Nessa Fleming is a photographer.
Dexter Smith is an assassin.
Everyone wants them dead.
But neither Dexter nor Nessa are what they appear to be and they are both keeping dangerous secrets.
Cover by meha-k
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We ran through her neighbours' backyards. We passed house after house, avoiding eyes that peeked out from closed curtains. For this neighbourhood, nothing new.
My gun was pointed in front of us. The other holding Vanessa's smaller one that clutched mine like her life depended on it.
She did rest her baseball bat on her shoulder, ready to hit the shadows if they made a wrong move.
"Where are you going?" She asked.
I hushed her.
She glared up at me. "Don't shush me."
I groaned shaking my head. "I parked a few blocks over."
"Then what do we do?"
"We will figure that out once we are safe," I told her, watched our surroundings for anybody coming.
"So much for parting ways and never seeing each other again." She grumbled to herself.
"That was before they hired more than one assassin to kill you." I gritted, annoyed at our luck.
"Is that because you're a bad assassin? They even had to hire someone else to do the job?"
I let out a deep breath. "It means they don't want you dead. The Descãlu's need you dead."
She took her eyes off the shadows to look at me with a furrowed brow. "The what now?"
I let out a breath, thinking about the people that hired me to kill her. "Andreea Dascālu. She is the godmother of the Mafia Romaneasca."
She knit her brows together, scrunching up her nose. "Did you just sneeze?"
I shot her a confused look. "The Romanian Mafia?"
"Wait, hold your horses," she put her feet in the ground, stopping me from moving as she looked at me with her jaw dropped. "It's a bunch of Romanians that are trying to kill me?"
"Did you think someone else wanted you dead?"
"Of course not." She snapped her mouth shut quickly and pursed her lips. Her eyes wandering the shadows around us in thought.
I narrowed my eyes in suspicion. "What is it?"
"I just thought, that, umm."
"Spit it out."
She glared at me, speaking quickly, her eyes clearer. "I've never even heard of a Romanian mafia. I've heard of Russian and Italian mafias, but never Romanian."
Vanessa Fleming was good, but I was better.
These people didn't put a price on random strangers heads. There was always a reason. And Vanessa Fleming had a hefty price.
"You're saying, you have no ties to them?"
"No. I'm not even Romanian. I'm Irish." She told me.
