Cats and Mouse

XI

But as much as I really wanted to be the heartless and cold assassin my uncle and cousin wanted me to be, my dumb curiosity got the best of me. And there were times where I'd fallen into Lorenzo's trap of seeing if I still cared about them now.

Now, with this box full of a whole year of where and what they've been up to was piquing my interest way more than the gift boxes Liam was eagerly waiting for me to open from him.

Rolling my eyes at his childish excitement, I took out all the photos in the box in my lap and quickly got to work in putting them in the timeline order of the dates written behind them.

Although Liam was hurt by my nonchalant reaction towards his gifts, he stood beside the bed watching curiously at my action. It was like a puzzle that I was trying to put together by fixing up all the photos and finally letting out a relieved sigh once all of them were neatly fixed in timely order.

"Damn. If I knew you were into stalking three very sexy lads then I would've stopped trying to shoot my shot with you long ago. Should've just told me from the beginning that I wasn't anywhere near your type. My feelings would be hurt but I'd learn to get over it"

Liam mumbles before going back to eating the rest of my chocolate cake he offered me a while ago for MY own birthday but I guess that offers off the table now.

It's not like I was actually gonna eat it anyways. With my distaste for cakes plus my diet of being a stealthy assassin now, that cake would've gone to waste if he waited for me to get to it.

Turning back to all the photos, my mind was humming at the sight of all three Petrov men in the pictures. I didn't know whether I was happy to see these or mad at the fact that Lorenzo continued to be nosey with my life and decides to taunt me about what happened on my 18th birthday last year.

Now that I'm on a mission where I'm supposed to stop relationships and feelings, it seemed like Lorenzo's teasing antics seemed to heighten. He's been leaving subtle hints about them during our monthly talks and he's even taunted me before about how I might have fun this year on my 19th birthday with four guys instead of three like last year.

My eyes skimmed over the pictures while smiling at the scenes of Dax being seen in public with his dogs. His brothers hated pets but Dax had always been a dog lover. Ever since I was a child, I remember watching Dax rolling around with all sorts of dogs. Of course dogs never had long lives but every time Dax's dog had passed, his rich parents made sure to buy him twice the amount more. Which ended up with him having a large amount of them now.

He didn't have a whole house of them but he had more than 5, well the last time I checked. In the picture in front of me was him jogging shirtless with his oldest 4 dogs out of the 9 I remember him having.

The oldest 3 dogs he had were all black Doberman's. I wasn't very fond with the scary looking dogs at first but when Dax would bring them over to my house and taught me how to take care of them, I actually began to like the scary looking dogs.

Dax taught me how to care for dogs and enjoy playing with them so much that he actually bought one for me when I was 12. My father and brothers didn't like that considering I was still a child that could barely take care of myself so Dax made a pact with them to let me have it over my house on the weekends.

I never knew how many types of dogs there were but when Dax took me to a dog rescue center a few blocks from my house and I spotted the tiny black fluffy dog in the corner sleeping by itself, I just couldn't resist picking it instantly. The woman at the counter had relayed all the information to both me and Dax about how to care for the adorable little dog and I was as excited as Lilo was when she adopted Stitch.