Last Kiss (Hitman #3) (16 page)

I thought we were a team. I thought he liked me. Not just as Naomi, but . . . like men like women. I enjoyed fellating him in the club. I wanted to do more to him.

And all this time he has been plotting to kill my brother? My parents if they stood in his way? It hurts to think about. “What about me? What if I stood in your way?”

“Ah, that is an interesting question.”

“That’s not an answer.” This is unnerving. “You’re worrying me.”

“You should be worried, Naomi,” he says, swirling the ice in his glass before raising it to his mouth again. Same spot we have both drank from. “I think tonight at the club has made me realize you are not afraid of me. And perhaps you should be.”

Maybe I should after all. I stare at him and then retreat to my room, locking the door behind me. I remove my clothes and crawl into bed to sleep, but I’m not tired. I keep seeing mental images of Vasily with the gun. Shooting Mom. Shooting Dad. Shooting Daniel.

I feel sick to my stomach. How can I want someone so much and know they would hurt those I love? How can he be so tender to me one moment and so brutal the next?

VASILY

I should comfort her. Place a hand on her shoulder and soothe her tears, but it’s better that she is afraid. Ignoring the tightness in my chest, I pack our few belongings. I do not care that she fears me. I do not care that she is weeping. I do not care that I can still feel her wet mouth covering my hard cock.

I am Vasily Petrovich. I have no feelings.

And I have no excuse like Naomi. I have no feelings because feelings are an impediment to success. If I felt, then I would drown in self-loathing, disgust, and hatred. I would still be that little boy, trying to protect his sister with a fork against the vile beast who begat us. Or the older boy who gave up his body so that his sister could remain innocent. Or the young man who killed and destroyed so that he would not be victimized again.

If I had feelings, I would fly to Moscow, go to the apartment of
Elena Petrovich, and blow a hole in her perfectly made-up face. But feelings don’t change the past and they won’t change the future.

I do not care.

Not at all.

The weeping.

The fear.

The hate she now stokes in her belly.

None of it matters.

There is only one thing that I seek, and that is power. With power, my enemies will be crushed, and the heel of my boot will grind down on the neck of any who seek to oppose me and mine. I can offer Naomi physical gratification, protection, and maybe even peace.

But I won’t give her comfort, affection, or . . . love. Those are for the weak. And even if I wanted to, I don’t know how.

My body may burn for her in a way as strong as my desire to kill Elena smolders inside of me. But a warrior’s life is one of abstinence and delayed gratification.

It does not matter that I want to fuck Naomi, that I desire to slake my weak body at the fountain of her bountiful one. But as much as I try to shut Naomi out of my mind, visions of her nude body lit by the computer screen or her in the lingerie and filmy robe appear each time I close my eyes. My cock can still feel her wet mouth sucking on its hard length. She is generous and brave and I am none of those things. Even if I could touch her, I do not deserve to do so.

Resolutely I turn to the feeble nightlife stumbling around the Spanish Steps. From my seventh-floor balcony, I could easily pick the tourists off, one by simpleminded one. Despite the earliness of the hour, the street vendors are still hawking their five-euro roses and cheap toys. One at the top of the steps near the hotel, the
vendor is repeatedly throwing his glow-in-the-dark gel ball in the air. I pull out my rifle and scope and take aim.

He throws it up and it spirals in the air for a count of five before it descends. He tosses it again. I count off, breathe, and pull the trigger. The moment the ball and the bullet impact, time slows. The neon liquid inside the gel ball explodes, like paint spatters onto a black canvas. At the base of the lamppost, the vendor’s head is tilted back and his jaw is dropped.

And then time resumes. The ball falls. Drunk partiers cry out in fear and stumble down the steps. Other vendors start packing up, but the gel-ball male simply stares up in the sky wondering where his toy has gone. The ether has it now.

The position of the moon in the sky alerts me to the time. The forger will be open for business. In the bedroom, Naomi is still slumbering. The lushness of her body is evident even under the linen sheets, cotton blanks, and comforter.

To look and not touch is tormenting. My body tightens as I imagine ripping the covers off of her and diving between her legs. Our mouths would mate fiercely as I thrust into her slick channel, relieving the growing tension between us.

