Page 75 of The Hitman

“That flight leaves in two hours, ma’am,” she says as if I haven’t been watching the clock on my phone inch toward the time to boarding.

“I know. I still need a ticket.”

“It will be more expensive than normal,” she says with raised eyebrows. She’s looking at me the way Shae looks at me when I talk about buying a designer handbag or something else equally as frivolous. She’s looking at me with a mixture of judgment and pity as if I need someone to tell me that there are other flights to Naples.

Hell, I could even take a train for less than this last-minute flight is going to cost me. Yes, I get that, but saving money right now is not the point.

I brush off her judgment because she doesn’t understand, and I don’t have time to tell her. I’m not even sure I could explain what I’m thinking or what I’m about to do. I only half-understand it myself. But I don’t need to understand it, because I feel it.

I’m the thinking sister, Zoe’s the feeling sister. We’ve fought all our lives because I can’t make a move without thinking about it for too long, and Zoe’s motto is to never overthink or else you run the risk of missing the crest of the wave. Or something like that. I don’t know. Neither of us has ever surfed, but whatever, she thinks it sounds good. Anyway, in this moment, what I’m saying is that I see the wisdom in her weird water-based motto. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I can feel the rightness of it in my bone marrow. No overthinking necessary.

“I understand,” I tell the ticket agent. “I’m willing to pay whatever it costs.”

She frowns but starts typing on the computer in front of her, and that’s all I need. She asks for my passport, and I rush to pull it from my purse along with my wallet.

When the ticket agent tells me the price of my ticket, I want to faint. I hand over the credit card with my highest limit and pray. In an hour, I’ve checked my bags, and I’m on a plane to Naples, a city I’ve never been to, hoping to find Giulio even though I have no idea where the hell he could be.

Okay, maybe I should have thought this through a little more.

24Salvatore

I get a late startthis morning.

After years of having to share my home with a woman I hated, I’d been accustomed to spending as little time in my apartment as possible. Now that Flavia is gone, I find myself lingering in the mornings, enjoying my home for the first time in years. These days, I enjoy waking up later, taking longer showers, and then sitting at my kitchen table to enjoy an espresso in peace and quiet. Some mornings, I even stay in bed longer than I’ve ever been able. I lie flat on my back, close my eyes, and conjure every image of Shae I can.

There’s no shame in the fact that sometimes I don’t start my day until well after daybreak because I stay in bed touching myself thinking about a woman I never should have met and will probably never see again. This morning is one of those days. As soon as I open my eyes, the idea of leaving my bed is the worst thing I could imagine. I stay in bed until mid-morning, ignoring all of my responsibilities, stroking myself to the still vibrant memories of Shae’s smile, taste, smell, and the warm grip of her cunt around my cock.

If left to my own devices, I would have stayed in bed all day, but I can only delay the start of my day for so long. The restaurant can open without me — the restaurant can run without me — but my organization won’t. I need to be where I can be seen, by people who need me, and people just waiting to take me down.

Eventually, I do get out of bed. I shower — stroking myself to one more orgasm I wish I could share with her — and then I head to work. I walk through the front door and nod at Massimo, the bartender, and the waitress, a new girl whose name I can’t remember.

I make my way to my office — the fake one — and check my messages. I check the safe, even though there’s nothing of real importance inside. And then I throw my pristine apron over my head and tie it at the back. I walk back out into the main dining room and sit heavily in the chair at the small table where I sit every day. The small table where I was sitting the first time I saw her. The new waitress brings me an espresso and the morning paper. I unfold the paper and begin to read, sipping slowly at my drink. For the next hour, the restaurant traffic ebbs and flows. Tourists arrive; tourists leave.

A man and a woman masquerading as a couple walk through the doors and ask to sit across from me in the restaurant. I hear them say it’s so they can enjoy the scenes of the piazza, but I know that’s a lie. They’re polizia, obviously, but I don’t even bother to lift my head. I know who they are, and so does Massimo. I don’t have to look behind me to know that he’s watching them even more closely than I am. They linger over lunch, and I forget them. When they leave, I suspect they’ll return to their station and file another report that says that I haven’t done anything but sit at my table, read my newspaper, and sip my espresso.

Once the lunch rush is gone, the new waitress brings out my lunch before she leaves. While we’re closed, most of the staff leaves, except Massimo, who busies himself, cleaning his guns behind the bar.

After I eat, I walk to the back of the restaurant, stopping briefly to take off my apron, before I go to my real office. Giulio and Alfonso are already there.

“What’s the word, boss?” Alfonso asks.

“Have a seat.” They do.

I sit in my regular chair and look at my two lieutenants. Alfonso looks the same as ever, eager, and deadly. But Giulio looks different.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” I ask him.

If it had been up to me, I never would have let him go to his father’s home in the countryside. I understand why he did, I’ve used the location for business more than once, but the house doesn’t mean anything to me. Even though Giulio has only ever told me about his childhood in the vaguest terms, I looked into his background before I offered him a position, so I know what he lived through. If he had asked me, which he normally does before he makes any big decisions, I would have told him to go somewhere else. Anywhere else. But he didn’t ask me, and that is enough of a sign that he’s not alright. I don’t know what happened while he was gone, but the Giulio who returns isn’t the Giulio I sent away.

Unfortunately, whatever is going on with him has to wait.

“We have a mole,” I tell them.

If any of my wife’sothercrooked family members had tracked Giulio on his holiday, I could have believed their resourcefulness, but the Neccis are so reviled that even Flavia pretends as if they don’t exist. They don’t like her either. When I was planning to take Flavia’s father position, I found that the Necci branch had been screwed over by her father for decades. I correctly assumed that when I took him down, they wouldn’t object, and I was right.

So, their reappearance is shocking, to say the least. But the thing about operating in the lowly underbelly of society that most people don’t realize is that the lowly underbelly has an underbelly of its own. And the Neccis are the nocturnal leaders of that under-underworld.

“Who do you think it is?” Giulio asks. He sounds as eager as Alfonso, which is very unlike him. It’s not that Giulio doesn’t like his job, but to him, it is a job. Alfonso is eager to do what needs to be done in as brutal a manner as possible for the thrill of it. Giulio likes to complete his jobs cleanly and efficiently. They’re polar opposites, and that’s always been very useful to me. But I don’t focus on his strange behavior. If I’ve learned nothing in all my time at the top of the food chain, it’s that nothing stays hidden forever.

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