I peer out over the beautiful vista of crystal blue water and whitewashed stone buildings, the volcanic rock cliffs in the distance, reluctant to divulge my location. I sank a good chunk of my last payout on renting this one-bedroom villa for the month. It’s my private sanctuary, where I can revel in anonymity and peace for a while, before finding somewhere else to drift to.
Bentley has never asked before. But he also has the technical capabilities to trace this call. If he really wants to find out, then he will. In fact, the second I picked up, he probably already had his answer. “Where do I need to be?” I say instead.
“San Francisco.”
I hesitate, caught off guard. My assignments are all in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Never on homeland soil. This doesn’t make sense. But I also know not to question him, especially over the phone. “Give me four days.” My rent here is paid up for another three weeks.
“I need you here in two.”
“Then call someone else.” I say it, knowing he won’t. Bentley has plenty of highly trained resources at his disposal. If he’s calling me, it’s because he can’t call anyone else. He needs me.
“Fine. Four days. We can discuss more at my place.”
Again, I’m taken aback. Never before have I met directly with Bentley when being handed an assignment. But something is different about this one, I’m sensing. Something in his voice tells me that it’s more urgent than usual. “I’ll contact you with arrival particulars.” I don’t wait for his answer before I hang up. Our calls are never very long or detail heavy. Just enough for me to know that I’m about to get my hands dirty again, all for the greater good.
A soft meow catches my ear. The resident tabby cat—a whore who hops from one villa to the next, sharing her affections without discrimination—struts across the thick balcony wall to me, her tail curling in the air as she approaches. I stroke the soft patch of fur beneath her chin and listen to her purr while I begin to mentally prepare myself for my return to California.
It’s been almost five years since I last stepped foot on American soil. Soil that once brought me purpose, love, and determination. Then pain, weakness.
Disgrace.
What will it bring me now?
My hand drops from the cat’s chin, deciding I’ve given her more than enough. She leans forward, head-butts my arm—allowing me a chance to reconsider, to show her the kind of love that I am no longer capable of—before giving up and scuttling away.
With a sigh and one last glance over the peaceful blue waters, I flick the cigarette butt that sits mashed up on the railing and venture back inside to where an olive-skinned Grecian beauty is sprawled across my bed. She’s the smoker, and an unexpected outcome of last night, while I enjoyed a quiet solo meal by the water. A curvy, sensual woman, much like the tabby cat, stalking in to impose herself on my life. Except her affections weren’t as easily dismissed, wearing away at my defenses over the hours with throaty laughs and wandering fingertips.
Manipulating my loneliness.
I rarely succumb to it, but last night, I did.
I also must have had too many glasses of that pricey Limnio, because I don’t usually end up in my own bed with a prostitute.
I slide a hand back and forth over the smooth skin of her hip until she stirs with a small groan. Eyes as blue as the Aegean Sea below us flutter open to meet mine. Her plump natural lips—that were wrapped around my cock with such expertise last night—curl into a smile. “Good morning, American,” she purrs in her thick accent, reaching for me. “You want more, don’t you?”
Had I not just received that call from Bentley, I probably would have taken her again. But minutes within getting news of my next assignment, my mind is already shifting focus, shutting down my weak human urges, preparing the rest of me for what is to come.
I quash her efforts for a repeat by filling her groping fingers with her crimson dress. “You can let yourself out.”
“But . . . last night was . . .” She stumbles over her own surprise. “Will I see you again?”
There’s no use pretending that either of us is something we’re not, that we will be more to each other than we were for a few paid hours last night. So I don’t bother answering, leaving her on my bed to head to the bathroom, feeling her anger blazing into my back.
“You will pay me!” she suddenly demands.
That catches me off guard and I stop to face her again, to search for the joke in her words. “I already paid you, last night.” She was quite adamant that she got her cash before her dress came off. I haven’t forgotten. I didn’t have that much to drink.
The bed creaks as she climbs from it, her naked curves swaying with her naturally seductive strut toward me. “That was my fee for two hours. For the whole night, you will pay me five hundred euro.”
