17. Stefi
17
STEFI
T he next morning, I turn on my VPN, open an anti-tracking browser, and send Charlie an email telling her I’m fine and will reach out when I’m able to. I want to call her, but it’s not safe. Her reply comes almost instantaneously, a paragraph of stream of consciousness liberally punctuated with exclamation marks.
I’m so glad you’re okay!!!! Your husband said you wouldn’t be able to contact me, and he gave me some money just in case. Two thousand euros, can you believe it? After you left, I opened your laptop and tried to pretend I was you, but I didn’t know how to answer any of the customer support questions, so Lynda fired me. Well, you. Well, me. Anyway, sorry about that. Joao is sooo hot, btw. He wanted me to pass on a message to you. He said, “ she’s the only woman in my life who’s ever mattered.” Sooo romantic!!! Not gonna lie: I totally swooned. You should call him. Anyway, he also said that you’re going to get yourself killed if you keep running from him, which, you know, would really, really suck, so please don’t die.
She’s the only woman in my life who’s ever mattered.
I stare at those words on my screen for a very long time. I desperately want to believe them, but even if they are true, I don’t deserve Joao’s love. Not after what I did to him in Mexico, and especially not after what happened in Istanbul.
Even if he means them, when Joao finds out why I ran, it’ll change everything.
I don’t stay in Paris. The next day, I take the train to Lyon. The day after that, I leave France entirely and head to Barcelona.
It’s been a few months since I was on the run, and I haven’t missed it. The feeling of constantly looking over your shoulder, your senses on high alert. . . I haven’t felt this hunted in years.
And I constantly fight the urge to reach out to Joao.
I should stay away from the chat room—nothing good will come from my dangerous obsession. The more time I spend with Joao, the more I’m going to want to be with him. And that’s impossible. Even if Joao could bring himself to forgive me for disappearing eight years ago, it doesn’t change the present.
But it only takes three days on the road for my willpower to evaporate. Seventy-two hours of craving Joao, craving the sound of his laughter, the caress in his voice when he calls me ‘little fox’ before I give in and log into the chat room.
His message comes almost immediately.
Joao
Call me, little fox.
What number?
Same one as before.
What the hell? I dial it immediately, and as soon as he picks up his phone, I demand, “You gave me your real number? Is that safe?”
He chuckles. “Hello to you too, little fox. Why wouldn’t it be safe? Are you planning on killing me?”
His voice is as smooth as a really good whiskey and just as potent. It messes with my senses and makes my head swim. He’s always had this effect on me, and the years apart only seem to have made it stronger.
“You’re being careless,” I accuse.
“And you’re worried about me.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” I scoff. “Why did you give me your real number?”
“I want you to be able to reach me. Day or night, whenever you need me.”
I clench my eyes shut. His words unwittingly rub at an old wound. I’ve always been able to reach Joao when I needed him. Until that fateful day. . .
Joao was on a job, and so was I. We weren’t supposed to be in contact at all, but I was freaking out and needed to talk to him. I tried to call him, but his phone was turned off. I logged into the chat room, but he didn’t show up there either.
I waited as long as I could, but I couldn’t get a hold of him. In the end, I just ran out of time.
Joao’s waiting for me to respond, and I’m trying to choke back my swell of emotions. “Oh,” I manage. “Thank you.” I need to change the topic before he realizes how upset I am. “What name do you go by nowadays?”
“Still Joao,” he replies. “Different last name though. It’s Carvalho now.”
I navigate to a different window and do a search on him. “You kept your first name? Was that a good idea?”
“I thought about changing it,” he says. “But I didn’t see the point. Joao’s a common enough name in Europe. Besides, you kept yours, too.”
“I did.” I already had to give up Joao—I couldn’t bear to give up the name he whispered in my ear as well. “Joao’s not a common name in Venice, though.”
And I shouldn’t have done a search on him. Picture after picture of Joao appears in the results, always laughing, never alone. Joao in a suit, flanked by two beautiful women. Joao at a gala on the dance floor, his arm wrapped possessively around his partner. Joao working out at the gym, Joao playing pool, his eyes focused.
What did you expect him to do, Stefi? Did you expect him to mourn you forever? Did you expect him to stay celibate for eight years?
A seething ball of jealousy roils in my stomach. I do my best to push it down. Women have always flocked to Joao, attracted by his laughing eyes and his devil-may-care attitude. Why would it be any different now?
