Chapter One.
I don’t get paid enough for this, I decided running a greasy steak knife through a man’s gullet, I jumped over him before his knee’s hit the cold tile below. There was a second man about the size of a mountain the same size as the first man. Not that it mattered to me how big they were; they all fell one way or another. The second man took it upon himself to charge at me, whereas the first had tried to calculate a way around my defenses, which as one could see his tactics hadn’t help him much.
Number two came at me like a freight train, if I were in a more playful mood I would have easily eluded him and continued our little dance as I neatly cut him from nose to scrotum. But tonight I was ruthless and as he charged for me I slipped past him only to leave my nasty little weapon in his throat, he went down before I could bat an eyelash crashing into an empty table and chairs; knocking over half empty wine glasses, ruining a priceless silk tablecloth and someone’s over priced chicken.
I scoffed turning to meet the man of the hour, Mr. Denni Hammond, third richest man in the country, runs a pricey corporation in Louisiana, a corporation that builds and sells nasty little weapons to this country’s greatest enemies. The kicker to it all, our great and mighty government doesn’t even realize he’s doing it, so much for Big Brother’s watching. He’s soon to be a very rich corpse, if I have anything to do about it, which of course I do.
Denni Hammond was doing something that not many of my clients do when faced with their executioner; he was actually smiling and clapping nonetheless. I resisted the urge to lash out asking what was so entertaining by the women who held his life in the very palm of their hand.
But of course I knew better, I was trained better.
So I ignored him, what could he do anyways? His gun and the guns of his goons were across the intimate dining area whereas; mine was tucked in the back of my black dress pants that a very helpful waitress had let me borrow. My fingers were trigger happy anyways and if he happened to have a little hideaway 9mm somewhere it would take little time for me to just off him. Though I would be disobeying orders, direct orders from Max, and orders from Max that were not followed to the letter were later disciplined.
I believe he knew this and that’s why he was clapping and smiling like a moronic clown, because he knew I was merely the messenger sent out to do an old man’s bidding, his dirty work if you must give it a name.
Denni stopped clapping after realizing that his applause did little to affect my stoic nature. Smoothing back his greased black hair, Denni studied me with beady blue eyes his red cheeks puffing with every breath.
“Are you here to arrest me, my dear?” he asked, his voice as smooth as his slicked back hair. He was a little taken back at how quickly I dispatched his guards; his thick meaty hands shaking.
“Something to that extent,” I mused, watching as he relaxed ever so lightly. He actually believed me to be an escort of such, Denni Hammond may be a rich son of a bitch, but he was also a very gullible son of a bitch.
Side stepping a fallen chair I eased my way closer to Hammond, he reeked of fear and of piss, as they all do about this time. At my approach he stood straighter, still trying to have the air of arrogance and fearlessness. Too bad I could see right through him, too bad I could see him quivering in his Armani loafers, too bad for the traitor to his country. Too damn bad.
“If it’ll help you cope I am only here to extract you to a higher command, if you will.” I smiled now I was playing, I should have immediately knocked him out and called for an extraction team. But what can I say, I have no control over my actions and my actions wanted to hear him squeal like the pig that he is.
“I am somewhat surprised and pleased that you have not decided to retrieve the 9mm you carry from that sweet little ass of yours, my dear.” He laughed wiping profusely at his sweating brow.
Settling back into my heels I shrugged. “I for once wasn’t set to kill, Hammond just to retrieve.”
“Like a bitch?” he asked his arrogance returning since he wasn’t going to die, yet. “What is your name bitch?” Hammond stuffed his chubby hands into his pant pockets, taking one or two bold steps towards me. Finally getting a hold of his fear, he came to his senses and realized that I was little more than five feet and three inches tall and only one hundred and fifteen pounds. A rag doll that if he could just backhand once he would put me in my place, which he believed was on my knees.
“Ana Rowe,” I answered, feeling my temper rise. “And I like to hear my bacon squeal before it burns.”
My arrogance was off the charts, and I needed to cool it but I couldn’t. I haven’t slept in the past three days because I was trailing this fat bastard and learning all his little quirks and everything else that went with a kill. I was tired, hungry, arrogant as hell and ready to blow a hole through this fuckers head and I wasn’t even allowed to do that. So you could see my frustration and unkind words when I was supposed to take excellent care of Mr. Hammond, fat chance there, when I really just wanted to beat the shit out of him.
His face paled a little at that comment, but I have to hand it to the fat bastard he did continue to stand his ground, though the ground he was standing on was figuratively giving way to his undoing.
“What did you say bitch?” he growled gnashing his teeth.
