Page 70 of Assassin Anonymous

For the first time, I’m angry.

Whoever this is, they want to come in here and take this all away from me.

The door creaks open and the figure steps into the house. From the reflection of a mirror near the front door, I can see more of him: bald head, thick neck, wide shoulders. Maybe this won’t be quiet. I run through the Rolodex of hitters in my head, try to match someone to the shape. Can’t come up with anyone.

I press myself flat against the wall and let him step past me into the living room. He’s carrying a bag, which he drops when I come around him and wrap my arm around his throat, putting him in a blood choke. Cut off his oxygen. He tenses against me and with the other hand I bring up the knife.

“Make a sound and I will…”

He’s strong, and I’m a little drunk and I let my anger cloud my judgment, so I respond a second too slow when he leans forward and tosses me over his back. I smash into a china cabinet, glass and shattered wood pelting my head and shoulders. The knife goes flying somewhere into the room.

Okay, so tonight may be the night I come clean to Sara, but that’s not important right now. What’s important is getting back on top. The guy comes at me and I sweep his leg. His front foot kicks out and he manages to stay up, his legs spread at an awkward angle. He throws out his arms to steady himself, so I slam my fist into his crotch, and his face scrunches as he tumbles to the floor. I scramble on top of him and crack my fist into his face so hard his head bounces off the hardwood.

“Do you even know who I am?” I ask. “And you come here like this?”

“Where is—”

I throw my fist and his nose shatters.

Again, and his breaking teeth gouge my knuckles.

I grab him by the collar and pull him close. That god-energy screams through every cell of my body, the most savage part of me fully in control.

Someone wants to take this away from me and I will not let them.

“The smart thing to do would be to keep you alive and question you,” I tell him. “But I’m going to find out who sent you either way. And I want them to understand the depth of the mistake they made. What happens if someone ever even looks at that woman upstairs.”

And I wrap my arm around his neck, bear down hard, and yank, separating his skull from his spinal cord.

Just as his body goes slack and I feel the life leave him and the god-energy crackles at my fingertips and I revel in the ecstasy of the adrenaline coursing through my veins, the lights flick on.

“Lucas!”

Sara is standing at the top of the staircase, holding her bathrobe cinched to her waist. Eyes wide, mouth open, staring at the body on the floor.

I’m thinking up an explanation when I realize she just said her brother’s name.

With the lights on, with the haze of violence cleared from the air, I can see that the bag the man was carrying was full of presents, the carefully wrapped packages spilled across the floor. Sara dashes down the stairs as I check Lucas’s pulse, as if regretting that he’s dead might change the fact that he is.

Sara stands above us, and I suddenly feel smaller than I’ve ever felt. Words jumble and clog in my mouth. I have to remind myself to breathe. I stand, slowly, my hands up.

“Please, Sara…”

Her face twists through a messy jumble of emotion: disbelief, anger, fear. She doesn’t know what to settle on. And I’m so desperate to fix it, so desperate to make this right, that I say the worst possible thing in this moment.

The cruelest thing imaginable.

“Sara, I lov—”

She puts up a hand to cut me off, her face red, and she screams, “Don’t you fucking dare.”

And she dashes up the stairs as my head swims and I struggle to keep down the whiskey in my stomach. I stand on unsteady feet and hear her voice. “Please, I need you to send the police…yes, he’s still here…yes, that’s my address. Please, hurry.”

I want to plead my case. It was an accident. I mean, it wasn’t an accident, it’s what I was trained to do, but I didn’t mean to. I want to open my chest and show Sara the ruins of my heart.

Sirens whine in the distance.

So I struggle into my boots and my coat, grab my wallet and my keys, and I’m out the back door, the cold Christmas Eve air searing my face.

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