Chapter 21
twenty-one
RODRIGO
We’re standing in front of the leaders of the world’s most dangerous criminal organization, and all I can think about is the scent of Billie Harper’s perfume.
She is beautiful. Hermosa. I shouldn’t have let her come to this place. But she would not take the keys to my rental car. She would not leave. And I worried— because I can see it in her doe-like eyes— that if I had made her go, she would have thought it was because I did not believe in her.
Billie needs to be believed in. If only she knew; I don’t just believe in her. I would cross countries for her. She has the kind of beauty that makes a man commend his life into her hands without care.
And that’s what I’ve done.
We’re in a concrete room— a killbox, if you care to look at it that way— and Marco and Mateo Ledger are standing across a table from me.
Alana is to my right, drumming her nails against the table.
And to my left is Billie, who I’m trying very hard not to stare at.
Still, I risk a peek. Her shoulders squared.
There's a small crease between her brows.
Her eyes are fixed on the twins with an expression I can only describe as fearless.
These men are dangerous, but Billie Harper looks like she might, at any moment, ask to see their manager. I find this extraordinary.
“You thought this request warranted an in-person visit, Alana?” Marco says, his long, dark hair hanging heavy over his face. His hair is greasy and shoulder-length, and both he and his twin are dressed in Europe’s finest: bomber jackets in ugly prints. Gold chains swing around their necks.
“Okay, so.” Alana steps forward, and the temperature in the room changes.
She is wearing a shade of pink that has no business existing in a building like this.
She gestures at Billie and me with the casual authority of someone presenting a school project.
“I brought my representative. This is Billie. She negotiates. She’s like, honestly?
So much meaner than me.” She pauses to let that land.
“And this—” she gestures at me, “—is Rodrigo. He’s the one with the contract on his head.
See?” She tilts her head at Marco with great sincerity.
“The contract you took out,” Marco reminds her.
“Right, but you cannot kill him. Look at him.”
I hear Billie exhale very quietly beside me. I think it might be the only laugh she can afford right now.
Marco, across the table, does not look like a man who takes direction from anyone, let alone a woman in a bubbly pink dress describing me as visually compelling.
His brother Mateo, beside him, is identical in structure— same jaw, same cold precision in the eyes.
He looks at me the way a collector looks at something he’s decided to acquire.
“Once a contract is issued, it cannot be reversed,” Marco says, shaking his head.
“Alana— you of all people know this to be true. The contract is already distributed. Hundreds of freelancers. They have spent their time. Their resources.” He opens one hand.
“We pull back now— what does that say? That the Ledger changes its mind?” He says this like the concept is mildly offensive.
“That we waste the time of the people who work for us?”
Mateo nods. “Assassins are not patient people,” he adds, almost pleasantly. “And nobody wants to make an assassin feel disrespected. That is, as you might say, a bad investment.”
I look at the window on the far wall. It’s open. About two meters from where Billie stands.
I lean close to her. Her hair smells like something warm— honey, maybe— and I make a note not to think about that right now either. “If this goes wrong,” I say quietly, barely moving my mouth, “you run. That window.” I tilt my head toward it slightly. “Don’t think about it. Just go.”
She turns to look at me, and for a moment those Bambi eyes are aimed directly at me and I nearly forget what I was saying. “What about you?” she whispers.
“I’ll be behind you.” I know this is a lie. I’ll be dead before she makes it out the window.
She holds my gaze for just a second too long, and then nods once, very seriously, like we've agreed to something binding. Without planning it, I take her hand. Just briefly. My thumb against her knuckles, her fingers small in mine. She doesn’t pull away.
Then the moment closes, and Alana is talking again, and Billie steps forward.
“Boys,” Billie says. Her voice only wavers once, on that first syllable, and then it doesn’t waver again. “Thank you for meeting with us.”
Marco says nothing. Mateo spreads his hands— go ahead.
And something happens. I watch it happen. Billie Harper, who came in looking like someone’s very earnest assistant, straightens to her full five feet and three inches and begins to speak like she’s spent years studying what makes people say yes.
She doesn’t threaten them. Not directly.
She is too smart for that, and I suspect she understands, the way good negotiators do, that the most dangerous thing in a room like this is a person who isn’t afraid to walk away from the table.
“You may think pulling the contract is a logistical nightmare. You have vendors— assassins— to whom you’ve promised payment.
You may think it makes you look weak to reverse direction on an order.
But have you considered you’d be exhibiting strength?
Picture this…” she puts her hands in the air, painting a picture for them.
“The Twin Ledger is an organization that can not only issue a hit— they can stop it mid-contract. Cancelling a contract tells the world that you control the game. You dominate this hemisphere. Furthermore,” she leans in, motioning at Alana.
“Alana’s knowledge of your operation runs deep?—”
“Well, I wouldn’t say that,” Alana answers, looking nervous.
“What does it tell your contractors if you won’t cancel even for one of your own employees who’s worked for you for years?
What thanks can they be assured if you won’t stop a hit?
There is power in ceasing just as there is power in commencing.
Don’t you want to show your power… today?
Perhaps Alana could repay this favor by doing the next three jobs for free. ”
“… I’m actually really busy right now,” Alana starts to say, but Billie shushes her.
Marco and Mateo consider this. They look at each other and then— they nod.
