The Professional Read online

  I’d believed him, despite all contrary evidence and experience, that he wasn’t spying for my mother. Last night, when he’d sworn to me with his hand over his heart, I would have believed him anything. Yet how could he not be lying? Was his purpose really just to keep me safe? Had I spent so long at odds with Mother that every gesture turned wicked in my eyes? It was hard to tell. Harder because, again, due to experience, I knew not to trust any action my mother made until the final word was said. Her best quality was her ability to not waste, whether that be time, action, or people. If Alex was here, he was here for a reason. It was my job to interpret that reason and counteract before I got even more tangled in her schemes.

  What was her game hiring an impossibly handsome, wickedly charming man to shadow my every move?

  I groaned and rubbed my eyes. Was the stress of my family’s visit getting to me? My mother could be a bitch, but she wasn’t an evil mastermind from a crappy spy movie. Maybe I was just reading too far into this. Maybe Alex was just a surprisingly suave bodyguard and maybe my mother really just thought I might be a kidnapping risk.

  If that’s the case and you can trust him, then there’s nothing keeping you apart…

  I mentally slapped myself at the idea I couldn’t stop from invading my mind. Even if Mother had no grand plans, I knew for a fact that falling for Alex would buy me a one way ticket home to Athea for the rest of my miserable life or until my mother died, whichever came first.

  Would it be worth it? My thoughts flew back to that kiss. He’d kissed me with a passion and intensity that I’d never felt from any of the boys I’d dated at Columbia. I wouldn’t mind doing it again. But there was no possible future for Alex and me, even if I wasn’t royalty. We were too different.

  “You’re acting like you have to marry the guy,” Diana said over the phone. I called her after realizing I was talking myself in circles. What were best friends for if not to advise you on your horrifying love life? When I told her we’d kissed, she shrieked, “CALLED IT!” so loudly into the phone, I was afraid Alex might hear it from two floors away.

  “You owe me five bucks, bitch!” She cackled with glee.

  “No, I absolutely do not. We didn’t… you know,” I said.

  “What? Bang? Not yet, babe, but it’s coming. Oh lordy it’s a comin’.”

  I shook my head. “Why are you talking like that? Listen-” I spelled out my issues with Alex for her: his oppressive presence, his almost constant inability to stay serious for longer than a few minutes, the fact that my mother would never in a million, billion years sign off on him as a son-in-law.

  That was when Diana cut me off and informed me that I didn’t in fact have to marry Alex. “And why are you talking like you do?” she asked. “It’s not like he’ll be the first guy you’ve ever slept with.”

  “I know!” I said. “And I wouldn’t! Trust me, Alex is not marriage material.” But I wasn’t telling her the truth. The truth was that, deep down inside me, there was a sneaking suspicion that if I gave any more of myself to Alex Flynn, there’d be no going back. Even if I could pull myself away, I wouldn’t want to. It was only my resistance now that kept it from progressing any further.

  But I didn’t tell her that. Some things just can’t be shared, not even with best friends. What I did say was, “Sleeping with him just isn’t worth the trouble it’ll bring.”

  “Cora, you owe it to yourself. You need to have fun once in a while. Get freaky. Bang someone your mother hired to protect you. Otherwise you’re going to snap before you graduate and do something really stupid like dye your hair pink or get a nipple piercing.”

  “Ew.”

  “You would not be the first nor the last. You’ve been repressed for so long, this only seems crazy because you’re going crazy.”

  I laughed. “No, Diana. It’s definitely crazy.”

  “No, Cora. Crazy is what I went when Derek and his friends hired a petting zoo and let it run around our apartment while they did acid. You are just a young woman in a dry spell who’s going to bang her sexy bodyguard so hard your mother’s going to have to fire him afterward for doing you bodily harm.”

  I pressed a hand over my eyes. “Please just stop talking.”

  “I will,” Diana’s voice hissed through the phone, “only because I’m hanging up so you can go bang it out.”

