“Wait.” Clacking came over the line as she typed the names. “And?”
“A business. Centrium Group. They do business in Torino.”
“Hmm, okay, let me poke into it. It’ll take me a second, because the internet at this hotel sucks.”
“You’re on vacation?”
“If you call a luxury shack in the woods a vacation, sure.”
“Where’s your husband?”
“He wants to roast something over the massive firepit he’s got going outside, so I don’t know... hunting? While I’m stuck here, wasting away without Wi-Fi.”
“Well, don’t die before you find out that info for me, okay?”
“Aw, shucks, how sweet. Your concern is touching. Speak to you later, L’Ombra.”
I hung up, my assassin moniker echoing around my head. The Shadow. It was a name that I’d been given pretty quickly after I left the Special Forces and went back to the real world.
I’d worked hard in those first few years, building that reputation, figuring out how to use the skills I’d honed.
Looking back, it was all a blur. The only thing that had felt real was the slow uncovering of my mother’s past. My abusive POSaunt and uncle had both passed, unfortunately, so torturing them for information would have been impossible.
Trying to find the hospital had also been a fucking dead end, despite having the logo of it, since the entire thing had burned down only a few months after my mother had died there. So the hospital was a dead end—and the asshole rapist former boss was dead.
Now Giada was nosing into the steel mill staff registry and taking her sweet time. Once she came back with something, my life would carry me away from here and back on the path to vengeance. The only thing I cared about.
Except that wasn’t quite true anymore. Now I had something new to care about.
Katarina Dmitrova and our contract.
A change, after so long.
14
KATARINA
The cafeteria was chaotic at lunchtime. There were fewer orderlies and nurses today. Clearly they’d put some kind of lockdown on the whole place. So patients who usually had a lot more support were wandering, confused and upset, with the skeleton crew of staff they’d brought in hardly keeping up with the demand for care.
I grabbed my stale cheese roll, my go-to lunch, as I couldn’t stomach the mystery meat in the hot dishes. I went to sit at my usual table by a window, so at least I could stare out at the spindly trees that stretched far into the horizon.
I sat here every day, without fail. So I noticed right away.
One of the branches close to the window was different. I pressed my forehead to the glass to get a closer look.
A tiny, nearly unnoticeable bud.
A loud crash pulled me from my wonder.
“See what you’ve done? Stupid girl!” Sister Vera’s voice was scathing, ugly with her unspent rage; she was looking for an outlet.
I shoved to my feet at the sound. Rough, shouted words set me off like nothing else and always gave me a jolt. Fight or flight, and I always chose fight.
Tatiana stood in the middle of the lunchroom, a tray at her feet, food spilled across the tile floor and on the hem of Sister Vera’s black robes.
“You dirty little sinner, look what you’ve done—wasting food? You might as well spit on a cross!” The nun was raving mad. “Now you’re crying? I’ll give you something for those crocodile tears!” She drew her hand back.
Sister Vera wasn’t holding back today, and there was no one around to stop her. Except me.