Page 14 of The Hitman

The man deflates, and his smile broadens falsely. “Of course, sir. Just that way,” he says, gesturing behind me.

I grunt my thanks and turn toward the familiar hallway to the restaurant, trying to figure out what the fuck that strange encounter at the front desk was all about.

I skulk through the restaurant and fall into a chair by a bank of windows with a perfect view of the pool. There’s a family with a small child playing in the shallow end. I don’t realize that I’m looking for light brown skin and oversized sunglasses until my mood dips when I don’t see the woman from yesterday. I feel worse now.

“Buongiorno. What would you like for breakfast, sir?”

“Espresso,” I say, before turning and coming face-to-face with the same waitress from yesterday. Well, face to breasts. My mood lifts immediately. She’s not big glasses and brown thighs and dainty white toenails, but her hungry smile is an open invitation.

“Espresso, per favore,” I tell her.

She nods and turns away. I watch her hips and ass move as she leaves.

I scan the dining room looking for the woman from the pool again. Sue me. There’s no one in the small restaurant except the servers and an old man chain-smoking on the patio.

When the waitress returns, she leans forward, much more than is necessary, to put the cup and saucer in front of me.

She smile down at me.

I smile up at her nipples. It’s as if last night never happened.

“I have a break after lunch, if there’sanythingelse you need, sir?” she whispers in English.

I reluctantly raise my eyes to her face and nod. “I’ll meet you at my room,” I tell her as I raise the cup to my lips.

“Yes, sir,” she says and turns to walk away again.

I watch her ass again. The view is nice.

She passes the door to the hotel, and I see a flutter of silky black fabric and dark sunglasses. My dick lurches just as the sweet, bitter coffee hits my tongue. I can hear the sound of her sandals slapping against the tile floor over the restaurant’s music and the sound of dishes clanking against one another. The background noise fades away, becoming faint as if I’m not in this room, as if I’m out there following the angry woman with the great legs down the hallway.

And next thing I know, I am.

* * *

Zahra

He’s preening.

It’s pathetic.

I can’t look away.

His body is fucking perfect.

Not like action star perfect. Ryan has a movie star body. It’s a contractual obligation. He spends so many hours in the gym that I used to joke that the rowing machine was his other girlfriend.

I have to wonder now, though, if he really did spend as much time at the gym as he said he did. Maybe he was meeting up with Trisha or someone else; anything is possible now, I realize. Every part of the life I’d had with him — the life I’d felt sure enough about to wreck my relationship with my sister — is now up in the air. How do I know what was real or not? How can I tell which parts of our life he’d been honest with me about and which he hadn’t? That’s assuming, I realize, ifanyof it was real. Just as that thought crosses my mind, I feel queasy.

I down the rest of the wine in my glass and pour another. I want to drink this feeling away. I want to drink all the feelings away.

I take another sip as a splash from the pool grabs my attention.

The peacock is doing laps again.

The wine glass stops halfway to my mouth. I angle my head to the side to catch the pert globes of his ass bouncing above the waterline as he swims a perfect lap toward the other end of the pool. I’m sweating. Could be the sun. Could be the alcohol. Could be all that fucking dark body hair. Could be all of the above.

Either way, Ryan never made me sweat.