“True.” His voice turns amused. “You sound distracted. Let me guess. I told you my last name, and now you’re searching for me on the Internet.”
I jump like a startled cat and immediately shut the browser window, my cheeks hot with embarrassment. “I’m doing no such thing.”
“No? I’m not ashamed to admit I looked you up. Interesting persona you’ve adopted. Cat memes, photos of every meal you’ve eaten, but never any of you. It’s a perfect cover. Nobody would give Stefania Freitas a second glance.”
“Maybe I’m just boring nowadays,” I say before I can help myself. I feel dull compared to Joao. Call it a self-pity spiral, but Joao is surrounded by people, and I’m watching TV alone, holed up in a nondescript hotel. He’s embracing life while I’m hiding away from it.
“You? Never in a million years. What did O’Shea say when you told him Zurich was a trap?”
“I didn’t—” I start to say before I clamp my mouth shut. He just slid that question in there, and I almost answered. Joao hides a razor-sharp intellect under his golden retriever exterior. Add in how well he knows me. . . If I’m not careful, he’ll find me again within a week. “Damn it, that almost worked. How did you find me in Paris, by the way? I’ve been wracking my brains, and I can’t figure it out.”
“What will you give me if I tell you?” he teases. “Will you tell me where you really are? My phone says Lisbon, but I don’t believe it.”
“Why not? We went there once, remember?” The moment those words leave my mouth, I regret it. What’s the point of reminiscing about the past? Even if I could go back in time, I wouldn’t change anything. I had to do what I did to protect?—
“Mmm,” he says. “And you stole my custard tart. Don’t think I’ve forgotten about that.”
I laugh as I remember the incident. Joao had gone inside to get me a second cup of coffee and made the mistake of leaving his pastel de nata unattended. I scarfed it down and tried to pretend a seagull stole it, but one look at the outrage on Joao’s face, and I couldn’t keep a straight face. I started giggling so hard that everyone around us stopped to stare. We’d ended up eating a dozen of them huddled together on the beach, while the ocean threw fine saltwater spray all over us.
“I forgot about that,” I admit. “I haven’t eaten one in years. Can you get them in Venice?”
“I don’t know,” he replies. “I’ve never looked. It wouldn’t have felt right to eat one without you.”
He doesn’t want to eat a pastel de nata without me. My heart clenches painfully, and Joao abruptly changes the subject. “You told me about Charlie and let slip that her stepfather was one of the Cosa Nostra. That was enough to figure out her real name. Then I looked at her mother’s phone logs, and?—”
“She called her mother. Of course she did, damn it.”
It was stupid of me not to realize it was a possibility, but I grew up without family. I never had anyone to lean on, so I don’t know how it feels. Severine Bellegarde is a terrible parent, but she’s the only one Charlie has. I should have predicted she’d call her mother.
And unlike me, Charlie doesn’t keep switching burner phones. The moment Joao found her number, he had her location and, by extension, mine.
Joao’s chuckle is warm and sexy against my ear. “Teenagers aren’t exactly models of restraint,” he says. “Remember us? We couldn’t keep our hands off each other. It’s a miracle Henrik never found out.”
“He would have killed us if he did.” Joao was one of Bach’s favorite trainees. Even after he killed Michaela in front of us, I don’t think Joao truly ever saw how dangerous he really was.
“He would have,” he agrees soberly, taking me by surprise. “It took me a while to see who he really was. I was an idiot in those days, a stupid, cocky kid who believed I was indestructible. And Henrik knew how to mold us into his perfect little tools. He made us believe that we were doing what needed to be done, what most of the world was too soft to do.” His voice turns reflective. “I bought his spiel, hook, line, and sinker. You never did.”
“You’re being hard on yourself,” I say softly. “You knew Bach was a psychopath; we all did. We didn’t have a choice in what we did. If we didn’t obey, we died.”
“And now he’s dead from a car accident,” he says grimly. “Daniel sent me the coroner’s report. Looks like the bastard died instantly. I don’t believe in the concept of heaven and hell, but I’ll make an exception for Bach. If there’s any justice to be had, he’s burning in the hottest of hellfires.”
“I’ll drink to that.”
We both fall silent. Truth is, with everything that’s happened in the last week, it hasn’t really sunk in that Henrik Bach is dead. Every year, I make a trip back to Istanbul to Christopher’s grave and celebrate the people I’ve killed that year with a toast. This year, when I drink, it’ll be an extra-large pour. I might not have succeeded in killing Bach, but he’s dead, and that’s all that counts.
