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ALINA
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I inhale sharply as I sit up in bed. A loud noise has startled me awake. I take a few rapid breaths to steady my breathing.
"Matteo?" I call out in a disoriented panic. Soft morning light is pouring in from the window to my right as the quiet murmuring of voices fill the air. I quickly search the bed to find it empty.
"Matteo?" I call out again, my voice is hoarse from exhaustion.
I turn my focus to the living room where I find Matteo--hands balled into fists at his sides--glaring up at the television hanging on the wall in front of him. My eyes follow his gaze.
My eyes all but pop from my skull as I take in the man on the screen.
"о мой Бог" I gasp. "How is this possible?"
On the television a live news broadcast is interviewing Mayor Oleg Borkov as he announces his run for Presidency. I shake my head back and forth in utter disbelief.
I watched him have a heart attack. And then I witnessed Matteo put a bullet through his head shortly after. Borkov is dead.
This... this doesn't make any sense.
Matteo, hearing my voice, turns toward me.
I flinch back when I see the rage in his eyes. Angry doesn't begin to describe his disposition. He's terrifying in this moment. Absolute venom oozes from his every feature. His shoulders are broad and his fists are curled at his sides. If smoke could billow from his ears, it would.
He takes a step toward me and I freeze with fear unsure if his anger is directed at me or the deadman who is very much alive on the television screen.
"Are you behind this?" He seethes, pointing to the television behind him. His words hiss off his thinned lips. My brows raise as I desperately shake my head, no.
"I don't understand. What's going on?" My voice is pleading, I need him to make sense of all of this.
Quickly, before I have a chance to scurry away, Matteo is at the edge of the bed grabbing me up by my arms. He is rough as he gets in my face. "Tell me how this is possible, Alina!" He demands, enraged. "How is the man I sent you to kill, the man I did kill, alive?!"
My breathing falters as I struggle to form words. I'm just as perplexed as he is. "I-i, I don't know! I was there when you shot him Matteo. I-i don't know how this is possible!" I need him to believe me, I don't understand any of this, either. We were both there, he held me in his arms as he took his life. I felt the vibration of the gun through Matteo's chest.
"You're lying," he seethes. "Why else would The Agency have put a hit on you? You, Vladimir, and Oleg must have been conspiring together this entire time!" He growls viciously. "Was it for this?" He tips his head towards the television screen behind him. "The Presidency?"
I gasp, dropping my hands loosely at my sides, in horror. "The people you work for put a hit on me?" I ask, incredulously. It's as if a heavy weight has fallen onto my chest and I have no way of getting it off.
I watch Matteo's body go rigid, his muscles as hard as stone at the question, yet he says nothing. His silence is all the confirmation I need. My stomach drops.
"A-and you were the agent sent to kill me?" My voice quivers. I lift my eyes to his. It isn't really a question, because deep down I already know the answer.
For a brief moment a pang of guilt flashes across his features. I see it in the way his onyx pupils dilate against the vibrant turquoise-green of his eyes. All too quickly they retract, as if it never happened, and he settles me with his usual blank expression.
I laugh with no humor behind it as everything starts to make sense. All the scattered pieces of the puzzle are beginning to come together for a clearer picture. I'm not simply his hostage, I'm his assignment. He's using me before he kills me. The same way he used Vladimir to get to Borkov and the way he manipulated Borkov towards his own demise. I laugh again at the revelation, sounding absolutely crazed to my own ears. "I can't believe I actually thought that there is a good man somewhere beneath that hardened exterior." I spit the words in his face. "And to think, you've been planning to kill me all along! D-do your promises mean nothing, to you?" My voice quivers. My emotions deceive me as my eyes swell with tears. I shouldn't feel betrayed, he's an assassin, killing is what he does. But still, I do feel betrayed by him.
For a brief moment last night I felt as if I understood him. His inner workings, why he does what he does. What makes him tick. I can't believe I had actually started to think that I could trust him.
His eyes narrow. "Don't lie to me Alina." He says, voice low, shaking me slightly but his grip has loosened and he's lost some of the acidity in his tone.
"I'm not lying, Matteo!" My voice raises in exasperation. I'm so angry I could cry. But I wont. I refuse to let the tears fall. Not for him, not anymore. "I don't know anything!"
"Then how? How is Oleg still alive? And why does The Agency think you're involved with him and Vladimir?"
How am I supposed to know?
I want to scream the question at him. But I'm certain that nothing I say will be good enough for him. No matter how many times I tell him I don't know anything, he won't believe me. So why bother? From the moment I walked into Vladimir's hotel suite, nothing has made sense to me. He has kept me out of the loop time-and-time again and now he expects me to suddenly have all the answers? He kidnapped me! I glare at him as I shake my head.
I can't give answers that I don't have.
"Then you are no longer any use to me." He says releasing me from his grasp.
I drop, lifelessly to the bed, my knees bent beneath me. I gaze up to find Matteo hovering above me with his gun drawn.
It's a slim, silver gun. It's length exaggerated by a silencer. The same gun he had sitting on his lap the night I found him waiting for me in Vladimir's suite. The gun he killed him with.
My eyes bulge, heart drumming incessantly against my ribs. My mouth is dry and it's painful to breathe as I gaze up at him with worry.
As if in slow motion Matteo's finger moves to hover above the trigger.
"Wait!" I cry out.
Matteo pauses, an eyebrow lifts as if in question.
I scramble for anything, absolutely anything I can say to buy time. My chest is heaving up and down struggling for air as I think back to all of the conversations I've overheard, all of the bragging Valdimir did about Borkov.
"Doubles!" I say desperately. "What if Mayor Borkov has doubles?" My face lights up with a twinge of hope at the idea.
"Doubles?" Matteo questions, doubtfully.
"Yes, doubles!" I answer, more to the gun still mere centimeters from my face. It's trained down slightly, more towards the bed than at me but with a flick of his wrist, it will be pointed directly between my eyes. "Vladimir mentioned to me once that he had heard Borkov had a double. Borkov must use doubles, you know like Saddam Hussein?"
"The man I killed was not a double," Matteo answers sharply.
I open my mouth to speak but I'm again at a loss for words. Matteo's finger finds the trigger once more. He pauses for an uncomfortable amount of time in order to search my features. Searching for what? I'm not sure.
For some reason the way he is studying me ignites a fire in my chest. As if the decision to let me live or die is as simple as a flip of a coin. I glare at him.
"If you're looking for a reason not to kill me, I don't have one." I accuse.
I'm not guilty, but if he thinks that I am, does it really matter that I'm innocent?
Matteo's eyes widen and snap to a spot behind me.
Everything happens too fast.
Matteo lifts his gun.
His finger moves to find the trigger.
He squeezes.
A swift, low-resounding whistle reverberates throughout the room. The discharge of the gun is quiet enough to not alert anyone outside of the suite but loud enough to ensure me of it's lethality.
It only takes a fraction of a second for the bullet to hit its mark.
I scream.
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