Clenching my jaw I slowly counted to three in my head, when I hit three I counted to six and when six didn’t work I tried twenty and all the counting just made it worse.
I wasn’t meant for this to fetch like some mangy animal, I was meant for the hunt and for the glorious kill. But for some reason unbeknownst to me Max has me doing extractions whenever clients come up, and he sends Pierce in for all the kills, that bastard.
While I was reeling inside over how sexist my job has really started becoming, Hammond had started to inch away, like I wouldn’t miss a three hundred and fifty pound man just walking away.
Cursing myself I whip out my S&W compact 9mm, pulling back the hammer I didn’t give a flying finger that I was definitely breaking the rules when it comes to being the extractor; all weapons should stay in their holsters, one must be able to retain their client without the use of violence. I just received a failing grade for those rules.
“Hold it right there fatty.” I barked taking aim for his right shoulder; I wouldn’t totally fail this way.
Hammond stopped beside an empty chair, brushing off bits of debris he sat down. “Welcome back my dear, I was beginning to think that my words had been a little too much for you to process.” He smiled showing off a pearly white smile.
I tried to keep my face as impassive as possible, but something cleverly funny popped in my head and I couldn’t resist laughing.
“What’s so funny?” Hammond asked looking a bit wary.
Taking a deep breath I steadied myself, my sides tight and hurting from the laughter I was holding in. Keeping the gun leveled at his shoulder I continued to quietly titter to myself, just to annoy the hell out of him.
“Tell me what is so funny you fucking whore!” he shouted, looking like he just might fly out of his seat and backhand me, I’d like to see him try.
“What was that Mr. Hammond?” I asked arrogantly. “I didn’t quite hear you; try shouting just a little bit louder.”
“You fucking bitch, you will rue this day!” he shouted jumping up from his chair and chucking it at me, it barely made it half way across the floor. “Do you hear me? You will rue this day!”
“Mr. Hammond,” I called when he was finished with his tantrum. “Knock, knock.” He gave me a quizzical look his small blue eyes still burning with anger.
“Who’s there?” he asked, though he knew he shouldn’t have.
“Bang.” I answered, letting a bullet fly from the barrel, shooting cleanly through his right shoulder.
The shot was nothing he would die from and it certainly didn’t shut him up, but it made me feel a lot better and that was all that mattered. Of course I would get an ear full from Max but I am the monster he created.
Pulling out my Blackberry I dialed a set of numbers, and after the first ring I got an answer.
“Hey Mark, Rowe, I have a little present for you.” I laughed casting a glance over at Hammond he was rolling around on the floor clutching at his shoulder screaming bloody murder.
“No, it wasn’t intentionally,” I told him when he inquired as to why the client was screaming. “No, no my finger just slipped, shouldn’t have applied vanilla lotion beforehand.”
“Yes, yes I’ll make sure no one else hears him,” I listened to a few instructions; Mark was a very cautious man. “Ten minutes?” I hid the excitement in my voice as I watched Hammond start to crawl away, whimpering like a stuck pig. “I can handle him for another ten minutes, no problem.” A warning and a couple threats from Mark led me to believe that Hammond was more important alive than dead.
“Yes, scouts honor.” I laughed hanging up, just as Hammond ran out of running room. I turned to face the traitor; his eyes were as big as a china saucer as he searched for an exit from this hell, until he laid eyes on me then he began to scream.
He had run into a knocked over table looking like a rat caught in a cage, I wondered if he dared try and get up and fight me off, when beasts are forced into a corner there’s no telling what they’ll do to get free.
Bending over I pulled out a six inch bowie knife from my boot, the steel blade glimmered in the restaurant lighting. Straightening I watched all means of escape and fighting back wipe clean from Hammond’s face.
“Now, where were we?” I asked, feeling a bit like an old school villain just before he rips his first victim to sheds.
Then, just like all the blond bimbo’s in horror films Hammond started to scream for his life.
* * * * *
“You do realize that what you did was against Max’s orders, right?” Mark Kylner asked, watching as several of his men picked up an unconscious and bleeding Denni Hammond.
I knew what I was getting myself into right from the start; I just don’t understand how I lost control of the situation. Hammond was alive, but I had tortured him and for what reason? I don’t remember, I don’t think I even had a reason.
I lost control; me. I have more control than most of the men who work with Max, that’s one of the reasons I rose so high up in rank, control.
You had control; a voice whispered sending chills down my spine.
“I was provoked.” I argued, watching the black Escalade take Hammond to Max’s home, where he would be questioned and bandaged most likely.
