8. Julian
JULIAN
I've made a decision.
It's the only way.
The laptop screen glows blue in the darkness of my hotel room, casting shadows across my hands as I type.
Credit card transactions scroll past—a luxury hotel in Santorini, a restaurant reservation for one at a cliffside café, a cabana rental for the beach tomorrow.
She's making this easy for me. Too easy.
Isabelle Montague doesn't know how to disappear.
She's never had to learn, and she has no reason to think that she needs to now.
She's a girl who's spent her entire life wrapped in wealth and privilege, protected by her father's name and money, never once considering that someone might be tracking her movements through the digital breadcrumbs she leaves everywhere she goes.
Her Instagram is public. Posted two hours ago is a photo of the Aegean Sea at sunset, the sky lit up in shades of orange and pink. The caption reads Finally feeling free with a white heart emoji. The location tag says Santorini.
I close the laptop and lean back in my chair, pressing my palms against my eyes until I see stars.
Finally feeling free.
She has no idea. No fucking idea that freedom is the one thing she'll never have again. Not while I'm alive. Not while the contract exists. Not while the New York mafia family that ordered her death is waiting for confirmation that the job is done.
My phone buzzes on the desk with an encrypted message. I know who it is before I even look. It's Maddox. I pick up the phone, my jaw tight, and open the message.
Status update required. Are you confirming the contract?
My fingers hover over the screen. I could tell him the truth—that I fucked the target twice, that I had my hands around her throat and couldn't finish the job.
That I can't imagine Isabelle Montague, so full of life and fire, dead with her eyes blank, bleeding out onto concrete or sand or wherever she's standing when the bullet goes through her skull.
I could tell the truth and be dead within days.
Instead, I type: Tracking target. She left the country. Currently in Santorini, Greece. Will complete contract within the week.
The response comes almost immediately.
Call me. Now.
Fuck.
I stare at the message for a long moment, then stand and move to the window. Maddox answers on the second ring.
"Julian. Should I be concerned?"
"No." I keep my voice flat, professional. "The target moved. I'm following."
"So you're confirming the contract?"
My chest tightens. I remind myself that if I don't do it, someone else will. If I don't kill her, we'll both be dead. What's the point of that? What in the fucking Romeo and Juliet do I think would be accomplished by dying with her?
I'm not that sentimental, and if I ever have been, it died with the last person I cared about.
"Yes." I bite the word out. "I'm confirming the contract. I'll have Isabelle Montague dead within the week."
If anyone is going to kill her, it's going to be me, a small, sick voice whispers in my head. One that can't imagine anyone else taking her life, just like I can't imagine anyone else touching her after the way I fucked her.
"And you say she moved?"
"She's traveling, it seems. She's in Santorini. I'll be heading there tonight."
"Do that." Maddox's voice takes on an edge. "Stalling on a Capetti contract is not something I would recommend."
"I'm not stalling."
"Then what are you doing?"
The question hangs in the air between us. I could tell him the truth. Could admit that I'm compromised, that I fucked the target, that I can't stop thinking about the way she looked at me when she came.
But that would be suicide.
"I'm doing my job," I say instead. "The target is in Santorini. I'm heading to Santorini. The contract will be completed."
"It had better be." His voice drops, the warning in it absolutely clear. "Because if it's not, the Capetti family will send someone else. And they won't just kill the target, Julian. They'll kill you, too. For refusing the contract. For wasting their time. For making them look weak."
"I understand."
"Do you?" He doesn't wait for an answer. "The Capetti family doesn't tolerate failure. They don't tolerate excuses. And they sure as hell don't tolerate contractors who get cold feet. You accepted this job. Now you finish it, or you die. Those are your options." His voice is sharper now.
"If I didn't know better, I'd think you cared, Maddox."
He lets out a harsh breath. "Just tell me again you understand."
"I said I understand."
"Good." A pause. "You have a week, Julian. After that, I can't protect you. After that, you're on your own."
The line goes dead. I stand there for a long moment, the phone still pressed to my ear, staring out the window. I set the phone down on the windowsill and press my forehead against the cool glass.
