“Move, and she dies,” he says, calm and collected. The woman in his grip looks at me with wide, petrified eyes, and I know the one question on her mind is whether or not I value her life enough, even as I have my barrel trained on her captor. He isn’t the oldest man in the room, but of all the mobsters I’ve killed tonight, he’s the highest ranking by far. “A lot of the men in this room might have called you a friend before tonight, you know,” he says coldly. “Maybe even more. Others might have had you killed before you got ambitious. I must admit, my one regret is speaking on your behalf all those times.”
We stare each other in the eyes for several seconds. There’s so much I want to snap back at him, so much I want to tell him of how much hatred I have for him and all that he represents.
But I will not play his games.
The woman shrieks as I fire my pistol, blood spattering on the rich pillows behind the mob boss as he drops his gun and falls back on his bed, lifeless. The woman recoils from the sight, some of the blood in her hair as she screams.
I lower my pistol, my eyes moving to her momentarily before I walk over to look at the man’s lifeless eyes before turning to her. She quiets, looking up at me in terror, the unspoken question of what is to become of her written all over her expression.
“Go,” I say simply, and it’s a moment before she nods hastily and darts out of the room. I give her a few minutes head start to move around the house and ensure that everyone was dead. This job could afford nothing less than perfection.
Bodies are strewn across the entire apartment. Smoke still hangs overhead as the dull Russian music drones from a stereo by the television. Blood is spattered across the unfinished game of poker, and there are bullet holes in forged paintings that must be worth hundreds of thousands.
I survey my work with neither a smile nor frown, but I feel a certain sense of peace as I stride out the door, dropping the superintendent's keys by the guard’s body. I have no intention of cleaning the place or even doing so much as closing the door.
Tonight, I mean to send a message.
1
Liv
“Smile, honey!” my mom calls out, grinning widely from behind a big black camera. I struggle to balance both my clunky valedictorian plaque and the enormous bouquet of roses my father presented to me. My face just barely peeks out from behind the flowers and my dad pulls me close in a tight hug just as my mom snaps the photo. I blink rapidly, the flash burning behind my eyes. It’s probably the hundredth picture taken of me today at my high school graduation ceremony. The sun is beginning to make its slow descent down the horizon, casting a dreamy pinkish glow across the football field.
“Oh, that’s a great one!” exclaims my mother, who rushes over to show Dad the photo, kissing the top of my head along the way. Both of my parents are taller than me and very athletic; my mom is an avid runner and my dad used to compete in bodybuilding competitions. As a result of their shared passion, I have been raised with the expectations of attaining and maintaining physical perfection. But while I lack my parents’ height and overt athletic appearance, I am certainly a contender in my own right.
Ever since the day I was born a couple months premature, I have been tiny. I’ve always been a little smaller than all my friends and fellow students. So it was a struggle for my sports-obsessed parents, trying to situate me in an athletic track that I could feasibly do. I mean, it’s not like a five-foot-one girl is going to make it big as a basketball star or anything. And since I was also lucky enough to be born with asthma, I have never been the runner my mom hoped I would be (not for lacking of trying, I might add). But after years of bouncing back and forth between different sports programs, we finally settled on the one sport that’s become my ticket to success, my passion, the thing that drives my every thought and heartbeat.
Gymnastics.
I may not be able to sprint a mile in record time without hyperventilating, and I may not be able to even reach most of the exercise bars at the gym. But I can bend and twist and flip my body in ways nobody ever expected from me. I’m a pretty damn good gymnast, if I do say so myself, and getting to this point has meant years and years of hardcore dedication and training. There’s something so freeing and fulfilling about teaching my body to fly through the air, every muscle straining to the brink. Every time I run and leap, spin and stretch, I feel my heart soaring in my chest. And there is nothing in this world so satisfying as landing a difficult move, my feet grounding me gracefully to the earth once more. It makes me feel like a superhero. It makes me feel like I can fly.