Julian
The message comes through to my encrypted app early in the morning, from Maddox. Calling you on the burner. Answer NOW.
My gut tightens instantly. I've been awake for a while already, working on my laptop next to the window while Isabelle lightly snores across the room. I've been trying to predict where the next threat might come from, and all the scenarios I've run through seem to end badly.
I've also been trying to find where this goddamn contract has come from, and I'm coming up blank on that, too.
I can't remember the last time I was this frustrated.
No one seems able or willing to track how the contract might have come to the Capetti family, and I can't lock down where the next attack might hit, either.
All I feel fucking good for is killing, right now. And I can't even do that right, anymore.
I answer when the burner phone buzzes, glancing once more at Isabelle before stepping out quietly into the hall. My stomach is churning—I know this can't be good.
"Julian." His voice is flat. "We need to discuss your situation."
My hand tightens on the phone. "What situation?"
"Don't insult my intelligence. You know exactly what situation." Maddox pauses. "The Montague contract. The one you accepted and failed to complete."
Failed. The word hangs in the air like a guillotine blade.
"I'm working on it," I say, keeping my voice level. "The target is proving more difficult to isolate than anticipated."
"The target is sleeping in the next room." Maddox's voice doesn't change, but my stomach drops like a rock. "You've been traveling with her for over a week. You've had countless opportunities to complete the contract. And yet she's still breathing."
My jaw tightens. "Are you watching me, Maddox?"
"No," he says flatly. "But your current employers are. And they passed the information along to me, so I could let you know that they're fucking pissed, Julian."
The words settle over me like ice water. The mafia knows I've been protecting their target instead of killing her. Which means my reputation is destroyed. My credibility as an assassin who always completes the job—the thing that's kept me alive and employed for fifteen years—is gone.
"I can explain—" No, I can't. Fucking a target is stupid, but as long as they end up dead after, excusable, so long as DNA isn't left behind.
But this… in my world, this has absolutely no excuse.
Whatever I feel for Isabelle, whatever has apparently severed my ability to make any kind of logical decisions when it comes to what to do with her, has no place in this world, and never will.
"I'm not interested in explanations." Maddox cuts me off, his tone still maddeningly calm. "I'm interested in solutions. And fortunately for you, I've negotiated one."
My teeth grind together. "What kind of solution?"
"The kind that might save your life." He lets that sink in for a moment.
"You have twenty-four hours to complete the original contract.
Kill the girl. Provide proof of death. If you do that—if you finish the job you were hired to do—there's a chance we can salvage this.
Your reputation will take a hit, but you'll survive.
The family might even be willing to overlook the delay if the job gets done. "
Twenty-four hours. The number echoes in my head, impossible and final. "And if I don't?" I already know the answer, but I need to hear him say it.
"Then a contract goes out on you one minute past that.
One million dollars for your head. Every assassin in Europe will be hunting you, and unlike the girl, you won't have anyone trying to keep you alive.
" Maddox pauses. "You're good, Julian. One of the best I've ever worked with.
But you can't run forever. Not from that kind of money. Not from that many hunters."
One million dollars. It's more than enough to bring plenty of professional killers and every desperate amateur out of the woodwork. More than enough to ensure my death within days, maybe hours if the right ones decide that the figure is worth their energy.
"This is your only chance," Maddox continues. "Twenty-four hours to make this right. After that, you're on your own."
"And if I complete the contract? If I kill her?" The words taste like poison in my mouth. You could do it. She's sleeping right now. She could be dead before she wakes up. All of this could be over.
"Then we move forward. The family gets what they paid for. You get to keep breathing. Everyone wins." He pauses. "Except the girl, of course."
I close my eyes, feeling the weight of the impossible choice pressing down on me. Kill Isabelle and save myself. Or refuse and die knowing I protected her for as long as I could.
And she'll die anyway.
"I need time to think," I say.
"You have twenty-four hours to think. Use them wisely.
" Maddox's voice softens slightly, the closest thing to sympathy I've ever heard from him.