“Your negotiator is good,” Mateo says to Alana. “But we cannot cancel a hit. The wheels are already in motion.”
My heart pounds in my chest. Is this the part where they shoot me?
“But we won’t kill him today,” Marco says.
“You made this mess, Alana. You will clean it up. We will let the contract run its course so one of the assassins can collect. And—” he pauses, “as a personal favor, we will ask our most aggressive assassins to ignore the order. You will have to deal with the rest. ”
“Good luck to you,” Mateo adds. He looks at me once— brief, like a notation. “Today. This room. You walk out.” He looks back at Billie. “But the contract stays. It is no longer ours to pull. We gave our word.”
Alana, Billie and I look at each other. The air chills. The meeting is over. There’s nothing we can do but turn to leave.
Then, Marco says— almost as an afterthought, in Spanish, to his brother— “Just like a woman, isn’t it, to change her mind. Emotional, aren’t they?”
The brothers laugh.
I think: oh, no.
I look at Alana first. She has gone quiet, which is always bad news.
Billie stares at her, and I forget that she doesn’t speak Spanish.
I lean over and translate the comment into her ear.
Billie’s hand flies to her mouth and she looks at Alana— she knows as well as I do that this will anger La Diabla.
“Okay,” Alana says, and her voice is still very sweet. It’s always sweetest right before. “So I’m sorry— did you just say something about women being emotional?”
“It is simply an observation,” Mateo says, gesturing with one hand in a way that means he doesn’t consider the subject worth his full attention. “Women. Very emotional. Very— changeable.”
“Marco,” Alana says. “I once saw you shoot a man in the face because he brought you the wrong lunch order. And you think women are emotional.”
“Excuse me,” Billie repeats. “But Alana works really hard for you and sure, she made a bad decision, but you both kill people every day! She’s trying to change! That’s growth, not being emotional…”
And then they are both talking.
I would describe what follows as a duet, in the sense that two people are performing it and there is a structure of sorts.
“I’ve run dozens of operations for you and never once asked to change the objectives, which change on me minute to minute!” Alana says, flipping her hair over one shoulder. “It is like, so unbelievable that you don’t think the two of you are emotional?—”
“Right?” Billie says, and suddenly I’m worried the blazer has given her a little too much confidence. “When men get angry in the workplace, it’s viewed as constructive but women can’t even have one feeling without being labeled?—”
I should, at this point, be steering us toward the exit. I know this. I can see the window from where I’m standing, and I have a very clear sense that this room has a limited quantity of goodwill left in it, and we are spending it faster than we can afford. I know all of this.
But I’m watching Billie Harper hold the floor in a room full of the most dangerous people I have ever stood in front of, and I find that I cannot make myself interrupt her. She is so determined, so strong, so beautiful.
“Sì, sì,” Mateo says finally, doing the worst possible thing and laughing at both of them. He gestures at Alana’s side, where her gun sits in its holster. “If the women are so capable, then—” He makes a small, contemptuous motion. “Go ahead.”
He points over his shoulder at a table filled with food. There’s an apple sitting on top of a pile of fruit. “Shoot the apple.”
It is, clearly, a taunt.
I know it’s a taunt. Alana knows it’s a taunt. The walls of this concrete room know it’s a taunt.
Alana can hit the apple all day, every day. She doesn’t need to prove herself. But the taunt wasn’t for her: it was for Billie.
I watch Billie’s jaw set. The brothers look at each other and laugh.
“Billie—” I start.
She reaches across and takes Alana’s gun from its holster.
Later, I will think about this moment and try to identify the exact second when I should have stopped it. I will run the sequence back many times. But in real time, everything happens in the space of a breath.
Billie raises the gun and holds up in the air. She says loudly, “… as if I can’t shoot an apple anytime I want!” And then, she raises it. She’s about to point it at the apple but her wrist adjusts.
The trigger catches. She doesn’t mean for the gun to go off. These black-market arms don’t always function properly. But Billie doesn’t know that.
The gun fires.
The sound in a concrete room is not like the sound in the open air. It fills every corner. It has nowhere to go, so it bounces— off the walls, off the floor, off the inside of my skull.
Billie jerks backward from the recoil.
Mateo makes one sound. It is not words.
I’m surprised. Billie is surprised. But no one is more surprised than Mateo, who looks down at the gaping wound in his chest.
Then, he falls down behind the table, and the room is still, and I understand what has happened before I can fully process that it has happened.
Mateo Ledger is dead.
Marco stands, looking at the place where his brother was standing. He doesn’t move for three full seconds. He doesn’t make a sound.
And then, very slowly, he looks at Billie. Alana gasps. She knows just as well as I do— we’re in huge trouble.
My body is already moving. I don’t decide to do it.
I step in front of Billie— put my back to Marco and my arm out behind me, finding her, my hand closing around her upper arm and pulling her close.
She makes a small, stunned sound against my shoulder.
The gun is still in her hand. I can feel her shaking.
“Window,” I say, very quietly. “Billie. The window. Right now.”
Marco hasn’t moved. There is something in his stillness that is worse than anything I have seen from him today, and I have seen enough.
He lets out a sound like an animal crying in the night.
Then, his eyes turn cold. Grief, when it belongs to a man like Marco Ledger, doesn’t look like grief. It looks like rage.
“Billie,” I say, holding her arm in my hand. “We’re going to have to run now.”