Page 27 of Niccolaio Andretti (The Five Syndicates)
present
For someone with a five million dollar bounty on his head, my life is pretty damn boring. It’s been a week since Vincent informed me of the three-point-five million dollar increase on my hit, and I haven’t seen any action yet.
To be fair, I’ve been camped inside of my brownstone, hiding like a little bitch.
I tell myself that it’s because it’s not just my life on the line. I have my security guards to think about. Being in public,
out in the open, puts them at risk and also the lives of anyone around me.
But a few minutes earlier, when the door of a car slammed shut and I immediately straightened up, I knew I was bullshitting myself.
Who the fuck am I trying to kid?
I had been indoors, doing nothing on a pleasant Saturday afternoon, because I had been waiting for her to come back.
And at the sound of her car, I peeked an eye out of my window curtain, catching sight of her dark red hair, the soft curls blowing gently with the wind. I took a moment to consider what I was doing.
I was staring like an awestruck teenage boy.
Was I embarrassed? Absolutely.
Would I stop? Fucking unlikely.
I got another ten seconds of her bouncing up the steps to John’s place before she let herself in with a key and was out of my sight. I sighed and returned to my office.
Now, not even a minute later, I’m still sitting idly at my desk, tempted to look her up on the internet.
I don’t know her first name, but I caught site of her last name, Reynolds, on her sweater a short while ago, and years as a killer and recluse have gifted me with the opportunity to develop research talents comparable to the most infamous of stalkers. For a brief moment, I hesitate, my fingers hovering closely above my keyboard.
I can pull up security footage from my cameras outside of my place.
I can grab a still of her face.
I can run it through every facial recognition software known to man.
It would be easy.
I can do all that… but then I would be sinking to a new low.
The truth is, after talking to her a few times, I know deep down that she’s not involved in the hit, yet I want a reason to look into her past—into her. But…
She’s not a target.
She’s not marked for death.
She’s a nobody.
And I have no fucking clue why I’m so fucking interested.
I sigh, staring at the ceiling, focusing on a smudge, where the corners of the walls intersect. When I painted the walls gray, I accidentally left a light gray dot of paint on the bright white ceilings. I could have fixed it, but at the time, I kind of liked the idea of the imperfect.
It was a tangible, visible flaw, and it was mine.
It was me.
But after a while, I started to resent it. I even named it Asshole, because like an asshole, my imperfection mocked me every day when I stared at it with nothing else to do with my life.
Laying low day after day gets boring.
