CAUGHT: A Hitman Romance (16 page)

LIZ

"Sorry!" I gasp, balancing my glass just enough to only drop the tiniest spill of champagne.

To my luck, Pete's sister, Angelica, is not holding a drink in her hand. I had bumped straight into her while my eyes were fixed on the stranger's neck. She is a few years younger than me and just started college, an Ivy League school, good girl.

I don't mind her. Unlike my sisters, she acts friendly towards me. And she is a quiet person, never laughing out loud or speaking in a shrill voice when she is angry at someone.

Also, I think she might have the slightest hint of rebel inside of her. Or maybe I am just biased because I know she dies her hair darker just like I do, and for some reason, in our world lighter hair is seen as worth striving for.

She looks startled for a second, catching her breath and straightening her dress before she starts laughing.

"That's quite alright," she says. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, yes," I utter. "Sure. Sorry, I should have paid attention."

"What kept you so preoccupied?" she asks, now following the direction I had been looking at.

I hesitate for a moment, unsure whether I want to share my interest in the dark, tall stranger with her.

On the other hand, she might know who he is if he is part of her family.

"I was just wondering who my parents are talking to," I say, trying to sound not half as interested as I really am.

She narrows her eyes in an attempt to be able to see better.

"Ah," Angelica says. "That's Mr. Clark, I think. My dad's business partner."

"Business partner?"

"Yeah, they both invested in something together, absorbing another company or something? I don't know."

She shrugs. "Never been too interested in dad's work. But he and my mother have talked about Mr. Clark a lot."

"How?" I ask. "I mean... what did they say?"

Angelica quickly looks back over her shoulder before she continues to speak.

"Mom doesn't like him very much," she whispers. "He's new, you know. No known family, no fancy background. Just a guy who worked his ass up. He moved here a few months ago when he and Dad started working together. Owns a big fucking mansion over in the west."

She raises her eyes conspiringly and leans in closer.

"And he's living there all by himself," she adds. "It's kinda creepy, don't you think?"

I look back over to my parents and the man they are talking to. Mr. Clark.

"Creepy?" I wonder.

"Yeah," she whispers. "I think it is. A single man living in a huge ass mansion all by himself? Why not get a nice penthouse closer to the city or something?"

"Maybe he just likes the neighborhood," I suggest. "And all you can get here are big houses."

She furls her eyebrows. "But still..."

"People here are always so suspicious," I whisper, turning around to look back at him.

He is still talking to my parents, together with Mr. Bishop, Angelica's father.

"Well, I have to get me one of those," Angelica says, nodding towards the drink in my hand. "Talk to you later."

I smile at her and our ways part. While she heads toward the bar, I continue my way back outside to take in the late afternoon air. The weather is still mild and sunny, even though summer is officially over.

I place myself apart from everyone else, enjoying the fresh air as I sip on my champagne. I have always loved our garden. Neither the house nor the neighborhood itself ever had any sentimental value to me even though I have lived here my entire life, except for the past four years that I spent at college.

But our garden is special to me. It is huge, as are most estates in this area, and I am the only person in my family who likes to walk. I could spend hours just walking by myself, and I spend a lot of afternoons circling our garden again and again. I know it better than anybody in our family, every corner, every tree, every flower bed at any time of the year. The only person who is more familiar with it must be our gardener, Henry. He has been working for us since I was a little child and even though we never talked much, I feel oddly close to him. He is a solitary man who once told me that he is doing this work for exactly that reason.

"Not too keen on people," he once said. "No offense."

Of course there was none taken. After all, I am not that different in that regard. But I don't think I could live a life in such a solitude as he is.

“Always been fonder of flowers,” he told me, years ago. “They leave you alone, just looking pretty without asking for anything or talking behind your back. They know no evil.”

I must have been about fifteen years old when he told me that. They know no evil.

“How boring,” I said back then, and Henry shook his head at me.

“Just you wait,” he said. “You must know evil and hardship to see it not as something exciting, but as something to be avoided.”

I know that I am spoiled, that is why I never dared to complain, especially not to Henry, who I know had a lot more serious and existential struggles to deal with than I ever did. But I have always led a lonely life, at least as long as I was living here.

College life was different. At college, I had people I would call friends. I am not as antisocial as my family thinks me to be. The people I met at college didn't make me feel invisible like my family does. Sometimes I feel like I might just as well not exist for them.

It's all the worse that I had to move back home with them now that I have finished my degree and did not get accepted to the Master's program I applied for. I have nowhere to go, nowhere to be. An imposed gap year is what I am facing right now, in hopes to be accepted into another program next year. Months of nothing to do except for inhabiting my old childhood room in a house I don’t like with people who don’t want me around.

I flinch in surprise when someone touches me on the shoulder. It is my sister Sandria, asking me to come with her so she can introduce me to her father-in-law to be.