I'm fucked. Completely, utterly fucked. I don't want to do this… and I see no way out of it. If I don't kill Isabelle, the Capetti family will send someone else. And then they'll kill me too. For refusing. For failing. For being weak.
But if I do kill her—
The thought makes my stomach turn. I close my eyes and see her face.
The way she looked at me in that nightclub, her eyes bright with alcohol and desire.
The way she felt beneath me, her body arching, her nails digging into my back.
The feeling of her delicate throat beneath my hands, her life held between them.
The horror that flooded through me in that moment. The realization that the woman I'd been obsessing over, the woman who'd made me feel something for the first time in years, was the same woman I'd been hired to kill.
I should have done it then. Should have tightened my grip and finished the job while I had the chance.
But I couldn't. And now I have to go to Santorini and track her like prey, so I can finish the job now. All the while, I keep going back and forth on a decision I've already made, trying to find a solution that doesn't exist.
What the fuck am I doing?
—
The flight to Santorini is short. The plane is half-empty, the other passengers mostly tourists heading to the island for vacation. I sit in the back row, my carry-on bag at my feet, and stare out the window at the clouds below. I think about what I need to do next.
I thought I was going to go back to Barcelona and then to New York, which would have meant being able to get any of my weapons that I wanted.
But all I'll be able to get out here is a handgun and maybe a knife.
A hunting rifle, if I'm very lucky. Definitely not a sniper or anything that would enable me to take her out at a range where she'll have no idea what's happening, most likely.
I might be able to sneak up on her, take her out quickly…
but I was hoping for something much more detached than what I'll be able to get.
Still, it's everything I need to kill Isabelle Montague. I've done more with less.
The thought sits heavy in my chest, a weight I can't shake.
Maybe I can buy time. Figure out who ordered the hit and why.
Find leverage I can use to negotiate with the Capetti family, to maybe get them to call off the contract.
But even as I roll the thoughts over in my head, I know I'm lying to myself.
There's no negotiating with the mafia. There's no leverage that will make them change their minds.
Once a contract is issued, it's absolute.
The target dies, or the contractor does. Those are the only options.
And I've known that from the beginning.
If it comes down to it, I tell myself, I'll finish the job. If I can't figure anything else out, I'll do it, because that's the only path forward. The only one that makes any sense at all, when I really think about it.
I land in Santorini just after noon. The airport is small, and the heat hits me the moment I step outside.
Dry and intense, the Mediterranean sun beats down on white stone and blue water.
I rent a car—a nondescript sedan that won't draw attention—and drive to the hotel I booked online.
It's modest and clean, nothing special. A place where I can set up surveillance without anyone asking questions.
The room is on the third floor, with a narrow balcony that overlooks the street.
I drop my bag on the bed and move to the window, scanning the area.
Isabelle's hotel is five miles away, perched on a cliff overlooking the sea.
I can't see it from here, but I know exactly where it is.
I've studied the layout online, and I could get to her easily if that's the way I decide to go about it.
I unpack my laptop and set it up on the small desk, pulling up the surveillance software I installed on her phone just after I spoke with Maddox again.
It was easy—a simple phishing email disguised as a notification from her bank, asking her to verify her account information.
She clicked the link without hesitation, probably assuming it was just because of her international travel, and within minutes, I had access to everything.
Her location, her messages, her calls, her photos.
It was so fucking easy. She's a lamb, unaware of how to protect herself in a world that's more dangerous than she could possibly imagine.
And I'm the wolf that's going to tear out her throat.
The software shows me her current location: still at her hotel. She hasn't left since she checked in this morning. I pull up her Instagram again. The photo of the sunset is still there, the caption still reads, " Finally feeling free.
Free. The word mocks me. She thinks she's free. Thinks she's escaped whatever suffocating life she had in New York. Thinks she's safe here, thousands of miles from home, surrounded by tourists and sunshine and the endless blue of the Aegean Sea.
She has no idea that I'm here. That I've been tracking her every move. That I'm the reason she'll never be free again.
That the man she gave access to just about every part of her is the same man who is going to take her life.