I felt a hand touch the small of my back, I knew it was Mark and I fought like hell to not let myself relax against him. Mark Kylner was an alright guy don’t get me wrong but it would ruin my image as a badass bitch, and I had no intention of ever letting a man know that I get tired of standing by myself.
“Provoked?” he asked softly where he should have been reprimanding me, seeing how he was a higher rank than me, he was third where Pierce was second and Max the big man on campus.
“Rowe, you don’t get provoked not easily— at least not this easily.” He reminded me, like I needed to be reminded that I had gone psycho on Hammond, slasher crazy.
I looked up at Kylner, looked into his warm brown eyes and wondered for the smallest of seconds what the hell I was doing with my life. Then I came to my senses, I do this hunting because I know of nothing else to do and I was brought up in it. There wasn’t anything else it was either learn how to take a life or have yours taken.
“Mark–” I started and then remembered that I had no feelings, no weaknesses, no fears, I was a badass mother fucker and nothing bothered me. “Never mind.” I finished walking off to an awaiting car.
I was alone in the back seat of the black Cadillac Escalade preparing myself for Max’s wrath, and he wouldn’t go easy though I was his little pet, no he’d let me have it. Whether he gave me a verbal lashing, a straight out backhanding or worse he would put me three days in the box.
The box was a small, white, empty room where Max put recruits who crossed the line and the worst part the line that was cross could be anything small or big, it didn’t matter if you put three sugars instead of two in his coffee or you killed when he said extract. It all mattered on what kind of mood he was in, and sometimes he just put you in there to see how tough
you were and how long you could last being by yourself without going crazy.
I’ve been put in the box only once and I don’t plan on going back anytime soon. I can still remember why I had been put in there too, the first and only time I had ever back talked Max and that’s where he put me. I had questioned his authority among other things and was sent there for four days instead of the regular three. I never questioned Max again.
I hoped Max was in a jolly good mood by the time I got back to headquarters, I wasn’t really in the mood for being cooped up in a small room, I didn’t want to be by myself right now, losing control still bothered me.
When the SUV pulled into the gravel driveway of Max’s mansion instead of headquarters where assassins like me usually were taken too after a mission, I knew I was in deep, up to my neck, shit.
“Fuck me,” I groaned slamming my head against the headrest, as I watched the driver and passenger, two guys I didn’t recognize jump out of the SUV dragging me out after them. I didn’t resist, I knew I had it coming I just didn’t think Max would do it in his own home.
The two guys who handled me must have been new recruits or something because I didn’t recognize them at all, and I’ve been with Max most of my entire life, I knew everyone he hired and then some. They were all business too, looking like they just hopped out of a Men in Black movie. They both held my arms tightly too as if expecting that I would lash out and try to escape my punishment, if I hadn’t disobeyed I might be trying just that or screaming at the top of my lungs. But I knew I was in the wrong and one thing I have learned over the years from Max is take your punishment like a man you always deserve it.
Max’s home was a three hundred and fifteen acre establishment that just so happened to have a two story brick colonial style house on the edge of the property. Equipped with the best security system known to man, along with guards and the ever essential guard dogs, who scoped out the property twenty-four seven. No joke. Max had better security than the President of the United States.
Why you ask? It comes with such a simple answer, but try and keep up.
He trains assassins if you haven’t guessed yet, if you did kudos, if not that’s just sad. He creates hit-men; he practically made up the words hit-man and assassin. Max has been around since the beginning, training and creating his little monsters to take out the trash if you will. Friends of Max’s are in a bit of a bind and need someone taken care of, he sends one of us. A Governor turned dark side, us. Rappers, thieves, traitors, he sends one of us. Even Presidential assassinations, Max sends one of his little monsters.
He knows all and sees all, like Yoda only the dark side Yoda.
Pretty damn scary if you ask me, and once you’re his there’s no way you’ll ever get out. You can’t have a conscious in this business; it’ll just screw you over before you have a chance to think about leaving. There are just two ways you can get out; one of course is death and that doesn’t happen a lot, the other is if you are dubbed Rogue, and trust me you don’t ever want that.
A Rogue is when someone just spontaneously gets the idea to run. They don’t like taking lives and can’t handle what they’ve become so they run, they forget that when you signed onto this job you know too much and can’t be left alive in the real world. So Max sends five of his best to go after the Rogue, the man or woman is brought back to the estate and made an example of. Out of the eighteen years I’ve been with Max I have only ever been on two Rogue hunts, and I knew both girls which hurt the most.
