I really should have stopped her from going into that clinic today. I would have preferred for her to find out she’s pregnant after I make my presence known. I don’t like having an unfair advantage. But the truth is that the child inside her, our child, will make our reunion that much more interesting. No doubt she’ll be angry when she sees me. She’ll be tempted to risk her life and the life of our unborn to make me pay for my sins. But I’ve seen the softer side of Alex. The part of her that wants nothing more than to be touched, cherished, loved. She knows she can have all that and more with me.

My chest floods with violent rage as I watch Alex open her front door and invite Nicolas inside. The thought of his hands and lips on her is the worst part of this whole mission. I want to slowly break every bone in his body and watch him writhe in pain for even thinking he could touch her. But, once again, patience is a virtue.

I must wait for the right moment. Alex is carrying my child. Which means I’ll do anything to keep her. I’ll endure any agony to get her back. I’ll kill anyone. I’ll agree to any of her demands. But I need her to forgive me first.

Forgiveness.

Such a simple word with such complicated and varied implications depending on who you ask. What is forgiveness? Does it mean you forget the wrongs committed against you? Does it mean you embrace your tormentor?

I wish I knew. The answers to these questions become even more murky when the person you need to forgive is yourself.

I wash the dinner dishes and shower, then I get dressed to head out on patrol. Lurking in the shadows, collecting intelligence and investigating every lead is part of who I am. It’s why I was such a great detective. And why I was an even better hit man before that. It’s why Princess Amica contacted me first when she needed Alex killed.

It’s too bad that she caught me at a very low point in my life. If I had been high on another kill, I may have taken Alex out, no questions asked. But I hadn’t taken a job in three years. Though I fantasized about leaving the L.A.P.D. and going back to my old life, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

I hesitate to describe myself as broken. Broken people don’t have the capability to put themselves back together. But that’s what I did over the last few months as I investigated Alex and her family. In learning Alex’s story, I learned that I was not alone. And maybe, if I wasn’t alone, I still had hope.

I slide my .44 Magnum out of a drawer and hold it in my hands for a moment, lost in thoughts of the last time I used this gun for a hit.

I’d been working as a self-employed hit man for two years after leaving the Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence in France, more commonly known as the DCRI. I was working on high-level counterintelligence operations and realized my biggest thrill was taking out the bad guys. But not just taking them out. I took pride in completing each job without collateral damage. But that all changed on a warm August evening three years ago.

I was sent to London to take out a CIA operative who had gone rogue on a counterterrorism operation. I was hired to take him out before he was caught and tortured into giving up his secrets. He’d been in hiding for three months, but my intelligence had placed him in a small flat in West London. His family wasn’t supposed to be with him that night.

Even three years later, it still makes me sick to my stomach. I can’t get the image of that little boy dead, looking so peaceful in the comfort of his father’s arms. I had come into the man’s bedroom while he slept. As he lay on his side sound asleep, I put one bullet through his back, where his heart would be, and another bullet in the back of his head. The first bullet ripped right through his chest and lodged in his son’s brain. His son was snuggled up against him underneath the covers.

I tuck the .44 into the waistband of my shorts and pull my T-shirt down. Looking at my reflection in the porthole, I scratch my jaw and muss up my hair before I pull on a baseball cap. Turning away, I slide my sunglasses over my eyes.

I am not a good man. But Alex and our child are my chance to redeem myself. I just need to convince her that we are safer together. Because she’ll never be safe as long as there’s a hit on her head.

It took a lot of sweet talking on my part to get Princess Amica to agree to let me finish this job. She wanted to hand the job over to my friend, Crow, but as the only other person who was there with me that night in London, he knows I won’t give this one up. He knows I wouldn’t have come out of retirement for just any case. There may be no loyalty amongst thieves, but there’s a different code of ethics for hit men. Crow remains loyal to me.

But $20 million is a lot of money. He’s still hanging around the island, helping me with intelligence and waiting for me to screw this up so he can step in and finish the job. I don’t care how many years we’ve been friends, if he so much as breathes on Alex, I will gut him faster than a sea bass.

The image of that dead boy’s face flashes in my mind again and I take a seat at the small table near the galley kitchen. I grit my teeth against the memory and the mental self-flagellation that always follows. The inner voice telling me I don’t deserve to live after committing such a heinous act. That child didn’t deserve to die.

I went three years barely clinging to a long list of excuses to keep on living. It wasn’t until I started following Alex that I began to see what my purpose is. My purpose is to save her. To love her. And I will stop at nothing to do just that.

***

The Arkham Bar is housed inside a small, blue building with a clay tile roof. It has a warm, Spanish-island feel on the outside, but the modern, artsy interior feels cold. I feel a bit exposed in this tiny place, but that’s why I brought Crow here. Because if I feel a bit exposed, he’s going to feel downright naked.

The bartender asks for our drink order as soon as we take our seats in the uncomfortable white barstools. Crow keeps his black hoodie pulled tightly around his face as he sits next to me and we both order an Alhambra lager. We wait in silence as he retrieves the beers from a cooler under the bar and flips off the caps before he slides them to us. I pay for the beers and tip the bartender generously, then I let him know we’re not to be interrupted.

“If you didn’t want to be interrupted, you should have chosen a different fucking bar,” Crow complains in his British accent. “I look like a fucking wolf in a hen house here.”

“Don’t worry about maintaining a low profile in this bar. Worry about it when you’re out there walking the fucking streets. How many times has Alex seen you?”

He takes a long pull on the bottle of beer to make me wait. “I don’t know and I don’t care. If your girlfriend is feeling the heat, then she’s got good fucking reason to. She’s getting impatient.”

He’s referring to Princess Amica growing impatient waiting for me to get Alex out of the picture. “I don’t give a fuck if she’s getting impatient. I have to do this my way.”

He chuckles. “And your way is to have a go at her first? Fuck her body and her mind then kill her. Is that it?”

“You don’t know enough about my strategies to question me.”

“I know your strategies don’t always work.”

I should crack his skull for that comment, but I can’t. I need to keep Crow close, where I can keep an eye on him. I’ll take his snide comments about how I fucked up my last job. But once I have Alex back, safe in my arms, he’s on his own.

This is a not a business for making and keeping friends. Crow and I stumbled upon a friendship when I passed up a job due to a booked schedule. I’d been taking out marks for more than a year and my services were in high demand. It was Crow’s second job, and he came to me asking for advice. Two years younger than I was and thirsty for blood after a tour in Iraq, it was difficult not to feel sorry for him.