He unlocked the door and stepped aside to allow her in first. She swallowed her unease at the door shutting and locking behind them as they stood in the dark hall. The place smelled of flower fragrances and sea salts and opulence that contrasted with the burgeoning anxiety of being in a small, unknown space.
She didn’t lie to herself that this job was like the others. This job wasn’t for the Tribe. It was only for her. She took his hand and pulled him down the hall.
They entered a room Kwabena said was one of his favorites. She’d cased the spa a few days earlier, both as a wife looking to purchase a package for her husband, and after hours to get the layout of the back rooms. From the outside, the business appeared high end, but it was much more sinister when the patrons knew what to ask for.
He rambled about how this was unlike him, to bring a beautiful woman here alone.
“Then I’m honored.”
He chanced a quick glance at her. “There’s something beguiling about you, making me ditch my security detail and bring you here to my spa.”
She threw a sly smile over her shoulder as she walked the length of the room, ensuring there was nothing new since the last time she’d roamed the premises. He turned on the moon light, and the room was bathed in warm recessed lighting.
“Make yourself comfortable? I’ll get us some champagne.”
When he returned with an ice bucket holding a bottle of his finest, she was waiting for him. She gestured for him to join her. He set the bucket down and did as told, snuggling into her neck, inhaling the scent of her. He ran his arms over her body, exploring her curves and the heat of her skin. He went in to kiss her supple lips, and she tilted her head up so he trailed the tip of his tongue along the length of her jawline instead. She couldn’t bring herself to have his lips on hers.
“Me on top,” she breathed into his ear.
He gladly traded positions. She ran her hand up and down his leg. She traced it up and down his thigh, near his manhood, then teased it away.
She kicked her long leg over his lap, straddling him and easing her body onto him. He unzipped his pants. She quelled the urge to jump off him, the feeling of his penis flopping like a fish out of water beneath her making her think horribly of her brother Ofori. She breathed through the urge to vomit.
“Let me taste you,” he growled, gripping the hem of her skirt and hiking it up. His animalistic urges were overpowering his gentlemanliness. He was tired of seduction—and she was tired of seducing.
She said, “Tell me again what you want.”
He answered as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “To fuck you.”
“To fuck me?” Her hands slid down his arms, which were wrapped around her rear. “To know me?”
“Yes.” He strained against her. “Yes, baby, yes, to know you.”
She pulled back. “But Kwabena,” she breathed, “we already know each other.”
At the sound of his name, Paul’s third-in-command snapped his eyes open in muddled confusion. Beneath her, his body stiffened. He searched her eyes for understanding.
“What—what did you call me?”
Her hands were moving beyond his vision. “You know me. Intimately.”
She produced her push daggers from the belt of her skirt. In one swift move, she plunged the blades into his chest. She leaned her weight into the daggers as he thrashed beneath her. She dug them deep under the breastbone, the blades tearing through his left and right ventricles.
“Perhaps you remember me from N’nkakuwe.”
She watched his eyes grow round and his mouth open. Close. Open. Close again. He wheezed. She studied him, wanting to see every last second of his life. He coughed, blood spurting from his lips, running down his throat, and then dripping fast onto the floor.
His hands dropped from her, swinging like heavy pendulums until they finally stilled. When he was done, she got to work on the rest of her plan.
She walked the halls, entered all the rooms, the outer ones for legal massages and the inner chambers for illegal acts. She checked the explosive charges she’d placed in each one. When she set them off, this place would be leveled and Kwabena with it. But first . . .
She returned to the room with a small red condiment bottle of accelerant and matches. First she wanted to watch Kwabena burn.
When it was done, when he’d gone up in a quiet and satisfying whoosh, she walked away from the building, pressing a button on her burner cell phone to remotely detonate the charges.
Two down.
One to go.
46
BEFORE
If anyone had said I would be riding in another fancy black sedan before being whisked away to England in a private plane, I would never have believed them. Of all the things I envisioned for the future, this was not it. I believed I would die in Paris, frozen on the street, and that no one would realize it until I thawed in the summer and the smell of rot became too pungent to ignore.