Eight: The Job

When the job was put on his lap, it was too good to refuse. 20 million dollars to kidnap the heiress of a mob family. No one else was going to do it, they had to find the best man for the job.

He didn't accept it immediately. Just like any other job offer, he took his time to calculate whether it was doable or not. If he thought it would compromise him in any way, he would say 'no'.

His first thought when he saw her picture was 'she's beautiful'. His target was usually men, he never accepted an order to kill a woman, it was not in his gene. But Ariana was not a kill target, this was an abduction, and a very high profile one too.

He followed her for 3 months before the wedding. He studied her routines, her friends, her place of work, her house, and then he studied her boyfriend's house, the location of the wedding. He knew he was dealing with the most dangerous family in the country but that never stopped him before. He killed more people than any of the members of that family ever did.

By the second week of his surveillance, he accepted the job, then he continued his spying to make sure everything will go smoothly on the wedding day.

He was on the rooftop of an empty building 500 meters away from the summer home, he had camped there for two nights just to watch how the guards rotation worked in that house. Ariana came over one afternoon and Armand was in his room fucking a waitress he met at the Country Club earlier.

"Shit," he muttered.

If she walked in on him with that woman, the wedding would be off and the job would be canceled. But Armand was one slippery son of a bitch, he managed to hide the waitress in his walk-in closet and Ari never suspected a thing.

He kept watching through his telescope. He saw how Armand seduced her into making love to him that very moment the waitress he was half fucking was hiding in his closet.

He never put emotion into his work. Those people are just jobs he had to do, but Armand hit a nerve with him, he despised that man to his very core. He had never observed a man so cunning, so sleazy, mean, and deceptive as Armand Lombardo. If anyone had ever deserved to be killed by him, it would be Armand.

Which brings him to his actual job. To kidnap his wife at his wedding. It would give him some kind of personal pleasure. First of all, it would hit Armand's ego like a cannonball and second of all, after learning about Ariana, he thought she would be better off without Armand. The girl had been wrapped around his finger for too long.

The job was starting to cloud his judgment, he was observing them now because he was getting more curious about the girl he was supposed to kidnap. He never took off his eyes from his lens whenever they were making love, and he didn't realize that he was focusing on her when he did that.

He watched as she stripped her clothes off one by one. She would let him unhook her bra and pull down her panties. He zoomed in on her when she laid herself slowly on the bed with an inviting look in her eyes. He watched her face, deep in pleasure when Armand went down on her. The way she tilted her head and let her hair fall to her side, her gaping mouth, he can hear her moans in his head.

She hung her leg up and let her head fall on the edge of the bed. She would touch herself as they were making love and it looked incredibly sexy even from a tiny lens.

The sight of her just kept him interested. That's when he realized it was too late to back down from the contract. He was infatuated by this girl and he never felt like that before in a job.

He was confident that he could maintain his professionalism. The job was to get her out of the house and drop her off at an appointed place in the middle of the highway. To end up having to keep her for four days was a challenge he never saw coming.

He rested his hands on his waist and stared at her laying on the bed. She was the most vulnerable she'd ever been in her life. He had been watching her cry day and night since he took her from her life. Of course, she would try to get away from him. To her, he was a monster.

"It'll be over soon," he told her. "They're arranging the drop as soon as possible ... then you'll be free of me ... let's try not to kill each other 'til then." He slammed himself into the chair.

"Then what?" her voice croaked.

"Then you'll be out of my hands, and I'll be gone from this stupid world."

"I mean what will happen to me?"

"Who knows? You want to get rid of me so badly, I'm telling you it'll be done soon."

She fell silent and stared at the ceiling.

He never asked what would happen to her after the drop because he didn't want to care, but the conversation he just had with anonymous, played over and over in his head.