  “I’m not-” I stopped because Diana literally hung up on me, leaving me lying there on the bed. Someone obviously felt intensely about this. Maybe Diana was right. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad an idea…

  “Cora!” I sat up quickly at the sound of my name, a child in my parents’ house once again. Jackie strode into the room dressed to the nines and ready to kill.

  “Hi Jackie,” I said. “What- um. What’s going on?”

  She circled the room like a predator, examining the curtains, swiping a finger along the edge of the bureau to check for dust. I waited patiently for her response, sure she had heard me, but growing increasingly insecure the longer she ignored me.

  Finishing her rounds, Jackie sat on the edge of the bed a couple feet from me and smiled widely. “Cora!” she said as if just noticing I was there.

  “Jackie…” I tried again with fading enthusiasm. She seemed to inflate with intensity with every day closer to my family’s arrival. When she inevitably popped, I hoped she did it far away from me.

  “What are we going to do with you?” Jackie asked like I had an answer or even any idea what the hell she was talking about. I widened my smile as an answer and hoped she’d make do. Somehow she managed.

  “You’ll have to move out of that disgusting attic soon,” she said. “In fact, this room will do if it suits you. Your mother will be across the hall. It would be so nice for you two to be close.”

  I tried not to let my painful smile turn into a grimace. The very last thing I’d wanted. I hadn’t even considered that my mother (or Jackie) would force me out of my home in the servants’ quarters. I didn’t think I would be able to physically or mentally get through a month of living within ten feet from my mother.

  “I think I’m fine where I’m at,” I said as politely as I could. “All of my things are still up there and I’d hate to make the workers do extra work for something so inconsequential.”

  Somehow Jackie managed to show me even more of her teeth. They were blinding, so bright white I was half-convinced they must be dentures carved from marble or bleached bone. “Oh dear, I’m afraid I’ve already told your mother that the whole family will be staying on this floor. I’m sure she will be disappointed to hear otherwise.” She looked down as if contemplating and then snapped her fingers so loudly I jumped. “You know what? Why don’t you have Mr. Flynn help you move down? Then you don’t need to worry about inconveniencing the workers.”

  “Great idea,” I said with gritted teeth. It looked like I wouldn’t be able to get out of this. Whatever. Just because I was sleeping here didn’t mean I had to spend all my time in the room. My living room was still only a floor away.

  “Fantastic,” Jackie drawled, pulling out her cell phone. After typing a few numbers, she pushed it to her ear. “Hello? Mr. Flynn?” Shit. “Yes, Cora needs help moving into a downstairs bedroom.” She paused, listened. “Yes, on the second floor.” Pause. “Yes, just begin packing things.”

  Which was more distasteful, spending time with Alex or letting him go through my things? I was a loser either way, but at least in one scenario he didn’t see my underwear. At least, I hoped. Damn you Diana, you’re getting in my head!

  I stood up from the bed. “I’m going to go help him,” I said quickly and all but ran out of the room.

  “Nice talk, dear,” Jackie called from the bedroom.

  I ran up the stairs two at a time and burst into my living room with all the intensity of a raiding SWAT team. Alex looked up, surprised, from the couch where he was watching baseball. We locked eyes for several highly uncomfortable moments while I wondered internally why the hell I expected him to make a bee
line to my underwear drawer the moment he got off the phone with Jackie.

  “Sorry,” I apologized.

  “It’s OK,” he said automatically with a look of confusion. I tore my eyes from his and walked quickly to my room.

  “Wait, Cora,” he said.

  I stopped in my doorway and turned to see he’d stood up from the couch.

  “Are we going to talk about this?” he asked, crossing his arms and making the ropey muscles of his forearms bulge.

  I forcibly dragged my eyes away from them. “Talk about what?” I was being mean, I know. But I’d rather forget the kiss had ever happened and, if it must stick around in my memory, then I’d rather not bring it back into reality by voicing it.

