Rosa

Chapter 16

Rosa closed the door to Moulin's hotel room with another soft 'click.'

Immediately, Rosa locked the deadbolt to prevent the cleaning staff from coming in. She did a quick sweep of the area with her trusty Beretta in hand, taking care to check all the places a man might be able to hide: Under the bed. Inside the walk-in closet. The bathroom. The shower.

When Rosa finally confirmed that she was, indeed, safely alone in the room, she set down her gun and got to work. Slipping on a pair of leather gloves to hide her fingerprints, Rosa started sifting through everything and anything she could get her grabby, little hands on. For the next thirty minutes, she didn't leave a single suitcase or drawer untouched.

In the middle of her ransacking frenzy, Rosa stumbled upon a photograph of Moulin's smiling family—him, his wife, and their two kids—in the side pocket of a suitcase. Other than this small discovery, however, the crafty, old lawyer hadn't left her any significant cookie crumbs about his questionable clients or her secretive sponsor. There was no way around it. A face-to-face interrogation with Moulin was in order if she sought real answers about Mr. Massera.

With a sigh, Rosa put each item back exactly where she found it.

Around 10:45 am, she began to prepare the room for Moulin's return, positioning herself to be on the offense. Her Beretta was locked and loaded. Zip ties and pepper spray were retrieved from her purse. Rosa slipped them into the pocket of her blazer. If Moulin chose to be difficult, the spray and the ties would be used to—

Her eyes drifted around the beautifully curated room, admiring the lavishness and lushness of the decor. When Rosa realized that her thoughts were beginning to stray, she quickly refocused her attention.

Damn, what was up with her today?

Usually, her mind was always laser focused on the job. Today, though, she felt restless. It was hard to concentrate. For some reason, Moulin's photograph threw Rosa off her game. The idea of her target as a family man was... bothersome. It forced her to view Moulin more like a person and less like a target.

He was someone's husband.

He was someone's parent as well.

Rosa had been a parent once, too, for less than a year.

Suddenly, the world's most beautiful and perfect little face flashed across her mind. Fleeting. Soul-crushing. Rosa's eyes closed as her entire chest seized up with a stab of grief. It cut into her heart like frozen glass shards. Like searing steel knives.

Then, the pain passed.

Because she rejected it through sheer force of will, as she always did, as she always had, for the sake of her sanity, pushing those demons somewhere deep and dark inside her soul where the light of day might never find them. Still, Rosa remembered all too well what it felt like to have one's flesh and blood torn from her, to have the most precious part of her heart ripped away before she was ready to say goodbye.

Just like she was about to rip Moulin away from his family.

Rosa let out an irritated huff.

Seriously, what was wrong with her today?

She was behaving like a sniveling, little bitch.

Ever since Mr. Massera brought up Mesrine the day before, her mind and mood had been all out of sorts. She was beginning to lose a bit of her hardwon fuck-it-all attitude about life and death.

Clenching her jaw, Rosa fought to regain her composure.

It didn't help that Moulin also happened to be her first target who seemed to be a normal-ish civilian rather than a cold-blooded criminal. Granted, the man was no saint. This shady-ass lawyer, Rosa reminded herself, spent most of his career helping cold-blooded criminals get away with their crimes. His morality was highly suspect.

Yet, a small, annoying voice inside Rosa's mind argued: Moulin wasn't a killer, a rapist, or a sexual predator like her other targets. He wasn't a pedophile like the late Gaspare De León. Moulin might be a bad man, but he wasn't a monster.

Her conscience grew muddier and muddier as minutes stretched well past an hour.

Through no small effort, Rosa eventually convinced herself that Moulin's death was already set in stone. If she didn't pull the trigger, then Mr. Massera would pay someone else her €100,000 to get the job done. Moulin was simply a paycheck, nothing more, and she had no reason to lose her shit over the fact that this particular man impregnated some bitch and spawned some mini-Moulin's together.

Around 12:30 pm, Rosa unlocked the deadbolt on the door and hid herself in the bathroom. She checked her phone for updates from Mr. Massera. He had told Rosa to keep an eye on her phone in case there was a change of plans. She glanced at the screen. Nothing. It seemed everything was on track.

Très bien.

Rosa switched her phone to silent mode and tucked it back inside her pocket. Moulin might burst into the room any second now, and she didn't want a pesky ringtone to give away her position.

From there, she lurked in the bathroom like a silent statue, biding her time for Moulin's return. A minute after her phone went into silent mode, however, several new notifications lit up the screen. They arrived one after another, urgent, pressing, needing attention, with new messages appearing every two minutes or so.

Unfortunately, every single one of those messages went unnoticed in her pocket. Rosa became far too engrossed in listening for the approaching hallway traffic outside the room and 'clicks' at the door to check anything else. This was a rookie mistake that, on any other day, Rosa would've never made. At the moment, though, she was becoming too hyper-focused on one task and letting other tasks slide.

Little did she know, this mistake was going to cost her.

At exactly 12:59 pm, Rosa finally heard the footsteps and 'click' at the door that she had been anticipating for the past twenty-nine minutes.

After the door swung open, the 'thud-thud-thud' of heavy footsteps trod into the room. From the shadows in the bathroom, she waited for Moulin to come closer. She readied herself to strike. As Rosa listened carefully to the rhythm of the footsteps, dismay bloomed within her. She realized that Moulin must have brought a friend back with him. It sounded like not one but two people had entered the room.

Fuck.

Clutching firmly onto her Beretta, Rosa ducked behind the bathroom door to stay out of their line of sight.

The two men started conversing in French.

The first voice murmured, "Je ne pensais pas que Berlusconi enchérirait autant pour cette merde."

I didn't think Berlusconi would bid so much for that piece of shit.

The second voice chuckled deeply as he remarked, "La poubelle d'un homme est le trésor d'un autre, non?"

One man's trash is another man's treasure, no?

Rosa could only assume that the first voice belonged to Moulin. She had never met the man, after all.

The second voice, however, was no stranger to her.

A slow-moving dread prickled across her skin.

Rosa would've recognized that man's voice anywhere. Even in her dreams. In fact, that voice often haunted her nightmares. It was the same voice that hissed in her mind, reminding her of how ugly she was, how useless she was, how utterly lost she would be without him—

Rosa's heart began hammering away like a drum. She feared it might explode from her chest.

What if he heard her?

What if he found out that she was still alive?

Rosa's entire body became paralyzed with terror as she tried the wrap her mind around the chilling fact that the second man sounded just like—

Julien fucking Mesrine.