The Thorned Rose

5

A few hours after I had arrived home, Nadia came to see me again. I instinctively made her a coffee with no milk and handed it to her. As she sat upright on my blue sofa. Nadia had a much harder upbringing than me – her father was a drunk and abused both her and her mother, she had never gone into the details, but it was bad. He was long gone when my family and I arrived in the village she lived in, if he was still there my father, or I, would've definitely assassinated him. A few years after we started our business, Nadia tracked down her father and shot him; I think it helped her get a little bit of closure.

Without warning, I was suddenly being hugged from behind, but I swear it couldn't have been Nadia, she is always so serious these days. I turned around, and I couldn't believe my eyes because it was, indeed Nadia.

"I'm so glad you're alive," she said, "I was worrying non-stop." I hugged her back, and for a few moments, things felt almost normal. After our hug, she took a step back, and put her serious face back on.

"It was a lot easier than you made it out to be you know," I informed her.

"That's because you are the Thorned Rose... Speaking of which, have you looked at the news? Your murder is on literally every news-station ever." I picked up the remote from the table and flicked the channel. After the weather segment, it was the headlines, and the top headline of the day was 'Thorned Rose strikes again – the mysterious contract killer who always leaves their mark assassinated a high-ranking man in the Italian Mafia.'

"That headline isn't very to the point," I joked, causing Nadia to smile. Wow, a hug and a smile in the same day, lucky me. I swear, if she starts laughing now, I'm gunna shot her because this would be some imposter trying to get information out of me or something.

"This most recent kill has caused so many people to call us up, asking if we know who the Thorned Rose is, I bet every agency is experiencing the same thing, but if I know you, they want you." I smiled, people admired my work from all over the globe, studied my assassinations, and this one, seemingly impossible to carry out because of who the man was, and the company he kept, caused the fascination around me to skyrocket over the next few days. As I walked to the gym, and went on my runs, I would notice pins attached to bags, jackets, trousers, looking exactly like my pins. I found it funny how they would walk past me, not giving me a second glance, yet somehow admired me. How was it that there was such admiration about an assassin though? That is what I don't understand.

My favourite thing about being famous yet completely unknown was watching all of the guesses about who I was. People guessed various different famous people, ex-politicians, famous Russian spies, but no one would ever find out it was me. Nadia, myself and my father were the only people who knew, and that would never change, or so help me, I would beg for my life to be stripped away.

I am not afraid of death. I see it almost every day and it seems easy, and quick. I'm not afraid of pain either. I have pushed the boundaries of my pain threshold, and now wouldn't even wince at a broken leg. The annoying thing is I now have to fake it, but I am a great actor, so it is easy enough.

It may seem to you like I am good at everything, as it is true, I am good at many things, but in contrast there are things I am absolutely awful at. I cannot cook to save my life, I will burn food on the outside whilst it is still raw on the inside, I add salt when it is supposed to be sugar and vice versa, I leave things in for too long, I am just useless, and I hate it. Not being able to do something makes me so frustrated, so I actively avoid those situations. I cannot play tennis either, balls go in every direction except the right one, and that is guaranteeing that I actually do hit the ball, which is a rare occurrence. Music and dance are completely lost to me. I hate dancing with a passion, any kind, whether is it ballroom dancing or just dancing in a club, I cannot do it and I REFUSE to do it. Music goes along with dancing. I just don't listen to music, unless it is a classical orchestral piece, I draw the line there. I am hopeless at playing any and all instruments too. The list goes on, but those are the main things.

Almost a week after I had assassinated the man from the Italian mafia, I got a call from Nadia, saying someone needed a job done in Rome, again, and that everyone was fully booked, and the job was urgent, but if I said no, for my safety, she would ask the client to go to another agency.

Concerns were raging through my head about what if I get noticed. Although I had a mask on, it didn't exactly cover my entire face, hair or my body. I could bump into Don Sandrino whilst just walking by the shops, and he could have me dead in minutes. What concerned me more was what if Don Sandrino had seen my mark of the rose, traced me back somehow, he was the one asking me to do a job, so whilst I was in Rome he could kidnap me, or kill me. "A woman is only as weak as their weaknesses," ran my dad's words through my head. He is an amazing assassin, but he does not have a magical way with words, and although the phrase seems deep and philosophical, it really is not. However, they always snapped me out whenever I was worrying myself about something. I'm going back to Rome, I'll be damn well careful, but I was going.

I watched my opponent from afar for a couple of days; I wanted to make sure he was not involved in the Italian mafia, and to ensure that this was not a trap. If it was a trap, it would not catch me anyway, unless they were a fucking great shot, which I doubt, but still, I would be annoyed because it would be a waste of my time. I decided that I would kill this man from afar as it was the safest and simplest things to do. When I was in a situation like this, I always found some way of having a white rose crop up, whether it be a rose I had attached to an arrow and shot from a bow, carved it onto a bullet, or simply sent a single white rose to their house, family's house or one appeared at their funeral.

I was on the rooftop of a nearby building with my sniper rifle, looking directly down the site at the man I was to assassinate. I had a golden mask on that covered me from my neck to just below my eyes, and I had my special sniper glasses over my eyes. I watched the man for a little bit as he ate his lunch in the window of the coffee shop. Any normal person would think it is sad his life is about to ripped away from him, they might let him finish his lunch, they might show mercy. I am no normal person. Live and death means nothing to me, and it never has. I feel no emotion about anything, and apart from being a baby, I have not cried. Just as he was about to take his last bite, I pulled the trigger and he instantly fell. The glass of the coffee shop had completely smashed, and people ran around screaming. I put my sniper rifle in my bag and got up to start getting of the rooftop. Something caught my eye, it was Don Sandrino, followed by a flock of me who were running up to the man and trying to see where the bullet had come from. I had thought it would be a set up, but I didn't think they would be that obvious about it being a set-up, amateurs.

I went down the stairs, into the building I had been on the roof of, pulling out my handgun, just in case, but they didn't seem very clever, so I wasn't that worried. I found the bag I had stashed in one of the rooms. It was an office building, empty because it was on the weekend, but with the easiest locks to pick that I needed to pick in a while. Literally, took me like 6 seconds, as though I had a key of my own. I quickly changed my clothes, putting the dismantled sniper rifle in the floral bag, and then left the building through the back door, just as I heard a group of men break through the front door. Waiting behind the building was my getaway car, and all I had to do was drive off. Intrigued about what Don Sandrino and his men were up to, I drove down the road where the coffee shop was, and saw that men had broken into every building, not just the one I was in, meaning if they found me it would've just been luck. I saw them dragging a girl out of one of the buildings, her hands bound together. She looked a lot like me, same colour hair, same height, ish, and that was about it. She didn't have an ounce of muscle on her, she was crying, absolutely terrified, and she actually got caught. I felt a bit offended that they thought this was me. She was stuffed into a car and they drove off.