The two brutes at my side led me through the house and up the stairs to the east wing of the house; Max’s study his favorite place in the entire house.
When I said before that I was his favorite I didn’t lie, Max and I have a long history. He was a good friend of my parents, an uncle of sorts, I positive that my parents didn’t know what he did for a living, I remember he always talked about stocks, so maybe he was a stock broker? It’s all a blur now, I can’t even remember what my mother and father looked like it was so long ago.
When I was five my parents had been killed in a fire, a dishrag left over a stove something stupid along those lines, it was never made clear how. I just remember flames leaping at my door, eating away at my Barbie’s hair, trying to eat me. I have a burn scar on my right thigh from that night, along with nightmares that I know I will carry with me to the grave.
I remember at my parents funeral, I overheard a couple of my father’s lawyer friends arguing over something and when I got closer I came to the conclusion that they were discussing my future. Supposedly I had no grandparents, aunts and uncles were half way across the globe and didn’t want an orphaned five year old, I learned quickly that no one wanted me. And all of this at the age of five; rejection is a nasty little thing. It eats and eats until there’s nothing left, not even bones.
At the age of five I had lost all hope in anything and anyone, my parents up and died leaving me in this cruel world, with no one to take of me. All my other family didn’t want me or even knew that I existed. I remember feeling as if the world was spiraling out of control taking me down with it, until one man came to my rescue.
Max, my knight in shining armor, came to my rescue. He spoke to the lawyers and explained that he was a very close friend to my parents and would take it upon himself to raise their beloved daughter, it was what my parents would have wanted. He took me in and taught me the trade, I owe him fealty for the rest of my days.
That is why as I am preparing to be escorted into the lion’s den, I do not fear the punishment as much as the wrath that I know Max will pour down on me since I have deliberately disobeyed him, and maybe the disappointment will be there too.
When we were within feet of Max’s study I felt my heels start to drag, and every fiber within my being was telling me to karate chop these bastards and run. Run as far and as hard as I could away from there, I wouldn’t like what was behind the door and I sure as hell wouldn’t like the monster that lived in there either. But, alas I had saying ‘take it like a man,’ chanting in my head and I continued to walk, or maybe I had been scooting since the dudes on my right and left had suddenly picked me up and carried me the rest of the way to Max’s door.
Take it like a man. Take it like a man. There’s a reason why there aren’t so many girls in Max’s profession, there were seven the last time I counted and every year it seemed one would turn up on as Rogue. That was always a hard pill to swallow, especially since most of the men I worked with were big assholes and like to brag that men were the more superior species while woman were only put on this earth to cook, clean, and fuck.
That’s why I was going to take this punishment like a man, one if I sweet talked Max into letting me off easy and the guys found out about it, they were most certainly mock me and then I would have to kick several asses and then I would be right back where I started. So it was easier just to get it over with now instead of having to go through it later and receive a much harsher punishment than I would have gotten before.
When dumb and dumber set me down in front of the door I fought the very strong urge to jump back beyond beevis and butthead knocking their heads together and taking off. I also fought to just walk into Max’s study unannounced and demand to know why I was being man handled in such a way that it made me feel like a criminal, which I clearly was considering I broke one of Max’s rules. A third urge passed through me too but I figured once I was done talking with Max
I wouldn’t need to pee any longer.
When my guard and I stood in front of the old oak door a moment longer than necessary I really was considering bursting into the study, and I would have, maybe, but the brute on my left knocked before I could.
The door opened and I was face to face with Charles, Max’s manservant, I wasn’t surprised really Charles was everything and everywhere, so why not be a witness to my demise?
The old butler gave me a long once over, his keen brown eyes noting my disheveled hair and blood stained shirt, he was probably making a note about how to get the stains out of my clothes, when a voice sounded behind him.
“Charles, who’s at the door?” Max’s voice was calm, he wasn’t giving anything away. Whether he was happy with me or angry, he would never give anything away when there were witnesses.
Charles shook his head slightly. “Miss Rowe to see you sir.” He eyed the men to my right and left but didn’t name them; they might as well have not been there.
“Send her in.” his voice sent shivers running across my skin.
Charles gave a slight nod to his balding head and my guards released me and went on their merry way. I looked too the older man’s face for any insight on Max’s mood and found none, they were two peas in a pod, Max and Charles both impassive as the day is long, when it’s needed.
When the older man stepped aside I felt nothing. The fear and anxiety had all left me, I had nothing to fear because I had disobeyed and once you disobey a direct order you are punished. There are no ands, if’s, or buts’ about it, plain and simple.
“Take it like a man.” I murmured when I stepped into the room.