  He stared at me hard, green eyes drilling into my own, daring me to admit what we both knew was true. I was the first to tear my eyes away, looking off to the side, at the floor, embarrassed or ashamed, I couldn’t tell which. Of what though? Sure, I’d had a few drinks last night, but it was a party! And yeah, I jumped in the pool even though I couldn’t swim, but Alex had just been on my case about never taking any risks. So what if I’d kissed him? I had wanted to in the moment and I did. How was that for a risk? I raised my gaze again to look him just as strongly in the eye.

  “You want to talk about the kiss?” I asked. “It meant nothing.”

  He didn’t even blink. “That’s good to hear,” he said. Then his face spread into a lazy smile. “I wouldn’t want you getting your hopes up about something that’s never going to happen.”

  Fuck you too. “Good. Then we agree.”

  “Looks like we do.”

  “Good.”

  “Good.”

  It was a showdown, a staredown, each of us daring the other person to make the next move, admit that all we wanted to do was run across the room and tear each other’s clothes off. But I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t give in to his teasing temptation, couldn’t admit my own weakness for him. I wanted more than anything to hate this man, but for some reason, I just couldn’t summon the emotion. I had to do something though, or I risked letting my guard slip and endangering my future for a man I’d just met and hardly knew.

  I turned quickly, breaking the tie between us, and disappeared into my room, shutting the door with a loud snap behind me.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Alex

  I collapsed on the couch with the sound of the door slamming shut. I’d been ready, waiting to hear what that kiss last night had meant to her. To hear that she’d felt what I’d felt - that explosion in my gut and shake in my nerves. The pounding of my heart and adrenaline in my veins. A feeling I hadn’t experienced in a long time, what I’d been searching for with every heist…

  I shook my head and pressed my palms deep into my eyes, relishing the darkness, the explosions of color and pattern behind my eyelids. If I pressed harder, dug my fingers into my skull, maybe I could crack it in half. That would feel just about all right with me. Fuck.

  I stood up, paced back and forth in the living room. I wasn’t supposed to leave. I had to stay by her side. But all I wanted right now was a drink and honestly I wasn’t too concerned about getting fired. The longer this went on, the more I regretted my arrogance in coming here. I thought I was untouchable. I’d thought wrong. Well fuck it and fuck her.

  I broke my contract and went to Saul’s, figuring he could talk some sense into me. But when I got there, he was gone, probably out for groceries or restocking the bottles that he liked. He had left a package for me under the bar though, the item I’d order for the job. I unwrapped it and looked carefully at the craftsmanship. His guy was good. But now I didn’t know if I even wanted it.

  I poured myself a drink, considered my options, my choices. Did I still even care about the Crown? Not particularly. I’d found that feeling I was searching for. I knew a hunk of metal wasn’t going to do it for me anymore. And I think I’d known that for a long time. Ever since Katrina, ever since Thailand… I’d been denying it to myself for a long time, but the truth was that it wasn’t some prize I was chasing. It was a connection, one that I could trust and keep without fear of betrayal.

  I slammed the rest of the drink, angry. Yeah, that’s what you want, but are you going to get it? The way Cora was acting signaled clearly that she was a hell of a lot less confused than I was. She was smart enough to see that this was a bad idea, no matter how I looked at it, no matter how much I wanted it to work.

  Because after Katrina, I did value honesty, and Cora had no idea just how much I’d lied to her. The guilt chewed at my heart and I poured another drink.

  Face it, Alex. You fucked up and it’s too late to undo what you’ve done. Too late to go back and start again. In that moment, I would have given anything to unwind the clock, to jump back to last month and catch sight of Cora at a cafe, probably with Diana by her side. To feel my heart slow in my chest at the sight of her as she laughed, brushing dark hair out of large blue eyes. To approach, introduce myself, make a joke, make her laugh again for the first time. The daydream was vivid and overwhelming and when a car horn honked outside and I snapped back to reality, I could almost see its shape trail away in the dusty light. Intangible, temporary, as fleeting and frustrating as every moment I’d spent with Cora.

  I couldn’t make up for what I’d done, to Cora or to all my faceless victims in the past, but I could make an effort to change. I finished the rest of my drink. I would start by stopping Midas, by doing the job I was hired to do. I placed the object carefully back in its bag, a plan forming and solidifying in my mind.

