Page 46 of The Company

I need to get this out in case you ever read this. I didn’t come here to spy on you from afar. I was ordered by your father. It seems he has a hard time accepting no for an answer. So my assignment is to sit in this restaurant and watch you play on the beach. I’m good and drunk right now, so I apologize for my sloppy writing. But accepting someone’s daughter as payment is more than even my assassin’s soul can handle.

I do not want you.

I will never want you.

Six

Good God, I didn’t expect resentment. I close the book and all those happy thoughts I had a minute ago are gone. He doesn’t want me. My heart beats fast again and I take a few deep breaths to calm it. Harper, be reasonable, that inner voice says. That was a long time ago. He was very young.

Eighteen.

He was eighteen that year. Not a kid anymore. And not a novice assassin either.

I take the book over to the couch and settle back against the plush light green cushions. He has a thing for green. The house is the same color outside. I open the book to the fourth entry. My birthday three years later.

Dear Lionfish,

Once again, your asshole father sentences me to baby-watching. Once again you play on the beach. And once again I sit here and think about how many people are dead this year because of me. Ten. Ten more people added to my tally. You’re still a cute little blonde girl. How old now, nine? I’m nineteen. A fucking man. You know what I was doing for my last birthday? Take one guess.

This year I was invited to a private island. Right across from the one you’re on. Your father left me binoculars and I resisted watching you for almost the entire day. But the islands are not that far apart and I heard your squealing laughter when they brought out the cake.

And now I can’t take my eyes off you.

I don’t want you.

No amount of innocent smiles will make me love you. Because you are everything wrong with this dirty, dark fucked-up life I live.

Six

I have to swallow down the bile rising up from my stomach as I finish.

Surely he didn’t feel this way every year. Did he?

Dear Lionfish

Dear Lionfish

Dear Lionfish

Dear Lionfish

Dear Lionfish

Dear Lionfish

Dear Lionfish

Seven years pass and with each letter, the words are more venomous and hateful. But the last entry is not addressed to me and it was not on my birthday. It’s dated a few months ago.

Dear Amber,

Let every life I take in your name be the proof of my love.

James

I don’t know why, but the fact that he signed his name James instead of Six hurts more than the love part. Because this Amber person meant something to him. More than me, that’s for sure.

I disgust him. My age especially—he made that clear in letter after letter. When he told me back in Huntington that he was not bothered by my age, I knew he was lying. But this? This is much more than being bothered.