I burst out in a rare fit of laughter. “You want me to pay you because you fell asleep next to me?”
Fire dances in her eyes as she glares at me, waiting expectantly.
I simply turn my back on her, locking the bathroom door behind me, shaking my head. I pay for whores so I can get what I want without a hassle. This is a hassle.
I soak under the hot water a few minutes longer than my usual seven, wanting to give her adequate time to figure out she can’t swindle me, collect her scattered belongings, get dressed, and leave with some semblance of dignity. Mainly, so I don’t have to talk to her again.
Honestly, I don’t know if she’ll leave. She’d probably steal my shit while I’m in here, if I had anything in plain sight worth stealing. This place is a mausoleum, though—empty white walls and sparse furnishings, void of all personality, perfect for renting out. She could take my wallet, with no remaining cash in it, no credit cards, and a false driver’s license, if she really wants to. My passports and valuables are all locked in a safety-deposit box at the city bank. My other IDs and my gun are in a safe, and I assume cracking safes isn’t where her talents lie.
I continue with my morning ritual, taking my time to oil and lather my face before I begin carving the dark stubble from my cheeks with a straight razor. It’s the best tool for a well-defined strip of hair along my jaw, the beginnings of a beard that I like to keep short. A suitable everyday disguise, without going overboard.
Giving my body a good dry, I wrap the towel around my waist and open the door. It’s been twenty minutes. I assume she has given up by now.
My peripheral vision catches the glint of a blade as it approaches my throat from the right. If I weren’t me—with quick reflexes and well-honed combat skills and a steely demeanor—I would have panicked, giving the heavyset man she let into my villa a chance to maim me, perhaps kill me. But because I am who I am—what I am—I’m already moving to respond, my blood surging through my veins, my heart rate picking up with excitement.
Deftly grabbing hold of his meaty wrist, I twist until he yelps and is forced to release his grip on the handle, all while the whore stands in the doorway, her face trying to suppress her fright, her arms roped around that impressive rack in a hug. I retrieve the ten-inch chef’s knife that one of them must have plucked from my kitchen and set it on my dresser, beyond easy reach.
I’m guessing this isn’t the way they expected it to go.
“Who are you?” Besides a three-hundred-pound bastard with an obnoxious layer of chains tangled in the forest of chest hair protruding from a half-unbuttoned shirt.
He answers with a swinging arm, forcing me to duck and throw him face-first against the wall. He rolls his face to the side, smearing blood across the pristine white walls.
And now I’m irritated, because I’ll have to clean up that mess. “Let’s try that again. Who the fuck are you?” I already know who he is. Her pimp, who must have been sleeping in his car nearby, waiting for her call to see if this scam worked and I paid up, or if he’d need to come and put muscle behind it to intimidate me.
When he doesn’t answer, I tug on his arm. If I pull on it any tighter behind his back, his should
er is going to pop out of its socket.
“You pay Alena for whole night,” he forces out in broken English, his face contorted in pain.
That’s right. That’s her name. “I don’t owe Alena anything. We made no agreements for the entire night and I didn’t ask her to stay,” I simply say.
“You had all night. Pay!” he insists, though it’s lacking any conviction. I wonder how much of a cut he’s getting. On an island of about fifteen thousand residents, you’d think there’d be no use for this racket. Then again, Santorini sees upward of half a million tourists each year, so there’s probably a lot of suckers.
I’m sure she does damn well, especially if letting her gorilla-size boss in when her mark turns his back to extort money is her MO.
I’m well within my rights to refuse, and well within my ability to break a dozen bones in this asshole’s body before tossing him to the curb, but right now I just want them to get the fuck out. I release my grip and the guy’s body sags with relief. “And here I thought it was true love,” I mumble, fishing a twenty from my dress pants that lay rumpled on the floor where they fell last night. Nowhere near the three hundred extra she’s claiming. “This is all you’re getting out of me.”
