27| Robin

Chapter 27

Alessio

"I need to find Patrick fucking Kinsman, and I need to find him now," I yell to the boardroom. It has been three days since Alice has been home, and I promised her in two weeks, fourteen days, now eleven that I would be done with this life, and I meant it.

But for me to be done and for me to feel like my family and I are safe is if there's a tombstone with Patrick Kinsman's name on it and his body six feet under. I crack my neck and click away to slides showing off all the possible places Odella has found.

We know for a fact he's in New York, hiding in some high-rise condo or hotel, but which one is the problem. I need his exact location, so I personally can put a bullet through his fucking head and hand this company over to Tara so she can run it. "Damien, how is our hostage?" I ask him while he's too busy staring at Odella. "Damien!" I repeat.

He averts his gaze to me, "oh! Um, he doesn't know where he is."

I pinch my brow, "did he at least give you any useful information?"

Damien taps his chin, looks to Odella, and back to me. "He said that Patrick never stays in the same place too long, but he never goes very far from them either."

My jaw drops to the ground as I stare at Damien. "Are you serious? And you didn't think to tell me that sooner?"

"I- I was a bit busy," he looks to a red-faced Odella and back to me. Busy? I raise an eyebrow. I'll show him busy.

"Well, you better clear your schedule. Bennet, Timothy, Kipper, Sylvania, and you, Damien, I want you to monitor the front entrance of every major hotel and all the ones near it."

Damien jumps from his chair, creating a loud smack. "What? That's over five hundred hotels."

"Great! That means you only need to analyze one hundred each." I close my laptop, "get to it. I want him dead by the end of the week." And with that, I left the meeting room, went into my office, and closed the door behind me.

~

I sludged through my paperwork well past eight, one by one, until I felt like my eyes were going to bleed. So many contracts and numbers I had to figure out for the next three months so Tara could have some sort of cushion to start with. I run a hand through my hair and let out a deep sigh.

I missed dinner with Aria and Alice. The two girls are probably on the couch with Charlie between them under one of those blankets Alice spent a pretty penny on that she claimed was totally worth it.

What a pretty sight I wish I could be a part of. Instead, I'm here going through another mountain's worth of paperwork that will be stacked on my desk again tomorrow as if I didn't maul over it for hours already.

I tell myself that this is for Tara-my friend who is taking over. I'm doing this because I want everything to go well, and I put my blood, sweat, and tears into this place-I almost lost my marriage, too, because of it. I refuse for this place to go under because I forgot to file a paper correctly.

When Leo asked who would be best to fit the job replacement. Tara was the first person who came to mind, no one else. She's competent and knows how to rally everyone as well as I do. But there's so much she has to catch up on.

Tara has run small teams even looked after things during my sudden leave of absences I had, but this-truly giving her everything I built from the ground up is terrifying, and I don't want her to mess it up. This company has become a baby, a project for me that saved me from a life of nothing but drinking and drifting around the world with too much money to spend.

I hear three knocks on my door before I look up-Alice standing on the other side dressed in sweats with bags in both of her hands. She smiles, holding up the bags. How did she get in? She must have used her key to get into the building. After six o'clock, all the building doors lock unless you have a key.

I get up and immediately open the door for her. The office has been cleared out for hours now, so it leaves just her and me together. "Hey?" I say, opening the door wide enough so she can come in. "What are you doing here?"

She walks into the room, and a waft of Chinese-chicken dishes, to be exact, hits my nose. "You were out late, and I figured no one would be here, and you probably didn't eat, so I brought dinner. Is that a problem? Should I leave?" She looks around the room, "is it okay right now for me to be here?" I can see on her face a slight dosage of fear of what could be lurking in my office.

I never wanted her to feel such a thing in my presence-fear. Fear of being with me. I look at the board in my office field with possible locations and the stacks of paper everywhere with boxes. She follows my gaze, stopping a few extra moments at the faces with X's on their faces.

She knows what those Xs mean, and she would be right.

"No, it's just-"

"A bit weird now that I know what you do here?" She finishes. She grabs a chair and brings it to my desk, moving papers away, so there's enough room for the both of us to eat.

"Yes, I thought you weren't gonna ever show back up to this place." I take a seat across from her and watch as she fills plates with Chinese, making sure to put the extra chicken on my plate.

"I didn't think I would either, but I know how my husband is. When he's immersed in work, he'll forget all his other functions. Plus, you sounded stressed when you checked up on me at lunchtime. You didn't tell me what you ate, and now based on the lack of food containers in your trashcan, you didn't eat anything, did you?"

I put a hand over my stomach. The aching pain of not eating lingers. "You're too observant."

"Not observant enough," she mutters, catching my guilty eyes. "What? I will not say that I do not have any lingering grudges about my husband being a secret assassin. That's simply impossible just letting such a secret go."

I eat a fork full of food, "is there any way or anything I can do for you to forgive me?"

"Nope," she sucks down a few noodles. "You're just gonna have to live with my resentment and snide comments. You are so lucky. I love you."

I can accept that. I deserve it. If Alice kept something as big as that from me for years after marriage and two kids, I would feel resentment. She has the right. "I am lucky, so lucky that you love me."

