Eight days later, Mr. Lavigne's corpse was found in a foul-smelling puddle of his own vomit and feces. More than likely, it seemed, one too many nights of heavy drinking, hard drugging, and wild partying had led to his demise. Marseille authorities ruled the poor bastard's cause of death to be drug and alcohol overdose.

He had died alone in his apartment without anyone at his side.

No one knew about his old life as the heir to the De León crime family.

No one knew about the brutal murders of his father and brothers at Vincenzo Vitale's funeral.

No one knew about his treacherous sister who had betrayed their family to side with the enemy.

No one knew about his beautiful, blue-eyed, blonde wife who had paid good money to dispatch him.

That day, Gaspare De León's real identity also died with Mr. Lavigne.

As soon as her kill was confirmed, Rosa phoned David Candia, Valentina Rizzo's middleman, to collect her payment of €30,000.

He picked up on the fourth ring. "Pronto."

Rosa murmured, "It is done."

"Ah, how good to hear from you," David exclaimed, switching to English as soon as he recognized her voice, "my dear Rosa."

Rosa and David always communicated in English because she didn't speak Italian, and he couldn't speak French or Arabic.

She then went on for a few more minutes to update him on details of interest relating to the job: The kind of poison she used. The pronounced time and date of Mr. Lavigne's death. The police report. The coroner's report.

"Ah, excellent work, Mademoiselle Lenoir," David praised her.

"Merci."

Rosa chose, however, not to mention Mr. Lavigne's tall, dark bodyguard or the bastard's suspicious attitude towards her.

There was no need.

After a hit, Rosa always made it a point to disappear from the vicinity of her latest assignment for a few weeks—to lay low, let the dust settle, and wait for the blood to dry.

Maybe, this time, she would take a holiday to Greece. Maybe even Portugal. She heard Costa da Caparica, a popular beach near Lisbon, was nice around this time of year.

Or, perhaps, she should take on another job in London?

She still had some old contacts there with plenty of enemies to kill and even more cash to spare. She could always use the money. Rosa wasn't ashamed to admit that she enjoyed the finer things in life. Good food. Designer bags and designer clothes and designer shoes. Her fancy loft in the 9th Arrondissement certainly didn't pay for itself.

She deserved nice things, Rosa reasoned, after everything they had ripped from her soul, after the purgatory they had entrapped her in when she was only a child of sixteen.

Inès Nadir was long dead and long gone.

Her innocence had been burnt to dust and ash in Julien Mesrine's hellish inferno, in his brothel of lost, missing, and stolen girls.

Her present self, Rosa Lenoir, was, in essence, a phantom living on borrowed time.

Time—that had been stolen from the real Rosa far, far, far too soon.

Rosa knew full well that she wouldn't be here for a long time. She was here for a good time. Might as well live it up before she met her maker.

At any rate, Rosa doubted that the bodyguard with the rose tattoo on his hand would be able to track her down, he only knew her as the fictitious and nonexistent Mademoiselle Adèle Moreau, and, as long as he couldn't locate Adèle, he wouldn't be able to trace the death of his employer, Mr. Lavigne, back to her or her clients.

So, Rosa argued internally, why alarm David and Mrs. Rizzo without good reason?

David's voice drew her from her reverie. "Signora Rizzo will be pleased. Gaspare's existence was such a thorn in her side. She is most eager to remarry."

Rosa's ears perked up. "Oh? Who's the lucky groom?"

"Not a lucky groom," David drawled in amused tones, "but a lucky bride."

Rosa frowned slightly.

A bride?

Then, understanding settled in.

Oh!

So, Mrs. Rizzo was a lover of women?

Rosa chuckled. "Good for them. I'm happy for her and her wife-to-be."

"As am I," David echoed her sentiment. "Anyhow, I will transfer the first installment of what you are owed first thing tomorrow morning."

They had agreed on a series of smaller payments, €5,000 at a time, over the course of the next few weeks. Large sums of money transfers tended to attract too much attention from banks and authorities, so, these tedious yet necessary precautions were often employed for the sake of discretion.

