Page 202 of The Black Trilogy

My muscles stiffened up overnight and by the next morning, I’d barely be able to move, but Black made me run, cycle, lift, and jump again anyway. On day five, he did at least bring in a physio to loosen my muscles before I seized up completely.

Fight training became my nemesis. I already knew how to box, but Black began drilling me with weapons too. He had a series of punchbags set up, all with layers of foam taped around the outside, and he taught me to attack them with knives first, because he expected me to carry one from now on. Once I’d mastered blades, he moved on to anything else that happened to be around—a golf club, a hammer, keys, a rolling pin, a flashlight, whatever we picked up on our way to the gym.

There were times—many times—I wanted to tell him what he was asking of me was impossible, but I swallowed down the words. Why? Because everything he made me do, he did it too, and I couldn’t bring myself to admit defeat.

As I ate lunch after my third physio session, Black wandered in and sat opposite me. He’d already showered and moved with an ease I only dreamed of.

“I have to go away on business until the end of the week.”

“Thank goodness.” The words slipped out before I managed to stop them.

He looked at me sharply. “You still have to train, though. Gym at five, as usual.”

I groaned, but I couldn’t complain too much. After all, he was paying me a lot to be there. And without him watching over me, I’d just jog on the treadmill for half an hour then go back to bed.

Or so I thought.

When I got down to the gym on day six after a non-sanctioned lie in, I found Black had hired me a new trainer.

“You are late,” he growled in a thick Russian accent, tapping his watch. “You will have to do extra.”

Oh, great. Extra.

Alex, it turned out, used to be in the Russian army. I suspected they’d kicked him out for being too hard on the troops. Black was a pussycat in comparison, and I found myself counting down the seconds until his return. In my spare time, I plotted ways to murder Satan’s older brother.

Shove him under a truck? Strangle him with barbed wire? Simply shooting him as he slept seemed too kind.

On the plus side, when Black finally did get back, he’d procured me a UK driving licence to go with my passport, complete with international driving permit.

“After lunch, we’ll start lessons,” he said.

Thank goodness. If I was driving, Alex couldn’t make me do push-ups.

Black sat me in the driver’s seat of his Ford Mustang, apologising that it was the smallest car he owned, then proceeded to tell me what each pedal did, how to change gear, and what all the dials on the dashboard meant. He got halfway through his spiel before I got bored, started the engine, and drove off.

“Oh. Why didn’t you say you could already drive?”

“You never asked. Once again, you made an assumption about me, and it was wrong.”

“I’m going to have to stop doing that, aren’t I? To save us wasting time down the line, do you have any other skills I should be aware of?”

“You already know about the pick-pocketing. Probably you could cut the lessons on shoplifting, lock-picking, and burglary short as well.”

“Noted. Who taught you to drive?”

“Mostly a seventeen-year-old car thief named Vinnie, although some of it was trial and error when I started borrowing cars myself.”

“Ah. So I needn’t have bothered providing you with a key?”

“It wouldn’t have been essential, no.”

From that day on, I lost my afternoons to less physical tasks like offensive and defensive driving, shooting, and learning how to throw knives with deadly accuracy. It wasn’t long before my evenings vanished too. Black started off by bringing in a French teacher, who spent three hours each day teaching me the language as well as French history and culture, which she claimed was as important as knowing the words themselves.

Sure, the lessons were hard, but learning how to converse abroad was far more useful than learning about the reproductive cycle of a dandelion. I enjoyed L’ecole de Noir far more than Forest Hill Comprehensive.

One of those co-opted into working with me was Nate, who turned out to be a whiz with electronics. He taught me a little about computers, as in how to hack them, search them, and take them apart. I also found out how to place bugs, disarm security systems, and monitor phone conversations.

I drank in everything he told me and developed a flair for blowing things up. It was possible to do an amazing amount of damage with things found in an ordinary household, and the day I created a spectacular ball of flame using a mobile phone battery and a few chemicals, I got a grudging smile and a “Nice job.”

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