All Chapters of Kisses of a HitWoman: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

She had chosen that corner deliberately.Not the one with the streetlight. Too visible, too staged. The one just past it, where the light died and the rain came down hard enough to make a person look genuinely lost. She had stood there for eleven minutes before his car turned onto the street. Eleven minutes in the cold, shoes filling with water, running the calculation one last time.Dominic Moretti took the same route home every Thursday.That was his first mistake.She had been briefed on him for six weeks. Knew his schedule, his habits, his pressure points. Knew he had a weakness for broken things — stray dogs, failing businesses, people who looked like they had nowhere left to go. His men called it generosity. Her handler called it exploitable.She called it the door.So she stood in the rain at the right corner on the right night wearing the right expression. Not crying, that was too obvious. Just still. The specific stillness of someone who had run out of options and hadn't deci

He told her three days in advance.That was unusual. Dominic didn't plan things. He moved and she moved with him, that was the rhythm they had settled into without discussing it. So when he came home Wednesday and said "clear Friday night, just us, no phones", she filed it under notable and spent the next forty-eight hours wondering what had changed.Friday came. He took her to a place with no sign outside and a host who knew his name before he said it. Small table in the back. No guards inside two on the street, which she clocked without appearing to look. Candlelight. The kind of quiet that cost money.He ordered for both of them without asking."You do that every time," she said."Do what?""Order. Without asking."He looked up from the menu. "You were going to get the same thing.""You don't know that.""Lena." He set the menu down. "You've gotten the same thing at every restaurant we've been to for two years."She opened her mouth. Closed it."That's not the point," she said."Wh

The morning after was quiet in a way that had teeth.Dominic made coffee. Set a mug in front of her without speaking. Sat across the kitchen island with his own cup and looked out the window at the city the way he did when he was working something out in his head and hadn't gotten there yet.She watched him the way she watched everything without appearing to.He hadn't mentioned the hallway. Hadn't mentioned finding her awake, or the bathroom, or the way they had stood in the dark looking at each other with that new and terrible silence between them. He had simply gone back to bed, and she had followed, and they had lain side by side in the dark not touching, not speaking, until somewhere around three in the morning she had felt his hand find hers under the covers.He hadn't said anything then either.That was the thing about Dominic that kept catching her off guard after three years. Other men filled silence with noise. He sat inside it like he owned it too."You're staring," he said

The man from the elevator was unremarkable. Brown hair. Average height. The kind of face that disappears from memory. He wore dark clothes and carried a briefcase.He didn't have a gun drawn. Lena saw the outline beneath his jacket but his hand wasn't moving toward it."Lena Vasquez," he said, stepping inside like he owned the space. Russian accent. Kill camps in the vowels. "Or Elena Markov. I forget which name you're using."Dominic moved. Not fast, but with control that meant he was calculating. Understanding this wasn't Marco."Who is this?" Dominic asked, voice sharp."A colleague from her previous career," the operative said, setting the briefcase on the coffee table.Lena stepped between them. "You need to leave."The operative smiled, cold and kind at once, which was worse. "Reza is concerned about your attachment. You've become a liability.""I'm not a liability.""You've been here three years without completing your assignment. Three years, and instead of eliminating the tar

The first operative through the window died before his feet touched the marble floor. Dominic's shot was clean, professional, the kind of shot that comes from years of knowing you might have to end someone in your own home. The body dropped. The second operative came through the glass immediately after, using the first as cover, and Lena was already moving.She fired from the kitchen counter, three shots in rapid succession. Two hit. The operative's shoulder, his arm. He didn't go down, but he lost grip on his weapon. Marco came from the side and finished the job, tactical and cold."Main stairwell, they're moving up," Marco shouted over his shoulder. "Four more coming through emergency stairs in ninety seconds."Dominic was at the security panel, fingers flying across the keyboard. The lights in the east corridor cut out. The emergency stairwell doors locked from the inside, trapping whoever was coming through. He knew this building better than he knew his own heartbeat. Every entran