"Très bien," Rosa murmured in acknowledgement, "thank you for letting me know. It was a pleasure doing business with you."

David returned graciously, "Pleasure was all mine."

They hung up shortly after.

Right away, Rosa started shuffling around her loft to pack her bags for a well-earned vacation. Work in London could wait. The beaches in Portugal called to her. As she tossed sunscreen and a handful of her favorite Fendi, Burberry, and Chanel bikinis into a Louis Vuitton suitcase, her thoughts couldn't help but dwell on her most recent kill.

To date, Mr. Lavigne's death marked her thirty-second victim.

She didn't know quite how to feel about her body count anymore. Rosa's first kill had rattled her to the core. Nowadays, though, taking lives no longer fazed her much, especially the lives of dirty, old men like Mr. Lavigne. Ridding the world of pigs empowered her in a perverse way. Rosa liked to tell herself that—by killing these men in the real Rosa's name—justice was being served. She was avenging the real Rosa's death in some way.

Did this make her a bloodthirsty sinner?

Probably.

But the divine forces could judge her as harshly as they wished. She no longer felt the need to stay in the universe's good graces.

Because fate had forsaken her first.

Fate had allowed them to take her away from the happiest of homes in Rabat, away from her kind mother and protective father and doting grandmother.

Fate had allowed them to entrap her in shadows and break her, over and over again, in darkness.

Fate had allowed him to rip the real Rosa—her tiny, innocent, precious Rosa—from her weeping embrace in such a way that it nearly drove her mad with grief.

No, she didn't owe fate a single fucking thing. Not at all.

Rosa learned, long ago, the hard way, that every person's fate was theirs—and no one else's—to accept and fulfill. To complain about life, to feel hurt or wronged by its atrocities, to feel anything, really, was a waste of time and energy.

Rosa had since become a being of wind and water, flighty and flexible, a woman with nothing to lose and, therefore, nothing to fear.

Her mindset was stuck in a perpetual "fuck it all" mode.

If she died, she died. If she lived, she lived. Whatever would be, would be.

Thus, the next morning, Rosa said "fuck it all" and took off from the Marseille Provence Airport for Portugal, €5,000 richer and more than ready for some sand, sun, and sea.

Many hours later, Rosa landed in Lisbon in very good spirits. She checked into her suite at the Olissippo Lapa Palace, a five-star hotel, and spent the next few days eating well, shopping up a storm in local boutiques, and sipping sangrias on the sun-kissed shores of Costa da Caparica.

By day three of her vacation, however, her good times came to an abrupt halt.

That evening, Rosa returned to her hotel around 11:00 pm after a night of drinking and dancing. As she unlocked the door to her suite, a sixth sense of dread shot through her. She knew something wasn't right. The door swung open. Her instincts proved to be on point.

She was greeted with darkness.

All of the lights inside her suite were off, and Rosa knew that she had left at least one light on before stepping out for the night. It had been an intentional safety measure. She hated returning anywhere in the dark. It made her feel blind. It put her on the defense rather than the offense when entering a space.

Had the cleaning crew turned off her lights?

Rosa scowled at the thought. It shouldn't have been them. She specifically requested the concierge to keep room service out of her way for the duration of her stay. She hated having her privacy invaded by strangers.

A prickle of panic slid down her spine.

If it hadn't been the cleaning crew, then—

Her amber gaze swept around the room for intruders.

When Rosa spied a shadowy male figure seated in a plush armchair tucked in the corner of her suite, her hand immediately shot towards the Beretta in her purse, wrapping her fingers around the grip in case she needed to pull it out at a moment's notice.

His voice—low, deep, and alarmingly familiar—drifted towards Rosa before she had a chance to react.

His English was thick with an Italian accent as he murmured in mocking tones, "Welcome back, Miss Moreau. Or is it Miss Lenoir? You are certainly a hard one to track down..."