The surprise on the other woman’s face was almost comical. “I don’t understand. I offered you what you want.” Confusion, doubt, and a hint of wariness entered her eyes. “This is what Requiem wants. This.”
Requiem reached down and handed her back her white robe. A protest formed on her lips, then fell, unsaid, as she looked deeper into Requiem’s eyes.
The woman pulled the robe on with jerky movements. The confidence of minutes before was evaporating and, as she slid her hand around one ear to curl her hair into place, the familiarity of the gesture hit Natalya in a blinding flash.
“It’s Mi Na, isn’t it?” she said in surprise, and she ran her eyes over her curiously. “Nabi’s sister? You were the one at boarding school while Nabi followed me around like a shadow, watching me as I learned the business. So you took over? In all her pursuits?” Her eyebrow lift was deliberately condescending.
How had this slip of a girl thought she could ever be as good as her assassin sister? Requiem studied her unmarked skin and bright eyes. No. There was no way she was an assassin. So what was she?
“Fuck you,” Mi Na said flatly, and the intonation was exactly the same as Nabi’s had once been when Requiem had shown her in vivid, naked detail the futility of trying to kill her. Worse, of trying to best her.
Mi Na narrowed her eyes and slowly reached for the CD player, turning up the volume on the gushing waterfalls and bird calls, to just short of deafening. Requiem tilted her head, watching her every move. She bounced lightly on her heels, waiting. The woman was an unarmed amateur. There was no threat. But she was curious.
Suddenly Mi Na reached for her foot and flipped her sandal over. Natalya saw the flash of metal too late.
She was fast, terrifyingly so, just like her sister had been, and slid the blade up to Requiem’s throat. But Requiem had three times the muscle mass on her, and immediately wrenched her hand away and twisted her arm behind her back. She debated whether to snap it. It would be so damned easy. A nice reminder as to who Mi Na was screwing with.
But Mi Na was as fast as Requiem was powerful. She took three light steps up the wall in front of her and somersaulted over Requiem, freeing her arm the moment her body was higher than her limb. On landing, she kicked the hot-rock crock pot at Requiem, who dodged it—barely.
Scorching rocks flew everywhere, tumbling under the table, towards the walls, and at Requiem, who kicked them away. Mi Na picked up a pair of the stones in her bare hands, seemingly not even noticing their searing heat. She hissed in fury, tossing one at Requiem’s head.
Requiem snapped her head away to allow it to whistle by, just as Mi Na hurled the other one. Using her forearm, Requiem smashed that away, too, ignoring the thud of pain. The rock flew straight back, slamming into Mi Na’s shoulder, and she grunted.
Mi Na threw her arms out wildly. One hand connected with a small, heavy Buddha statue which she grasped in her fist. She held it up like a club, swooping it viciously back and forth through the air. She hurled it.
Requiem spun out of the way. She didn’t move quite fast enough. The bronze weight thudded dully off her back, landing on a sore point. She winced. Again with her damn back scar?
She yanked the peace mobile down from the ceiling, just as the woman charged at her. Requiem sidestepped her like a bull fighter and wrapped the mess of metal and fishing line around her neck as she rushed by. Mi Na pulled up short and jerked and thrashed as the plastic wire bit savagely into her neck, her face turning hot red.
Requiem yanked hard, as Mi Na, clawing at her throat, desperately tried to free herself. Pulling her close, Requiem leaned into her ear. “One tug and you’re dead.” She yanked the fishing wire a little to make her point. “You’re nowhere near as good as your sister was. If Nabi had wanted it, I’d already be dead. I was aware of her many talents, and she had so many. I still think fondly of several of them.”
Mi Na growled at the suggestiveness, designed to provoke.
Requiem smiled. The enraged often made mistakes. “So tell me, were you planning to fillet me as we fucked?” Requiem asked. “Or was this seduction routine just to whet my appetite? What you really wanted was for me to agree to meet your fictitious boss somewhere later so you could dispose of my body out of the way? Mm?”
Mi Na cried out as Requiem tightened her hold on the fishing wire. “Answer!”
The woman hissed out a “yes”, pain etching her features.
“Well, points for originality. Shame about the execution.”
A peace symbol was pressing into the side of Mi Na’s face, creating an ironic imprint. Requiem almost laughed. “So why not kill me while I was on the table? Too messy? Harder to hide the stains?”
“With your back turned?” Mi Na said, squeezing out her words with difficulty. “You think I have no honour.”
“No honour?” Requiem repeated. “You even sound like her. Who hired you? The dregs of Fleet Crew? Or someone else?”
“No one. This is for myself. For family honour.”
Family honour. Requiem’s grip eased. She’d been right: this silly girl was no assassin. Great. A civilian on a vengeance kick. Although Mi Na had obviously had some actual training. “Family honour? What does that even mean? Nabi and I were not enemies in the end.”
“You broke her heart. She told me. You broke her. Then…I found out later you killed her. You shot her, when she was trying to protect her boss.”
Requiem said nothing for a moment, picking apart the anguish in the words, like ligaments from muscles. “I never killed her.” She didn’t bother denying the rest. The girl’s misplaced affections were hardly her fault.
“You used her! Treated her like dirt. And Sal said you killed her. It’s my right to avenge her. He trained me to fight you.”
Requiem sighed. Saliya Govi. The new head of Fleet Crew. Freshly out of jail, if her sources were right. He’d been the smartest gang member left standing when the dust had cleared after Requiem had betrayed the entire Australian underworld. She had wondered how long it would take someone to figure out she’d been the one. Of course Sal didn’t know for sure, so he’d manipulated Mi Na and sent her after Requiem. No matter the outcome, his hands were clean.
Slippery little shit.
“I didn’t kill your sister,” Requiem said in irritation. “Sal has his own agenda. She died of her wounds when police shot her as she was trying to escape.”
“Bullshit! And she didn’t deserve to die in some dirty alley like she was nothing. She mattered. She mattered to me.”
A burst of scrambling and twisting resulted in Mi Na wriggling out of Requiem’s grip. She let the woman go and sat back on her haunches.
Mi Na did the same and rubbed the red lines at her neck as they eyed each other cautiously, four feet apart.
“I didn’t kill her, like I said,” Requiem said. “Mi Na, your sister was someone I could no more kill than she could kill me. That was our relationship. Dysfunctional and complicated, but for assassins, that counts as downright friendly.”
There was a strangled, tortured noise and Mi Na brought her hands up to cover her face. Tears slid out from between her fingers as she wept silently.
Requiem stared at the emotional display with distaste, stomach plummeting. She wasn’t any good at this. The failings and frailties of humanity were nothing she’d mastered, beyond how to exploit them. The adrenaline was wearing off as the threat passed. She felt the stillness inside herself, and the seeping away of the part of her that was raw, pure, and dangerous, until Requiem faded.