We head to a little group on the terrace that includes Sandria’s fiancé, my other sister Lucia and her husband and Mr. Bishop… and
him
. The ominous tall, stranger with the dark hair and the tattoo peeking through at the top of his collar. Mr. Clark, Angelica had called him.

My heart almost stops when I notice his presence, but I try my best not to let it show.

I can feel his eyes on me as I join the group, but I don’t reciprocate his gaze. Sandria introduces me to her future father-in-law, and I shake his hand like a good girl, but cannot bring myself to respond to his lame introductory words.

Of course, I am introduced to Mr. Clark next. Our eyes meet for a few moments when we shake hands and he pins me down with his stare. His eyes are not completely black but more of dark gray. He looks at me with such intensity that I would normally fear that there was something wrong with my hair, my face, my dress. But I can tell in his stare that that's not it.

He doesn't focus on any imperfection. Just on me. No one has ever looked at me this way.

Why is he gritting his teeth, though? Am I making him angry?

"Leonard Clark," he introduces himself.

I look at him and give a polite nod before withdrawing my hand from his grip.

I cannot shake off the feeling of his intense stare the entire time I am forced to chit chat with Mr. Bishop and my sister's dull fiancé. When the topic turns to my academic endeavors and my sister uses yet another chance to play me down, Mr. Clark chimes in, forcing me to look back up at him.

I find it very hard to talk to him, even harder than usual.

He wants to know what it is that I could be embarrassed about.

"Nothing," I lie.

I am certainly not embarrassed about my choice of major and college.

I am, however, embarrassed about what happens in my bedroom when I find myself alone. I am embarrassed about what happened on campus when I participated in occasional dating and found myself with a boy staring at me with fear and disgust when I told him what I wanted him to do to me.

I am embarrassed and sad about the emptiness I felt every time someone fucked me, thinking he was giving me just as much pleasure as he was enjoying, while I just prayed for it to be over, faking every single orgasm I have ever experienced with a man.

Of course, that's not what anybody here at this party would expect or want to hear from me.

Mr. Clark looks at me as if he expects me to continue, but I am of the opinion that everything I need to say has been said. When I can longer bear to withstand his dark gray gaze, I lower my eyes, noticing that he has his hands in fists.

He is tense, clenching his fists so much that his knuckles turn white.

His hands are big and strong.

I wonder what they would feel like wrapped around my throat.

He knows that I noticed his clenching fists, but doesn't relax them. The longer I look at them, the more it feels as if he is grasping me, as if I was within his strong touch.

I avert my eyes and resume the dull conversation about my educational choice. I don’t want to be here. This conversation annoys me, and Mr. Clark’s eyes feel like spears poking into me.

“Will that be all?” I finally dare to blurt out. I know this is not the way one ought to leave a conversation, no matter how dull or annoying it is, but thanks to my overall reputation I am granted a fool’s license when it comes to my family - and I intend to use it to my advantage.

Of course, my sisters roll their eyes in embarrassment, but no one stops me when I flee the little circle. If anything, I am sure they are glad to be rid of me.

Except for one person.

I don’t have to turn around to know that he is following me.

My hopes that he might be heading a different direction are shattered when he appears next to me at the bar, brushing along my arm as he reaches for a new glass.

I am just about to turn away and scurry off when he asks me: “Does it hurt?”

The question is so multifarious that I am having trouble to answer it.

I am not even sure what he is talking about. The way my sisters treat me? He must have noticed how they both rolled their eyes and the way they addressed me in general. Or is he talking about the marks on my legs?

I don't dare to turn around, but I look back over my shoulder. "Excuse me?"

"Your ankles," he says and my heart skips a beat in shock. "Looks like you're hurt there."

Alright, then. I could have anticipated this. After all, the marks are clearly visible.

I am just not used to anybody looking at me with that much attention. I bet my family wouldn't even say anything if I had the marks right at my neck, where I would want them to be.

I turn around and accuse him of being impertinent.

He wants to know what happened to me, to my legs in particular. I hesitate for a moment, unsure whether it would be wise to insinuate anything.

He might just be genuinely worried. A good man.

A man who clenched his fists while staring at me as if I was an archenemy or something to eat.

All I can come up with is: "Nothing."

His gaze darkens, and he narrows his eyes as he looks down to me.

"Well, I'm pretty damn sure you're lying to me right now," he says, his voice so low that I can hardly hear him.

The way he looks at me doesn't suggest real worry. It is more like he is trying to get something out of me. Something I am not willing to share.

"I don't lie," I say. "Ever."

He probes, not only with his words but with his eyes, too. When I insist that nothing happened to me, emphasizing the word, he seems to understand. His eyes flicker for a moment and there is an undeniable reaction to the smile I add to the statement.

He looks around, checking the surrounding behind me. I am not sure whether he is looking for a way to escape, or trying to see if there are people watching us or listening to us.

Whatever he finds or doesn't find seems to have little impact on what he says next.