"For what it's worth, Julian, I'm sorry it came to this.
You're a good operator. One of the best. But business is business, and the mafia doesn't tolerate failure. "
"I understand."
"Do you, Julian?" Maddox pauses, and I can practically hear him thinking. "It seems like you've developed some feelings, Carros. And feelings make you sloppy. They make you weak. They get you killed."
"I don't have feelings for her."
"Then prove it. Twenty-four hours. Don't waste them."
The line goes dead.
I remove the SIM from the burner and destroy it. And then I sit in the darkness, feeling like the floor has dropped out from under me. Twenty-four hours. One day to decide, once again, whether I'm going to kill the woman sleeping in the next room or die trying to protect her.
The rational part of my brain knows what I should do.
I should walk into that bedroom right now, put a bullet in her head while she's sleeping, and be done with it.
She'd never know what hit her. I could be on a plane out of Croatia within the hour, back to my life, back to being the Grim Reaper who never fails a contract.
In time, the shadow of my temporary break with reality will pass.
But the thought of it—of pressing the gun to her temple, pulling the trigger, and watching the life leave her eyes—makes me physically ill.
I can't do it. Even knowing what it will cost me, even knowing that refusing means my own death, I can't kill her.
Which means I have twenty-four hours to figure out how to save us both.
Or twenty-four hours to say goodbye.
—
I throw myself into work with desperate intensity, pulling up every contact, every lead, every piece of information I've gathered over the past week.
The laptop screen glows in the pre-dawn darkness, casting harsh shadows across my face as I dig deeper into the network of assassins hunting Isabelle.
The list is longer than I expected, and worse than I feared.
Just from the information I can dig up through my resources, I figure out at least three who are close on our tail, one of whom is ex-special forces from Russia, and another who is a former cartel.
Three of the best killers in the business, all converging on the same target.
All hunting the woman sleeping in the next room.
And that's just the professionals.
I pull up another screen, scanning through the chatter on the dark web forums where freelancers and amateurs trade information.
The bounty on Isabelle has been increased again, and I count at least a dozen confirmed hunters, probably twice that many who haven't announced themselves yet.
She's the most valuable target on the continent right now.
And I'm the only thing standing between her and a bullet.
My phone buzzes with an incoming message. Encrypted, from one of my oldest contacts in the network. Heard about your situation. Price on your head is one mil as of an hour ago. Every operator in Europe knows you're compromised. Watch your back.
I'm a dead man walking. We both are. And all I feel is a strange, hollow calm. Like I've already accepted what's coming. Like I made my choice the moment I refused to kill her in Santorini, and everything since then has just been delaying the inevitable.
I have twenty-four hours to decide whether to kill her or die protecting her. But the truth is, I already know what I'm going to do. I'm going to die.
The only question is how many of them I can take with me first, and if I can find some way to get Isabelle safe. If I can delay this long enough to cancel her hit. It won't save me, but if I can find a pinch point, a way to whoever targeted her, maybe I can still get her out of this.
Maybe I can do one goddamned good thing in my entire rotten life so far.
I pull up maps of Croatia, calculating how long we can stay ahead of the hunters before they corner us.
Days, maybe, a week if we're lucky. My hands are shaking, and I realize I'm exhausted—not just physically, but emotionally.
Mentally. The constant vigilance, the endless calculations, the weight of keeping her alive while knowing I'm the reason she's in danger in the first place. It's crushing me.
But I can't stop, or we'll both die. And it will happen sooner rather than later.
If it were just me, I might get some good liquor, get good and drunk one last time, hole up with enough firepower to take out as many as I could coming through the door, and just stay here until I couldn't hold out any longer. But it's not just me.
So I keep working, searching for a solution that I'm not sure exists.
I get two more emails from contacts of my own, saying they're not willing to piss off the Capetti family by tracing their accounts to try to figure out where the hit might have come from.
I haven't been able to hack into anything myself.
The sun rises slowly, and I'm still sitting at the table, still staring at the screen, still trying to find a way to save her.
Twenty-three hours left.