The Killer’s Vow by Aria R. Blue
Simon
She’s been quiet.
Unusually so.
Her walls are sky-high again. Even her dog is ignoring me.
We’ve been listening to the radio for the past four hours.
“Vera.” I sigh, dialing down the volume of the car speakers. “Is there something you want to ask me?”
She turns the volume back up and proceeds to ignore me.
I wait for a minute.
And then I look at her. She’s facing away, gaze fixed on something in the distance.
“In case you forgot, you’re kind of stuck with me for now. You can’t ignore me forever.”
Her jaw hardens, and her lower lip juts out stubbornly.
“Vera, please. Talk to me.”
“You haven’t been honest with me,” she whispers. The indie rock music from the radio nearly drowns out her voice.
I lower the volume on Florence and the Machine but only by a little.
“What about?”
“Rebekah.” That’s her one-word answer.
After Rebekah lost consciousness, we left her in the Porsche with her windows cracked.
She was there to figure out just how much Vera meant to me. Showing too much emotion would only make Vera more of a target in their eyes.
“She’s probably waking up as we speak,” I say, smiling to myself as I imagine how pissed she must be right now.
“We shouldn’t have left her there all by herself.”
I glance at Vera.
She astounds me time and time again. There’s so much compassion in her heart.
Even though she was the one who drugged Rebekah like a professional, she wanted to stay back until Vera woke up.
“She’ll be fine,” I say. “She’s been through much worse.”
“Like when you left her to die?” Vera asks, finally turning to me.
I wish I hadn’t said anything.
“That was years ago,” I say. “And it wasn’t one of my finer moments.”
“You said that she was your friend,” Vera says. “How could you leave a friend behind?”
It’s better if I tell her about when the feud between Rebekah and me first started.
“Things are different when you’re barely getting by, Vera,” I say. “When you’re starving and sleeping on the streets, survival comes first.”
“Why were you sleeping on the streets?” she asks.
My hands get clammy over the steering wheel.
Driving always puts me at ease. Sitting behind the wheel always gives me a sense of control.
But now, I’m just plain restless.
And I can think of only one thing that might help.
I have the option to deflect. To talk about something else that’ll make Vera forget she was ever mad at me.
But I want her to know, however ugly my truth may be.
“Vlad took me under his wing when I was sixteen,” I say. “He told me about the assassin life he had to offer. At the time, it seemed better than the Institute. But it wasn’t exactly the life I envisioned for myself.”
“You didn’t want to be an assassin?”
“What kid dreams of becoming the villain?” I say. “But the more I was exposed to it, the more desensitized I became.”
Vera nods. “It still sucks, though.”
I glance at her profile. Her eyes are more gray than blue today.
I wonder if killing got easier with time for her too.
“It does suck,” I say, turning away. “That’s why I ran away from Vlad. I thought I could make it on my own somehow.”
“Doing what?”
I hadn’t thought of this in so long. “I liked to sketch.”
“Were you good at it?”
I glance at the Lamborghini logo on the steering wheel. “I was so-so. But nobody wanted to be sketched by a dirty boy on the street. It wasn’t something that could fill my belly or put a roof over my head.”
“I’m sorry,” Vera says, drawing her knees up against her chest.
“Eventually, survival meant going back to Vlad.”
“When was that?”
“Two years later.” Two years of mixing with the wrong crowd, stealing with them, and eventually going to juvie. I still have scars on my body that mark that time in my life.
“Did Vlad take you back?” she asks.
“Yeah, he did.”
“But you didn’t want that killer’s life,” Vera says, frowning.
“More than anything, I wanted to survive, Vera,” I say. I promised my mother I would make it big. “To make it easier for myself, I used to think of every hit like it was a game. It was a sick video game I was trying to master. Figuring out a flawless strategy, scouring maps to find the perfect entry and exit point, how to make it as clean as possible.”
“And Rebekah?”
“She left the Institute by the time I went back to Vlad. I would’ve gotten her out sooner, but all of my energy was spent trying to survive the harsh winters.”
Vera shivers as if she herself is on the cold streets of Moscow with nothing but a tattered blanket and mittens with holes in them.
“Okay, but what about the other incident she was talking about?” she asks.
“It’s not something I ever shared with anybody,” I say carefully, my heartbeat wild.
“Start now,” Vera demands.
“After she left the Institute, Rebekah became an assassin for the Russian Bureau. She climbed the ranks quicker than I did, and it wasn’t long before her reputation was as good as mine. We were both the best at what we did. I was given high-profile politicians, oligarchs, and kingpins who required more strategy. Rebekah’s technique involved more seduction.”
“You’re still not telling me what happened, Simon.”
It’s not easy to distract Vera.
When the Bratva princess sets her mind on something, she doesn’t stop until she gets it.
So I give her the real reason Rebekah hates my guts right now.
“That day in Tokyo. It’s something I regret to this day,” I whisper. “We were both given separate assignments, but they involved the same people. Two different Japanese crime organizations that had bad blood for generations. They were set to have a meeting together, and I was hired to kill the leader of Organization 1.”