  Feeling better about life and myself as a person based on my decision (and probably helped by the alcohol), I left Saul’s after leaving him a note telling him I’d been by. With nothing better to do and the still uncomfortable thought of Cora waiting for me at the manor, I walked aimlessly. It was a beautiful early summer day. Sunny, but not too hot, just warm and breezy.

  I wasn’t sure where I was going until I got there. Mom’s old apartment before we moved to Brooklyn, the rickety building on the Lower East Side that had withstood decades of vermin and disrepair, held up by the strength of its own dirt rather than the foundations that must have long since rotted away.

  I stood on the sidewalk and looked up to the fourth story window, the one attached to my childhood bedroom. I remembered late nights as a child, unable to sleep from the oppressive heat, staring down at the sidewalk, watching drunks and prostitutes trickle along in a stream of sorrow. Even on cooler nights, I could never really sleep well until Mom got home. She worked the night shift at an old pub three blocks away, and I can still hear the creak of the lock and then the floorboards when she’d finally come home. My door would shift open a crack and I’d pretend to sleep, smell her perfume mixed with beer and sweat, know she was watching and feel comfort before the door closed gently over again.

  I wondered if she was watching now. I hoped she wasn’t. I’d done a lot of things she wouldn’t have been happy about, things I wasn’t happy about. But at the same time, she’d always told me, “Alexi, it doesn’t matter to me what you do in life, only that you do it well.”

  Here, at the beginning of my retirement, I considered her words. I hadn’t sought out this life, I’d fallen into it, back when my thieving mentor and my ability to bring in cash were the only things keeping me off the streets or out of foster homes. It had seemed like a better deal at the time. Maybe it had been. Unfortunately, I’d listened to my mother’s advice and done it well. So well that eventually I couldn’t imagine spending nights sweating in cheap apartments with rats and roaches. I’d gotten a taste for the better things in life. They were hard to let go.

  Would I really leave it all behind? Could I? I wanted to say yes, for Cora. But I’d made promises to Katrina too and look how that had turned out.

  * * *

  By the time I made it back to Midtown and into the manor, nobody seemed to be searching for me. Upstairs, I listened at Cora’s door and could hear her furiously typing at he
r computer. Good, I hadn’t lost her. Physically, anyway. I stepped away from the door quietly and went back to the couch.

  I wasn’t sure if it was the stress and confusion or the warm summer afternoon or the three glasses of whiskey, but the moment I hit the couch, I was out.

  I woke an indeterminable time later to the sound of my name coming from an annoyed, female voice. I blinked the sleep from my eyes and tried to separate my insane dream (naked on a unicycle trying to juggle three Crowns of Athea while Cora tried to shoot them out of the air with a blowgun) from the stern reality standing in front of me.

  “Ms. Solomon,” I mumbled. “What’s going on?”

  She towered over me in a poison green pantsuit looking like a viper (or an overgrown weed), hands on her hips. “What did I ask you to do this morning?” she demanded.

  I searched my brain, still a little foggy from the alcohol. “Um…”

  Jackie raised an eyebrow. “Move Cora downstairs?”

  Oh, right. “Yeah,” I said. “I didn’t realize that was an immediate thing.”

  “Well the workers need to get up here and prepare it for the staff so yes, it is an ‘immediate thing’.” She looked way angrier than the situation called for, but I supposed being a high-powered problem solver for the rich and famous came with a healthy dose of stress.

  “When do you need it done by?” I asked.

  “An hour ago,” she said. “But I guess I’ll have to settle for as soon as possible.” She turned around and strode out of the room leaving me a bit unsure if I was still dreaming. At least I had clothes on. Speaking of which… My eyes darted to Cora’s door. I wondered if she’d heard Jackie’s demands.

  I stood, stretched, and knocked lightly on her door.

  The typing, still going strong, stopped abruptly. “What?” Cora called. At least she didn’t sound angry.