I would not be gentle—not that first time—but I would see that she came. I know many tricks. How to twist my hips to strike the spongy bit of extra-sensitive flesh. The right position so that my pelvic bone rubs against her clit. The precise point between too hard and too soft when my teeth are scraping against her tits. I haven’t had to employ these tricks in some time and never really for pure pleasure.

But I would like to see how Naomi would respond, how she would catalog each effort and measure each response.

It takes more effort than I care to acknowledge to wrench myself away.

Below me the taxi appears.

“It is time to go, Naomi,” I call.

She stumbles out of the bedroom, dressed in a gown of pale peach. The silky material clings to her peaks and creates enticing shadows in her valleys. Her hair is tousled and the red lipstick she’d applied for the club is smeared. She looks like she was fucked hard and enjoyed it. My cock thickens in response to the sight. Perhaps I should have shot myself after I finished Emile.

I toss her a long jacket. She can change on the train.

“Let’s go,” I say. My tone is shorter, more terse than ordinary, but gods in heaven, what is a man to do when presented with that kind of temptation?

She shrugs on the trench coat while I dismantle my rifle and pack it away. I want to avoid looking at her, but I cannot. Her stocking-covered legs beneath the knee-length trench hint at what I know is beneath. She looks doubly provocative. More enticing than the vestal virgins probably appeared to the invading barbarians.

In the lobby as we check out, I strain not to pummel the slack-jawed clerk who stares at her with lust in his eyes.

“We need a taxi,” I bark. When he does not take his gaze from her, I bark, “Taxi for Termini Stazione. Now!”

My sharp command has him nodding and doing my bidding, but not without one last glance at Naomi. I should pull out my gun and shoot him.

Naomi still blinks owl eyed at me as if not fully awake. “Where are we going?”

Part of me wants to reveal nothing to her. No, that is not correct. Part of me wants to reveal all to her. To place my head in her soft lap and shudder out all my concerns as she pets me like a domesticated wolf. So I give her only the smallest of details. “Firenze.”

“Firenze?”

“Florence,” I translate.

She contemplates this for a moment, and then her gears engage. I can almost see it happening out of the corner of my eye, because as much as I don’t want to gape, I find I cannot look away.

“That’s where the statue of David is. I’d like to see that. Oh and the Uffizi gallery would be nice. There’s Botticelli’s
Birth of Venus
. Have you seen it? Can we go to the leaning Tower of Pisa? I’d like to study that up close to see how exactly it’s still upright.”

“Those places are crowded. Many people.”

“Oh . . . I guess, maybe it would be okay. I could try the earplugs again.”

I rub a hand down my face. “I am sorry, Naomi. I am anxious to be on our way and that is why I am short with you. Perhaps another time we will do these things, but not this trip.”

“Oh of course. I get it.”

Her gracious acceptance of my surliness makes me feel even worse, and I find I cannot speak as we ride the taxi to the train station.

Dawn light is peeking through the clouds, casting a rosy glow over the landscape. Even the squat ugly Termini station looks romantic in this light. Throwing the driver money, I pull Naomi out of the vehicle and then grab our bags. I’d chosen the earliest train so as to avoid most of the crowds. The seats I have reserved are in the silent section of the business-class
carrozze
.

I stow our two bags in the seats across from the bolted table and gesture for Naomi to sit. She climbs in without a word and stares out the window. Her lips are moving but I can’t make out her words. Throwing my body down into the seat beside her, I slide the compartment door shut. It’s like a glass-enclosed tomb now. Silent and oppressive.

Why do I push her away when she has been nothing but accepting of me, my bloody violent ways, and my own idiosyncrasies? She has had opportunity to betray me. Her previous lies
were
out of self-protection.

There’s a shift inside me. I no longer want this distance between us, but since I am the one that placed it there, I must remove it.

“Do you want to change?” I ask.

She does not respond.

“Naomi?”