“Don’t tell me she was hired to kill the leader of Organization 2,” Vera mutters. “It sounds like the start of some demented love story.”
Well.
This explains my little tigress’s mood.
“It was never like that,” I say. My heart feels like it’s filled with twice the amount of blood as usual. “She was like a sister to me. And besides, I’m not Rebekah’s type.”
Vera is ready with a petty comeback. “Oh, yeah? And what if you were her type?”
I think about those days from my childhood.
They seem so long ago.
Rebekah and I stuck together from the start.
We knew about each other’s pasts and trauma. She was the only one I joked around with, and I was the only one she trusted.
My relationship with her was never a romantic one, but that of kinship and survival.
“What I’m saying is, you’re more of her type than I am. Rebekah prefers other women.”
The anger leaves Vera’s face. “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“I thought she had feelings for you,” she says. “Or that you had—”
“You own all of my emotions, Vera. Nobody else,” I interject.
Vera clears her throat. “So what happened in Tokyo?”
“It was a failed mission. Rebekah and I worked for the Bureau, but we also took clients independently. It’s why I didn’t know that Rebekah would be there, and vice versa. Both of us had our own plans for the assassination. I killed first, alerting the men at the meeting. By the time Rebekah got her shot in, they were able to locate her easily.”
“They found her?”
I nod.
The memory is a fresh hell in the back of my mind. “Imagine two of the deadliest families of Tokyo. They found her and threw her in the back of their S-class Mercedes. There was nothing I could do. If I went to save her, it would have gotten both of us killed.”
“You didn’t even try?” Vera is showing way too much empathy for someone she just drugged.
“Both of the leaders were dead, Vera,” I say. “That was reason enough for tension and turmoil between the men. If I were to insert myself between a hundred angry men, it would just be plain foolish.”
“What made you think that she was dead?”
“I followed them home,” I say. “I watched and waited for an opportunity. But there was nothing. They shot her once in the heart and once in the stomach. I saw her die. Or so I thought. And Vladimir confirmed her death two days later.”
“Would she have done the same if you were in her place?” Vera whispers.
“That’s what haunts me some nights,” I say, rubbing my dry eyes. “I wish I had done more.”
“Does she know that?”
“Know what?”
“That you’re sorry you couldn’t help her?”
“I don’t think it would make much of a difference. What’s done is done.”
“She seemed to care about you,” Vera says. “The type of nightshade I gave her…it removes a person’s inhibitions as it lulls them to sleep. She was showing us her real self before she blacked out. The anger and the hurt and the love, it was real, Simon.”
“Too bad she’s a real pain in the ass without the nightshade,” I say.
Vera smacks my arm. “I still feel bad about poisoning her and leaving her on the road.”
“Oh, don’t worry. You’ll be seeing more of her.”
Vera’s quiet for another moment. “When she had that knife over my throat, did you know that I poisoned her?”
“It’s so impressive how you managed to poison her in public discreetly.”
“Answer my question, Simon.”
I sigh. “No, but I knew she wasn’t going to kill you. The only reason she’s in America is to flex. She wanted to make a good comeback. And coming after the one person I refused to kill probably seemed like the best opportunity.”
Vera sighs and glances back at her dog. “Lion, what kind of mess did we get ourselves in this time?”
Her giant dog licks her palm.
“Does your butt hurt too, my l’venok?” she asks.
“Do you want a break?” I ask.
The glamor of the road trip has faded.
Driving this brand new whip was fun at first, but it got tiring after the first few hours.
“Yeah, I want to walk around for a bit,” Vera says.
We end up stopping at a small coffeehouse by the road. I get a coffee, and Vera buys a tin of roasted pecans.
We head out toward the back of the coffeehouse.
“There’s a trail here,” I say.
Vera walks behind me. “Shouldn’t we get back in the car before something unfortunate happens again?”
“I thought you wanted to stretch your legs?” I ask.
“Yeah, but…“ She looks unsure, nervous.
“Come on,” I say, tugging at her arm.
Lion smells all the flowers planted against the side of the coffeehouse. He sneezes at half of them, but that doesn’t deter him from sniffing every single one.
We end up taking an impromptu hike, the tightness in Vera’s shoulders dissipating with every stride of her long legs.
The exercise and movement do great stuff for my energy levels too.
She still pipes up with questions like "What if somebody knows about our car?” and "What if we lose our way?”.
I take her dog’s cue and ignore half of the things she says out loud.
It’s late in the evening.
The Georgia sky is a bright display of colors. Reds and oranges are splashed across the sky.
We walk through the worn path in the wilderness, filling our lungs with fresh forest air. After spending all day looking at other cars, the dark green hues around us are a treat.
Birds flit from one tree to another.
Insects add to the natural orchestra.
We stop at a circular clearing and look up at the now purple sky.
It’s here that Vera reaches for my hand.
I wrap my long fingers around her smaller hand and hold it firmly.
I have never felt this protective of anyone since my mother.
She looks at me.
“Ask me what I’m thinking,” she says.
“What are you thinking?” I comply.
“That I wish I met you when I was fifteen.”