She scoffs at the single bill. “I could scream,” she hisses with defiance, the remnants of her crimson lipstick making her lips look touched with blood. Fire and fear smolder in her eyes as they trail over my naked chest, over the towel hanging low on my hips.
“Or you could take this money that we didn’t agree to, walk out that door, and pretend we never met. Which option do you think would be smarter?”
She doesn’t answer. She must be able to hear the unnatural calm in my voice, the lack of panic or worry. She must sense that I’m not her average score. I’d like to give her that much credit, at least.
“This scam of yours isn’t really smart, Alena.” I take three steps to hover within inches of her face. “You never know what kind of man you will end up trying to dupe.” Her pimp is behind me but I’ve long been trained to be acutely aware of a threat’s movements, even when out of sight. So I’m ready for his last-ditch effort to save his reputation when he lunges at me. A quick shift and elbow to his solar plexus and fist to his nose—my eyes never leaving Alena’s—stops him abruptly. “And you never know what that man might be capable of.” I promise you, Alena, it’s a lot more than even I ever dreamt of.
She shrinks back now, terror etched across her face.
It’s too bad, really. More and more, I’ve been thinking that I need a home base, after years of simply drifting. Santorini might be the place for me. I would have been a great regular for her. “Get the fuck out of here and don’t come back.”
Her pimp spouts off a couple of words in Greek to her around his own pain. She snatches the bill from my fingertips and darts out of my apartment with him, slamming the door so hard that it rattles the wall, the dresser, and the knife lying atop it, causing it to slide off. It lands, blade-down, an inch from my left pinky toe.
I start to chuckle.
THREE
IVY
“He never changed even a bit, did he?” Ian swings his foot at the trash can. Not hard. Just enough to shift it.
I quietly watch my cousin from my perch on the front desk as he takes in his dad’s shop—the dusty collectibles, the grungy black-and-red decor, the wall-to-wall mirrors—for the first time in fourteen years. I was able to get crime scene cleaners in the same day that the police finished collecting evidence, which was a twenty-nine-hour process. It’s not like anyone’s in a rush to get the business back up and running. But the idea of Ian seeing the dark red stain where his father bled out was not something I could stomach, even if they were estranged. By the time Ian stepped off the plane from Dublin, you’d never know that a double homicide had taken place in here.
All the same, Black Rabbit feels eerily empty. Void of life. I guess that makes sense, since it lost its heart.
“He was Ned, right to the end.” Never warm and cuddly, never someone who changed himself to try to please others. He always knew who he was, and for that, he earned the respect of many people.
Including me.
But had Ned been someone else—someone who groveled, begged, who offered his attackers anything and everything he could—would they have spared his life? That question has been haunting me for six days now.
“Where did you find him?” Ian asks quietly.
I point to the leather chair that was still occupied by Dylan Royce—aka Tree Trunks—when I left for subs that night. At some point, the two men with guns must have dragged him out of the chair and forced Ned into it, using the extension cord plugged into the floor fan to secure him. The police haven’t revealed anything about the other guy, but since I never heard his nasally voice during the few minutes that I was hiding in the back, I’m guessing he was already dead when I arrived.
Then again, I also never heard the gunshot that gave Ned a quick and painless end to his ordeal.
At first I didn’t believe that the hole in his forehead was from a bullet wound. The police say they must have been using a silencer. That makes sense, when I think about the length of the handgun that I saw. But who comes with silencers, unless they’re planning to kill instead of simply scare? These guys came prepared, and they knew what they were doing, hiding their faces behind masks and their fingerprints inside gloves, and smashing the camera trained on the front. They even took the VCR to ensure there was no video evidence of their entrance.
In some ways, I’m relieved that they did that. While I want the assholes who did this caught, I don’t ever want to have to sit in a courtroom and give testimony while a video of how “Mario” tested his skills with the tattoo machine against Ned’s left eyelid is played for a jury.
Ian chews the inside of his mouth. That’s one of a few signs that his father’s death has affected him emotionally. He hasn’t shed a single tear from what I’ve seen. Neither have I, though—and I’m devastated—so I guess crying is not a good indicator of pain.