Again she ignores me. She’s added a slight rocking motion to her repetitious, soundless words. The train fills slowly, almost agonizingly slow. Tapping my fingers on the table, I stare at the back of her head where the hair is tangled. She can’t like that. Naomi is a person of order and precision. That she has not tried to straighten her hair is worrying. Reaching into her bag, I pull out a brush.

“This is a high-speed train. It will take only slightly more than an hour and we will be in Firenze.” I pull the brush through slowly, carefully ensuring that the brush does not tug on her roots. Years of brushing someone else’s hair has taught me things. I tamp down those memories. Slowly I brush one small section and then another, almost separating each strand individually. “Firenze is an interesting city. It’s landlocked, having no access to any major ports. Despite this, the Arno River has wreaked devastation upon the land. In the sixties, the river flooded and knocked down Ghiberti’s baptistery doors and ruined countless other precious artifacts. There are markers all over the city noting the flood levels. They are higher than your head, Naomi.” Her rocking has stopped and part of the rigidity in her frame has melted, but she still holds herself apart. The tangles are almost gone, but I keep brushing, smoothing her hair into a silk curtain of chestnut and bronze.

“The baptistery doors are outside. In the early morning hours there are few people about. The Cimetière de San Miniato al Monte is open air as well. There would be no crowds there. Inside the Santa Maria del Fiore is an entrance to Santa Reparata. It is the original cathedral, and the Santa Maria is built on top of it. There would be no one down there. It is not Pisa or the
Birth of Venus
, but it is part of the heart of Firenze.”

“Will you take me?” she says quietly.

“
Da
,” I answer hoarsely. Her supplication is a piercing arrow. I prefer my Naomi to be mouthy and outspoken. “I will, but first, we must go to Guillaume. He is familiar with the scene in Florence and will be able to provide us entrée.”

“What type of man is he?”

I smile ruefully, because it is a perfectly worded question. Not who is he, but what kind of man he is “He is a collector of things. Not of the Madonna, though. He would not be interested in a religious triptych. Rather he likes profane and unusual things. A bull’s penis used by a holy man in Persia to relieve virgins of their hymens the night of their weddings, for example.”

At this, Naomi turns, bright eyed. Her interest is piqued and she cannot resist asking me questions. “How is it not desiccated? Right after death, it would start to atrophy and decay. Is it some sort of mummification? Do you think he would show it to me? What else does he have? I once tried to mummify a frog at school. We were supposed to dissect it but I thought it would be interesting to mummify it first and then dissect it to compare and contrast the aging of the organs, but my teacher wouldn’t allow it. He felt that would be an improper use of the frog. But the frog was already dead so it isn’t like it would have feelings. It seemed like an entirely appropriate use of the specimen.”

“The penis is likely carved out of ivory but I agree. The frog was already dead,” I say, amused by the story. Naomi as a student must have been a terror. Smarter than her teachers, no doubt they were ill equipped to handle her questions and thirst for knowledge. “Your parents? What did they say?”

“Oh they moved me out of the school then and put me in a different one, designed for people like me.”

“Other Asperger’s sufferers?”

“No. You know . . . weirdos.”

“You are not weird, Naomi,” I respond sharply.

She shrugs. “Whatever. The school was good. We all learned at our own pace, some advancing faster than others. Once you reached a certain level, though, they made you take university classes. One girl told me that those classes were even worse because the professors aren’t interested in being challenged and you simply have to regurgitate what they say in lectures during examinations. I stayed in my little Montessori school for as long as possible until they finally realized I wasn’t actually doing anything.”

“How did you find the university?”

Another shrug. “The same. I was able to do a few independent studies such as the one I did on the Selfish Gene theory and whether it is still applicable given the new understanding of gene regulation—how genes turn themselves on and off. Dawkins coined the Selfish Gene in 1976 building on the late-eighteen-hundreds work by Mendel on gene theory.”

At my blank stare, she explains. “Dawkins said that a gene replicates if it is necessary for survival or adaptability and the other genes that are unnecessary die out but new understanding of how genes function are giving rise to new hypotheses. Of course, there’s no answer yet, but because there isn’t an answer I
didn’t have to give someone else’s. I could make up my own. That was fun.”

A knock on the glass door interrupts our discussion. “
Tè o caffè
?”