“Take a break,” she heard him tell the two guards who had finally noticed her approach. “It’s fine. Go have a smoke, and take him with you.”
“But, boss—”
“Go.”
They didn’t question the order again. Penny wondered, as the two men took the metal stairs down and passed her on the way, how many times they dared to question Cross Donati even once. By the look in his eye as he followed their retreating backs, it wasn’t very often. So was the life of a mafia boss, or that’s what she had come to learn.
The older man—with hair as dark as tar and only a whisper of gray despite the years that had left crow’s feet at the corner of his eyes—didn’t bother to stand even when Penny stood on the other side of the table from him. He tipped his head to the side, taking in her getup and the long white braid that she had flipped over her shoulder to at least keep it under control for the moment.
“Plans tonight?” he asked.
Penny shook her head. “Being cautious.”
“Yes, I suppose you have to do that now, don’t you? Comes with the territory of having a million-dollar bounty on your head.”
“Semantics.”
Cross gave her a look.
Penny only shrugged back.
Where was the lie?
“How did you find me?” he asked. “Tonight, specifically.”
“I know the right people. And I’m good at making phone calls.”
“And you’re here because—”
“Out of respect,” Penny told her former boss. “In case you had something to say to me, or you wanted to make a request. I thought it was only fair, considering ... well, you know.”
“That I paid millions for you to become what you did? That you’re offering a single million to make it all go away? That every effort we made to make you invisible was completely shot to shit? Or how about even that I’ve had to lie to my son and—”
“How did you know it was me—the bounty, I mean?”
Cross smirked, reaching forward for the glass of whiskey on the table. He downed half of what remained in the glass in one go and set it back down on the table with a crack. “Who else, Penny? Who else would do that the way it was done?”
“I’ve got a lot of enemies.”
“Now,” he agreed.
“I always did.”
The second she made her first kill within the ranks of pedophile rings overseas, she became a target. Each kill she added to the list after the first only added more to her back. It never really bothered her—that was a sacrifice she was willing to make, after all. Better her than ... everyone else.
Right?
She wasn’t so sure anymore.
“You didn’t need to come here—not for respect or anything else,” Cross told her, sighing as he cracked his knuckles and leaned back into the booth. “The contract with The League is void. You’re free to do what you want without my input, and honestly, I expect you to do just that.”
Well, then ...
“I am,” she replied softly.
“Then, you’re lying. Again. Like that night in the office on your birthday. You didn’t come here for the respect of the matter because I’m sure nothing I have said is anything you didn’t already know. Or suspect, either way. What are you lying about now?”
Penny swallowed hard, hating how he was right. “I’m trying to figure out something.”
“What?”
“What comes after, I guess. If there is one for me. I’ve been thinking about it. I have a lot of time to do that sort of thing lately. Apparently, they just kept me busy to keep me from thinking ... not because I was doing what everyone else wouldn’t.”
Cross considered her with that hard stare of his. The silence between them dragged on until she thought maybe it would be better to just turn around and leave. “That depends, Penny.”
“On what?”
“When the after is.” He lifted one shoulder, the blazer he wore custom fit to his tall form while the gold cufflinks caught the lights overhead when he waved an arm. “Because as soon as you do something irreversible that would hurt The League, they’re going to answer with an equal action. It’s inevitable. And you’ve made things easy—the cleanup, I mean—with the bounty. Can’t say I’ve ever heard of someone signing their own death warrant in such a way.”
The longer she stared at the man who had only been a part of her life for the last few years from a distance, the more she thought about the last time they had truly talked. Not the usual orders in a file, a new job discussed over a conference call, or a message passed between her handlers and delivered to her. They were never ... a team.
It wasn’t like that.
“I keep thinking back to when I was that terrified eighteen-year-old girl asking you to help me in that office,” Penny said, “and everything felt so hopeless. You were the only person that had a solution to my problem, but it didn’t get better.”
“The hopelessness?”
“Yeah.”
“And the solution wasn’t what I expected it to be, either. It did change everything for me, though.”
“For the better?” he asked.
Well ... look at me, she thought. Was it better?
“That’s yet to be determined,” Penny murmured in reply as she turned on her heel to leave, saying, “Thank you for seeing me tonight.”
“Penny,” Cross called at her back.
She hesitated. “What?”
“I hear there’s an important event coming up for Senator Tracey—an official engagement dinner to Allegra Hatheway.”
Her throat tightened with flaring anger that rose up from the pits of her empty belly. Even eating lately was an added chore. “It’s nothing.”
“Lies. It’s the first—maybe only—opening you’ll have to kill her. They know it, too. The League, The Elite. They’ll be expecting you there. Is that a risk you’re going to take?”
“What choice do I have?”
Even if it might kill her.
“Good luck,” Cross said.
Penny headed down the stairs, saying to herself, “I don’t need luck—I’m still trying to find hope.”
THE ROOF OF THE OFFICE building currently undergoing construction in its underground garage was twenty stories high. With lax security and a clear view of the Manhattan restaurant situated diagonally from the office building where Penny worked fast behind the shelter of an air conditioning system.
One piece at a time, her rifle came together under her skilled hands. The sniper would allow her miles of vision, but she only needed the block of distance between her roof and the front of the restaurant where her mother would soon be arriving alongside her senator fiancé.
The rattling of the air conditioning system was loud in her ear. Darkness coated her every movement, only the glow of lights from nearby buildings and a single security light somewhere at her back giving her any visibility to work.
Nothing she couldn’t handle.
Nothing she hadn’t done before.
She wouldn’t usually pick a spot like this to work. Beyond the difficulties the roof provided to her plan, the noise was distracting. No sniper with any choice in the matter would willingly choose to take long-distance shots through crosswinds while an air conditioner roared beside them. It was made for disaster.