* * *
I blushed and started to type a new message. Over the past few weeks, he’d surpassed all of my wildest fantasies in bed, showed me just how many times I could come in a single night, and pushed my body to its ultimate limit. Our “one more date” had longed turned into every other night, and each one ended with sex that stamped its way onto my memory.
I still wanted more, though. More talking. More romance. More us.
“Um, Meredith?” My father waved his hand in front of my face, interrupting my thoughts in the middle of brunch. “Meredith?”
“Huh?” I blinked a few times. “What’s going on?”
“Well, you’ve done nothing but blush and stare at your phone for the past twenty minutes, so I was wondering if it would be okay if we could talk for five minutes without it.”
“I’m sorry.” I set my phone on the table. “I didn’t even realize I was doing that.”
“It’s okay.” He gently tapped my hand and signaled for a waitress. “New boyfriend?”
“I’m not sure yet.” I bit my lip before I could say something personal. We weren’t even halfway there yet. “We just really like each other.”
“Hmmm. Well, hopefully one day you’ll be comfortable enough to let him meet me over dinner.”
I nodded, saying nothing. I wasn’t getting my hopes up on rebuilding anything just yet. Even though my heart was ready to jump all in, he’d let me down too many times before.
The moment the waitress took our orders and walked away, my father gently grabbed my hand atop the table and looked into my eyes.
“Look, Meredith,” he said, “I am a terrible father, and I know that to my core. I was also quite terrible to your mother, and I wish there was a way to make things up with her, like I plan to make things up with you.” He looked more genuine than I’d ever known him to be. “I don’t want to take the time I have left with you for granted anymore, and I would like to meet up with you for once a week until…Until you feel like we don’t need weekly check-ins to be around each other. I really want to be a part of your life, and I want to show you I’m capable of being a good father. Please let me.”
I blinked, unsure of what to say. I felt tears pricking my eyes, but I refused to let them fall.
“I’m also willing to file the cancellation paperwork for the campaign,” he said.
“I thought you did that already…”
“I did.” He smiled, squeezing my hand. “You have to go through five stages to file to run and fifteen stages to get out of it.”
I laughed and squeezed his hand in return. “Okay. We can start over. How’s every Sunday?”
“Perfect.” He let my hand go, and asked me about my day. Before I could answer, the hostess approached our table with a huge bouquet of flowers. It was three dozen white roses, with six black roses standing in their center.
“Oh, wow,” my dad said. “Who are those from?”
I opened the small envelope and blushed once I read the words.
I like you.
I’m outside in my car.
Come out and fuck me once you’re done.
(Is this ‘romantic’ enough for you?)
“My boss,” I said, putting the note away. “She’s really proud of me these days.”
“So, I’ve heard.” He nodded. “Tell me a bit more about that…”
Michael
Before
There was no easy way to admit it. I’d fucked things up in the worst way possible, and the only way things could possibly be salvageable, was if I were to suddenly burst into flames.
I was dating someone for the first time in damn near two decades. Someone who I actually liked outside of the bedroom.
She infiltrated my thoughts when I least expected it, made my nights better with her contagious, raspy laughter, and she kept my mind guessing with her random conversations about nothing at all.
Not only that, but I was willingly sending her gifts. Fucking flowers every day.
In all my years of work, I’d never crossed the line with a target. I’d infiltrated their lives in various ways—posed as a cab driver, pretended to be a security guard or a doorman, the new man at Central Park who has an obsession with feeding the pigeons, but I never said more than a few words at a time.
I was forgettable and memorable all at once.
There was no way that Meredith wouldn’t recognize me when it came time for me to handle her, and I’d lost track of what I was supposed to do to her in a few weeks. Well, I wanted to believe that was the case. I couldn’t focus on that right now, though. Not with another job in front of me.
I looked at my watch and set the timer before taking one last look around a soon-to-be dead businessman’s condo.
Five minutes. Forty-eight seconds…
This was always my favorite part of the job, the storytelling part. It was the closest I’d ever get to writing a damn book. Every scene had to be perfect, and it had to reveal exactly what I needed it to, in my preferred order.
I’d always specialized in self-inflicted wounds and accidents; I never did direct kills unless it was absolutely necessary. I’d freeze the brake lines on a target’s car overnight, so by the time they warmed up on the highway, they’d snap and force the car into a fatal tailspin; the crash investigators always pointed the finger at the manufacturing company. I’d add trace amounts of mercury to an obsessed coffee drinker’s cup, several months at a time. By the time they passed away and the autopsy was complete, their favorite mug being “on recall” was revealed as the silent killer.
I adjusted the picture frames on the wall, opened a few files that the responding officers would need to find, and made sure that the USB drive with his horrific crimes was in the middle of the coffee table. As I was adjusting the pillows on the couch, the door opened, and my target—the fifty-eight-year old CEO of a major toy company walked through the door.
“What the—” He dropped his briefcase onto the floor. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m the last person who’s going to see you alive, Mr. Donovan.” I looked at my watch. Three minutes.
“Okay, so you’re a comedian.” He rolled his eyes and pulled out his cell phone. “We’ll see how much you laugh when the cops get here and charge you with breaking and entering.”
“I already called the cops,” I said. “They’ll be here in exactly two minutes and forty-nine seconds.”
“Okay, Clown-Man. Can you please just get the hell out of my apartment and—” He stopped once he saw all of the pictures I’d scattered all over his floor, his printed version of high crimes. Some of them starred his own family members.
“Distributing child-porn is probably one of the most disgusting crimes there is, Mr. Donovan,” I said, noticing how his face was losing color by the second. “But what you do is far more heinous than that, isn’t it?”
He swallowed, looked away from me. “How much money do you need to make this go away?”
“This isn’t about your money,” I said, pulling a gun out of my pocket and setting it on the coffee table. “This is about someone wanting to even the score. Unfortunately for you, they’ve selected me to be in charge of the game.”