But where Ned and I were close, Ian hasn’t spoken to his father in years, after he and his mom, my aunt Jun, walked in on Ned in the back room giving a female customer more than just a tattoo. When they divorced, Jun and Ian moved to San Diego, where he lived until he started college in Dublin. He’s been living in Ireland for eleven years now. So long that his voice carries a faint Irish brogue.
“I can’t believe he included me in his will,” he finally mutters, kicking the trash can again, this time denting it.
“Of course he did. You’re his son. He loved you.” It’s true, they hadn’t talked since Ian’s high school graduation day, but Ned never stopped loving Ian in his own way. I saw it, through the occasional questions that Ned would slip into a conversation, pumping me for information about Ian; and the times I’d catch Ned trolling Ian’s social media pages online after I taught him how to navigate this “goddamn computer-age world.”
Ned still kept the picture on his nightstand of seven-year-old Ian standing in front of the shop. When I was living in Dublin, I tried talking to Ian about it, hoping to convince him to pick up the phone and make amends with his father, to try and find the good in him. Unfortunately, for all that Ian inherited from his mother—which is most of his phlegmatic personality—he did get Ned’s stubbornness.
Ian’s head bows, his brow furrowed deep. He saw that picture, too, and now he needs to come to terms with the fact that he will never get the chance to know his father as an adult. “He shouldn’t have. I don’t feel like I deserve a penny of it.”
“Come on, Ian. You were everything to him.”
Black eyes settle on me, full of regret. “You’re the one who came back here. You’re the one who bothered staying in touch with him all these years.” It’s something that has caused Ian and me to have our ups and downs. He thought I was taking sides—the wrong side.
I never saw it that way, though. I was only ten when it happened, too young to really
grasp what was going on. After Jun and Ian moved away, I asked Ned why. He said that sometimes people make horrible, stupid mistakes and sometimes other people can’t forgive them for it.
I told Ned I forgave him, and that was that.
Ian’s thirty now—five years old than me—so we were never especially close growing up, and had even less of a reason to stay in touch after he moved away. It wasn’t until I was finishing high school that we reconnected over email and our love of art. Sharing the same passions helps us understand each other. Very few people truly get me. My parents and brothers sure don’t. Ned was one. Ian is the other.
I shrug. “I guess that’s why he included me, too.” Not only am I inheriting half of Ned’s estate, he named me executor. What the fuck was he thinking? Me? Dealing with lawyers and real estate agents? It’s a sizable inheritance, with this shop and a small three-bedroom house in Ingleside. The house has got a hefty mortgage to go along with it, and it’s seen much better days, but it will fetch an easy seven hundred, as is.
“What the hell are we going to do with this place, Ivy?” He shakes his head, punching buttons until the cash register pops open to reveal an empty drawer.
Just like that guy did only days ago.
I squeeze my eyes shut and shiver at the memory. It’s one of a few that keep replaying in my head at odd times throughout the day and night, with no warning. The ding of the register, the buzzing of Ned’s tattoo machine. The cool metal desk against my skin as I hid.
The blood splatter on that guy’s wrist.
The cops blame my fuzzy memory on shock. They say I may remember more with time.
But a part of me hopes I don’t.
“Black Rabbit’s got a great reputation, a loyal clientele. It makes decent money. And we’ll make enough from the sale of the house to pay off the mortgage on the building.” After a messy and expensive run-in with the IRS back in the ’90s, Ned learned how to keep proper files and pay his taxes and bills on time. Ian and I were able to get a good understanding of the business affairs in one evening of going through the files. We know that he borrowed a hundred thousand against the building—that was previously paid off—only a month ago. But what that money went to, neither of us has any idea. It sure as hell wasn’t upgrades. And Ned’s bank account is bone dry, which we discovered when making funeral arrangements. It makes no sense, given how well he did here. He didn’t employ anyone besides me, and he didn’t pay me an hourly salary, because he let me take home all my earnings, without any chair rental fees.