"So," she takes another bite of her Chinese food. "Gonna explain to me why you're still here?"

"I was," Alice's eyes probes at me, willing me to tell her the truth instead of some pretty words that I've been telling her since we've met. A simple, fine, or nothing really will not suffice. "

Hard, pretty fucking irritating," I mutter.

"Really? I thought it was easy, like in those movies."

I chuckle, " no. I wish. This company, or at least my part, is a lot of paperwork, phone calls, bookings, and facilitating people too stupid to understand anything. See, one of my agents went to the wrong location, wasting thousands of dollars. While another one blew themselves up...literally."

Alice chuckles, "really? I-I mean, are they okay?"

I laugh, "he's fine. So it's okay to laugh, but it's nerve-racking all these amateurs. My only good agents are Tara and Damien."

"What about Odella?"

"She's not an agent in the sense of missions. She helps me with setting up location drops and surveillance work. She doesn't do what they do."

"Oh." She eats another helping of her Chinese. "So, she's like tech support and hacking stuff? Like Penelope from criminal minds?"

I nod my head, "somewhat-yeah, I guess. But, in terms of hacking, she can only change traffic lights. There's this woman I used to work with-well live with." Alice's eyebrow raises, "platonically. She was a new mother and Brooklyn's best friend. She could hank into government records and find anything she wanted. For fun, she would hack into government officials' accounts and take money out and give it to random people."

"Wow, so like a computer Robin Hood?"

"Yeah, you can say that." I take a bite of my Chinese. I would love for Katherine to freelance, but I sent her an email, and she simply said she was retired. It made sense, she was a mom now, and she had no financial or contractual obligations anymore.

"So there's another reason why I can by your office Alessio."

"Yeah?"

"So, like, what are you gonna do after you retire? Any ideas?"

I open my mouth then close it. I have no real answer for that. What am I going to do? "I do not know. My life has always had some semblance of danger in it, so I don't know what to do without it." I rub my chin. What exactly do I like to do? When I was dead, I sought out meager activities, but none of them stuck. I was either too wrapped up in Brooklyn and her killing mistakes or with my hand around a bottle with the occasional missions with Jackson.

"Well," she crones. She digs into her purse and takes out a flyer. "So, I was talking with a few of the moms while I was walking. Charlie and the middle school soccer coach retired." I cock an eyebrow. A soccer coach? "Now, before you say you know nothing about soccer-it'll only take you a few hours or so to learn about it. And, my handsome husband, I think you'll be really good at it. And you ran a murder-for-hire company. What's a group of teenage girls?"

"Sure, but I have one request."

"Yes?" She takes another bite of her dinner.

"You have to be the team mom." If I'm doing this, then she is at least helping me.

"Done. Also, Aria and her friends are joining, so be prepared to be called a diff again." A dilf-what has my life become for children to snicker that behind me, and my wife to find it as the joke of the year. Alice laughs, surrounding me with her light voice.

"You know, I'm not going to go easy on her just because she's my daughter."

"Oh, hell no. If anything, you'll be ten times worse because she's your daughter. I can see you now in the backyard doing drills with her. There would be cones everywhere, and like tons of soccer balls-a total mess. And I would be there on the back porch with Charlie watching you like the proudest person in the world."

I smile down at my food. "That quite a bit of time away." I swallow the spit and look up to Alice. I never knew when a good time to ask her or to even bring it up again, but with her across from me talking about the future, I don't think there's a better time than any. "In this vision, is it only you and Charlie watching us?"

Alice's eyes widen, and I see her hand approach her stomach, quickly pulling it away. "I don't know," she mutters into her food.

"Do you want there to be? Do you want there to be more people in the house?"

"Can I be honest?" Alice croaks.

"Yes, that's all I want."

"I'm scared. So fucking scared to be pregnant again. When we lost Annabella, I was so low, and now even the thought of me being pregnant again makes my stomach do flips."

I bite my lips. "I understand."

"No, because I see it in your eyes, you think I don't want more kids. I do. I loved being pregnant. I love being a mom to Aria and having her look up to me, and I know if we have more kids, I would love them as much, but I'm scared, Alessio. I'm so scared that what happened last time could happen again." She's not looking at me now. I step from behind my desk and get on my knees in front of her.

I can tell she's holding back tears. "Alice, look at me," she meets my gaze, and her tears fall. My beautiful wife. I wipe her eye and give her the kindest smile I can muster. "I love you." Alice laughs. "And I think what happened no...I know what happened to us shattered us to the very core-I almost lost that smile of yours. But, I think what happened to us won't happen again. I believe what happened was a stroke of misfortune." I place a hand on her stomach. "I believe that more kids are possible for us, that our next bundle of joy will be healthy and happy and filled with life."

"You think?" She croaks out. "Don't you think I will fail again? Aren't you afraid?"

"Yes, I am afraid. How could I not be? But I believe we will have one. I believe everything will work out eventually. And I want you to know, Alice, you never failed me. You didn't fail Annabella, and you won't fail her future siblings either."

"Alessio," she cries. "I'm so scared."

I get up from my knees kiss her forehead, "I know, but we'll get through it-together. And when you decide if we want to be pregnant again, then I want you to know it'll all be alright."

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