Joao’s voice jerks me away from my grim thoughts. “You got away from him,” he says. “You’re the first one who succeeded. It couldn’t have been easy.”
I think back to the early days of constantly looking over my shoulder, moving hotels every night, and never staying in the same city for longer than a week. “It wasn’t.” Part of me thinks I should hang up—every word I say to Joao could be a clue that helps him find me—and another, hopeful, yearning part cannot bear the thought of ending this conversation.
“How did you do it? I can guess some of it already. You obviously robbed a morgue for the body that was found in the fire, and you put your wedding ring on her finger.”
I was forced to part with my ring, and I feel its absence every single day. “No, I didn’t,” I interrupt. “I wouldn’t rob a morgue—that’s really creepy. No, the cartel sent an assassin to greet me. She almost succeeded in taking me out.” I’d been distracted by my positive pregnancy test and wasn’t really paying attention to my surroundings, and she nearly managed to kill me. “Luckily for me, she was the same height and build as me.”
“An assassin?” Joao’s voice sharpens. “Henrik said it would be an easy in-and-out.”
I laugh bitterly. “He lied. Veronica got chatty before she died. Called me a bitch, told me there were more cartel soldiers on the way, and advised me to make my peace with God because I was going to die.”
And the moment she said that, I knew I had run out of choices. If I stayed, the cartel assassins would kill me. To survive, I had to get the hell out of there.
But we were expected to do whatever it took to take our targets out, even if it meant we died in the attempt. If I returned to the compound without killing Peng Wu, there would be consequences. Severe ones. Bach was perfectly capable of killing me for my failure.
And for the first time in my life, I knew I had to live. I was pregnant with our baby, and the only way for that child to survive was if I quit being an assassin.
I had to disappear, and I had to disappear immediately. Before the cartel assassins showed up, and before Henrik Bach found out I didn’t kill Peng Wu.
And the worst thing was that I couldn’t tell Joao. I couldn’t leave him a message in our chat room because if it got intercepted, I’d be putting our unborn child at risk. And if it didn’t get intercepted and Joao came to find me, I knew Bach wouldn’t rest until he hunted us down. My disappearance he might be able to ignore, but Joao was the most talented assassin he’d ever had. Bach would stop at nothing to find him.
“Stefi?”
“Yeah.” I swallow the lump in my throat. “I’m still here.” I take a deep, shaky breath. What were we talking about? Oh, right. How I managed to get away. “Peng Wu brought twenty high-quality diamonds to the cartels as proof of good faith. They were worth three, maybe four million euros. I knew I needed money to stay hidden from Bach, so I stole the gems from his safe.”
“How did you find a fence?”
“I got lucky and found a crooked cartel soldier who was willing to take the risk of fencing them in exchange for most of the profits. I ended up with a million.” A million euros seems like a lot of money, but it goes quick if you’re always on the run. Fake passports, the kind that withstand electronic scrutiny, are expensive. “I made my way to Nicaragua and got on a cargo ship headed to Morocco. From there, Tunisia, then Athens and finally, Istan—” I catch myself.
Once again, I’m revealing too much. But it’s always been so easy to talk to Joao. All my life, I’ve always told him my hopes and dreams and fears, and even though everything is different now, my subconscious is ready to fall back into that old, familiar groove.
“You make an impossible journey sound easy,” he says quietly. “But you still haven’t told me why, Stef. Why did you leave? Were you hurt? Did you get spooked? Why didn’t you call me, little fox? I wasn’t anywhere close to Mexico, but I could have helped.”
“I did,” I say, the words wrenched out of my aching heart. “I tried to call, but I couldn’t get a hold of you.”
No, no, what am I doing?
Joao cannot find out the truth. He just cannot.
I cannot do that to him.
I cannot buy my own absolution at the cost of his happiness.
If he finds out about our baby, it will wreck him. Not just emotionally. I know my husband, and he won’t rest until he finds and kills the people responsible.
No matter how dangerous it is.
I cannot risk his life. I won’t drag him on my path. Eight years ago, I made the choice to put Joao’s safety ahead of our happiness, and I’d do it all over again if I had to.
This is my burden and mine alone.
“I have to go,” I say abruptly. Then I hang up.