Oh my god." I back away from him, my bare feet stumbling on the hotel carpet. "Oh my god. You've been lying to me this entire time."
"Yes."
The simple admission is worse than any excuse would have been. He's not even trying to deny it or soften the blow.
"Were you hired to kill me?" I need to hear the words out loud even though I already know the answer. "Answer me, Julian. Were you hired to kill me?"
He looks at me for a long moment. His jaw is tight, his hands clenched into fists at his sides, and he looks devastated.
I don't fucking care.
Then he says, "Yes."
I stagger like he's punched me. I knew it was coming. I knew what he was going to say. But hearing it out loud—hearing him confirm that someone paid him to murder me, that he accepted the job…. It's too much.
My knees buckle. I catch myself against the wall, my hand pressed flat against the cheap wallpaper, and I have to focus on breathing. In and out. In and out. Don't pass out. Don't give him the satisfaction of seeing you collapse. "Who?" The question comes out hoarse. "Who hired you?"
"The contract came through my broker." His voice is tight.
"I don't know who put out the hit, Isabelle.
That's not how this works, unless someone contracts me directly, which happens sometimes.
I was given a contract and a choice to accept, and I took it.
I have no idea where it goes from there, and that's what I've been trying to find out, to try to figure out a way out of this for you… "
"You kill women?" I stare at him. "Aren't men like you supposed to have like… a code, or something? No women, no children?"
He lets out a short, bitter laugh. "There are men a lot worse than me. I don't torture anyone. I don't do interrogations. I do quick, clean kills. And I've never killed a child. But any adult… yes. I take the contract as long as it's enough money."
"Money." I stare at him. "You kill people and get paid to do it."
His lips press into a thin line, and for a moment, he looks angry.
"Don't judge me," he says flatly. "At least not for that.
You can judge me for whatever has happened between you and me, all you like; you have a right to.
But don't presume to think anything about the rest of my life or what I do. You don't know anything about it."
The fact that he's daring to act as if he has any high ground at all infuriates me even more. I glare at him, gritting out the words between my chattering teeth. "Why? Why would someone want me dead?"
"I don't know. I never ask why. That's not how it works. Someone pays, I complete the job. No questions."
"But you didn't complete the job." I can hear my voice rising now, hysteria creeping in at the edges. "You didn't kill me. Why?"
"Because I couldn't." The words sound like they're being torn out of him. "Because when I realized who you were in Ibiza, that it was you, while we were… I couldn't do it."
"That's it? You just couldn't do it? Why did you come back?"
"I made a decision that night," Julian says. His voice is rough, raw with emotion I don't want to hear. "After I left your hotel room. I went back to my own room, and I realized what I'd done. Who you were. And I called my broker and told him I was backing out."
"Backing out." I stare at him. "Like it's a business deal. Like my life is just another transaction."
"It was supposed to be." He stares at me, as if there's any possible way I could understand this. "That's what it's always been. A job. A contract. Nothing personal."
"But this time it was personal. You'd already fucked me. You knew what I tasted like. So it was personal, and you realized that while we were in bed together."
"Yes."
"And it got you off."
Julian shakes his head sharply. "No… no that wasn't it. I…" He lets out a sharp breath. "You didn't realize what was happening. You liked it when I… when I choked you. And that…" His throat works. "Fuck Isabelle, why are we talking about this?"
"Why did you follow me to Greece?"
His jaw clenches. "I tried to back out, and I was told I couldn't. That the contract was brokered through…" He pauses. "Someone who wouldn't take failure as an option or no for an answer. There was no going back on it, or I'd die too. I…"
He sinks to the edge of the bed, running his hands through his hair.
"I thought about still doing it." He looks up at me.
"Is that an admission you want to hear, Isabelle?
I knew someone would finish the contract no matter what, and if it wasn't me, I'd be dead too.
What was the point of us both dying? I told myself I'd do it and make it quick, that you'd never see it coming, and I followed you to Greece. "
I stare at him, horror tightening my chest. "You were…"
"Yes. And then I saw you with that other man, and I snapped.
I didn't want him to touch you. I didn't want anyone to touch you who wasn't…
" He swallows hard. "I couldn't do it, again.
And before you ask, yes, fuck… I've thought about it since then.
I've got people you can't imagine on my ass, wanting to know why you aren't dead yet, and I could have made my life so much goddamn easier by just doing my fucking job.
But I couldn't do it, over and over, and once I realized that wasn't going to change…
." He takes a heavy breath." The only option after that was to convince you that you'd be safe with me, keep my secret, and try to unravel where your contract came from to see if I could do something about it, before we both died. "
"And you've been doing such a good fucking job of that." The sarcasm in my voice is thick enough to cut. Julian raises his hands and lets them fall again.
"I've tried, Isabelle. I swear I've tried. Whatever you think of me… I wanted to keep you alive. And I've done it so far at the cost of my own life. Whether you survive or not, I'm a dead man walking."
I stare at him. None of it makes sense in my head. "You're… going to die? Because of me?"
"Because I made a choice." He sighs, looking up at me with his hands braced on his knees. "And I'd make the same choice again. I don't want you dead, Isabelle. I never did. Contracts are never about me wanting someone dead. But you… I couldn't kill you. And now I'm going to die because of it."
I stare at him, at this man who was hired to murder me and chose not to. Who's been lying to me for weeks while protecting me from other killers. Who's risking his own life to keep me breathing. And I don't know what to feel.
Gratitude? Horror? Betrayal? All of it at once? "Why didn't you tell me?" The question comes out cracked, my voice still shaky and broken. "Why didn't you tell me the truth from the beginning?"
"Because you wouldn't have trusted me." His voice is quiet. "If I'd told you in Santorini that I was the assassin hired to kill you, you would have run. You would have been alone and unprotected, and one of the other killers would have found you within days."
"So you lied to protect me."
"Yes."
"You lied so I would trust you." My voice is rising again, anger cutting through the shock. "So I would depend on you. So I would—"