Chapter 2

Eva.

"Eva" That voice.

No.

I shake my head trying to convince myself maybe I heard him wrong but the guy takes off his mask and I take a stumbling step backward. It can't be him.

He gets up and starts approaching me and my hold on the gun tightens. My hands are shaking and I can vividly hear the sound of my heartbeat.

"Don't come any closer" I grit out, forcing myself not to cry. No, don't cry Eva, you are strong. You have to be.

I dig my teeth into my bottom lip and ignore the taste of blood on my tongue.

It's different seeing him on TV. He is no longer the boy I fell in love with.

The boy that I considered my only family. He is all I knew, he was there when I was cold, and he gave me his food when I was hungry. He shielded me from all the bullies in that horrible place.

When his time came, he promised to come back for me, he said I should wait for him.

I waited but he never came.

Someone else did. The person who turned me into a monster. A fucking killer.

"I have been looking for you" He whispers, staring at me in awe. I am far from the malnourished girl he once knew. And he is not the skinny boy I knew. Vin has grown both in height and his physical appearance.

He is in a grey suit, unlike this morning. The words and tattoos peeking from the collars of his shirt and sleeves are foreign to me. He even has piercings. And here I was waiting for nothing.

His eyes though. They are still the same, So grey and beautiful. They stare at me the same way as before, and it makes me so angry.

"You haven't. No. The moment you stepped out, you got relieved from the pest that was always clinging to you" I angrily yell and on the verge of tears.

"That is not true, and you know it" Vin shouts, his demeanor changing to anger too.

Vin smacks away the gun in my hand and he is about to pull me to him when I send a hard kick between his legs. "You don't get to touch me, ever" Still in his bent position, I kick his knees and he falls to the tiled ground with a loud thud.

"Stop it, Eva. Don't let me hurt you" He gets up in seconds and pins me on the wall behind me with quite a force. His hand tightly holds my neck, almost restraining my air pipes.

"Hurt me?"I defiantly chuckle, staring at him with all enmity I can muster."You already did that, don't you think?" The anger in his eyes is instantly replaced by guilt. A year after he left, a Russian man visited the orphanage. It was strange, the man was sinful even by just glancing at him. He took all the kids in that place in the name of adopting us.

It was my 15th birthday when Ivan came. He took us to his home and nothing was like I expected. There were more teenagers living with him but in a separate building. Ivan was thirty-nine years old without a family, or so we thought. He trained us to become assassins. The training took two years until he started sending us to missions.

He is a drug lord and he has a lot of dirty shit to handle. Both of us were homeschooled but at least in his home, we got good food and we didn't sleep on the cold floor. It was still a prison regardless, but we didn't have much of a choice.

It became more suffocating when he started favoring me more than the others. Ivan transferred me from the dorms where everyone else lived, to his main house. His approach toward me became alarming and I couldn't wait to see what else he had to offer. So, I asked him if I could continue with college and he accepted on the condition that whenever he calls, I should answer and that his missions should never fail.

I have been doing that for the two months I have been here. I kill for him and he pays me. It's temporary freedom but it's better than being under his roof. I met Ethan at UCLA and he later introduced me to his boyfriend Ty. They are the only people I am acquainted with so far.

"I have looked everywhere" Vin mutters, totally calm and I pull away from him. I will just go home and continue watching him from the sidelines.

" It doesn't matter" I pick up the gun and place it in my bag. It now belongs to me." My work here is done" Before I can open the door though, Vin quickly grabs my waist and pins me back on the previous wall.

"Do you think I will let you just walk away like that?" Vin shakes his head with a dark chuckle. I don't recognize the man he has become anymore.

"Then fucking kill me, Vin" I yell in exasperation. I can't hold my tears back anymore"Kill me and get it over with" I sob out, feeling every kind of emotion. Anger, pain hurt, and most of all I am exhausted. I wasn't ready to meet Vin, not anytime soon.

"Why the hell should I kill you?" Vin whispers with furrowed confused brows.

"Because I killed your friends" I mutter in defeat looking away. The once-innocent girl now kills people for a living. I hate it. He must be so disappointed in me.

"Hey, look at me. What happened to you, where have you been?" His hands gently cup my cheeks as he lovingly stares at me—just the way he used to.

"Please let me go" I whisper feeling sick of his touch. These hands have held more women than I can count. They don't belong to me anymore.

"I am sorry, but I can't" Vin whispers back touching our foreheads and I lack the strength to push him away.

"Why not?"

"You know why, Eva,"

"You have a girlfriend, girlfriends" I add with a bitter chuckle, trying to push away from him. He emerged two years ago and he seems to grab everyone's attention to himself. The billionaire playboy. I'm glad to know he chose a crime life after all. Leone Hotels is just a cover. I wonder where he got that dumb surname.

"I don't have girlfriends, they are just.. you know people I sleep with" He looks away with guilt and I scoff.

"I need to go, please" I untangle from his hold but he quickly wraps his arms around me to hold me in position.

"When I left, I didn't know where to start. I slept on the streets for days, trying to get a hang of the real world. Then one day I ran into some groupie of teenage boys supplying drugs in clubs and I begged them to let me in. I couldn't bring you to that life, I had to create something for you, baby" Vin whispers, and I am afraid he can hear how abnormally my heart is beating. I am sweating shit and I am barely holding myself from completely breaking down.

"Six months later I got in trouble and the cops took me in. I stayed behind bars for three months and when I got out, I had to start from zero again. Back on the streets, I found myself in a boxing ring. Nothing was easy, baby, and I had to toughen up. You know what gave me the push to exceed my limits, I knew a girl was waiting for me in some shitty place." Vin sighs and stressfully runs his hands through his hair.

"Then a man approached me and claimed to be my father. The idiot was rich and I only took the offer to be his heir because I knew, only then will I be able to provide for you. I came back baby, but you were not there. That place was completely deserted and no one knew where the kids went. You have to believe me, Eva" I look away from his tender eyes and settle for a drink instead.