Chapter
One
Mercenary. Assassin. Gun for hire.
In my world one did not live long if got attached to the people involved in
your mission. I wasn’t CIA. I hadn’t been in the military. And I certainly
didn’t swoon over television or movie stars. Or gangsters for that matter. I
had no time for the romanticizing of my job. I was a bit of a Jill of All
Trades, master of them all. It’s why I made a comfortable living. Not that it
mattered. I kept myself busy enough that I wasn’t at home but a few weeks out
of the year.
I was the best at what I did and
good at disappearing into the woodwork when my assignment was done. Not that
every job I did was an act of kindness. Hardly. The only people in my world
that I trusted were either dead or likely to be dead at any time. To boil it
down I trusted three people and they all knew my secret, so it made them prime
targets if someone wanted to get to me.
My housekeeper, Sofia. My high
school best friend, Dawn Malello. And the man who had trained me, Daniel Cooke.
I rarely, if ever saw any of them. I knew, though, if my ass was really in a
sling they’d all be there for me in the blink of an eye.
Growing up I wasn’t exactly what
you’d call bad ass material. In fact Dawn was the one who protected me from the
bullies pretty much on a regular basis. She was taller than me. Had better hair
than me. And drop dead gorgeous.
I was the class freak. The orphan.
The emo chick who wore all black, dyed my hair three shades of blue and caked
on the mascara. I listened to Nirvana and everything else that was alternative
hitting the airwaves. I was fresh meat to the mean girls and the boys.
Most of the time I never left Dawn’s
side. She was the equivalent of taking a gun to a knife fight. She was and
still is, a good person. But it wasn’t her who found me near death in the
foster home I was sheltered at the night of our graduation.
Dawn may have been my friend, but
she liked and still likes to party. So I was alone with that family’s set of
six foot five twins Seth and Lowell Gekham. They weren’t one of the fosters.
They were Annette and John Gekham’s biological children. Many nights I sat
awake with the door locked to my room waiting for them to break through and act
out the physical aggression on me.
They had a real problem with women.
Mostly they had a problem with me because I was smarter than them. That night
they got their chance. They gang raped me and nearly strangled me to death.
I was eighteen. Up until then I
didn’t have a taste for bloodshed, and had Daniel Cooke not found me I wouldn’t
have lived through the night. Daniel took me into his world and introduced me
to a set of rules that I live by to this very day.
Trust no one. But if you have to
trust anyone make damn sure they’re not playing you for the fool.
Never fall in love. It makes you
sloppy. It gets your heart broken. More than that it can and often does, get
you killed.
Never let moss grow under your feet
but pick one place to come home to every now and again to keep up appearances.
My name is Katerina. I have no last
name. Not anymore. This is story of how Katherine Walsh the emo girl became
Katerina the assassin. The mercenary. The gun for hire. And of how one man
healed me. Saved me. And turned me into a killing machine.
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