Agent 7. The Shadows: Part I

▪️◼️Chapter Twenty Nine◼️▪️

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ALINA
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It's silent between us for a long moment as I gaze at him.

I pinch my mouth shut. He doesn't need to know that I chose to stay or why.

There were so many times he could have really hurt me, so many moments he could have taken advantage of me but he didn't. As much as I dislike the roughness with which he's treated me and the fact he forced me to do what I did. I can't help a small part of me feels indebted to him. I could still be with Vladimir, but I'm not, and it's because of Matteo.

I watch as he rests his head against the back of the chair and pulls in another heavy breath. The movement is oddly vulnerable for a man that shows so little emotion. As if tonight was too much, even for him.

"Why do you do it?" I ask, pushing myself up onto my elbow. My voice is weak, just like the rest of my body.

He doesn't answer right away, he seems as lost in thought as I have been the past hour.

Eventually he shrugs his shoulders. "It's what I was born for."

I tip my head to the side inquisitively. He said it as if the answer is simple, but nothing in life is so cut and dry. My skepticism is written all over my face when I respond. "No one's born to be a killer Matteo." I admonish.

"I was." He says sharply, his eyes cutting to me briefly before landing back on the drink in his hand.

He straightens his posture, leaning his shoulders forward and lifting his head to allow himself to take a long pull of his whisky. I sit up even straighter myself, taken back by this admission.

I search his features for any hint of sarcasm or a sign that he isn't telling the truth but I find nothing. His features are even more captivating in this shrouded light. Giving him a lethal and mysterious edge to his already deadly countenance.

He's continued to allow his five o'clock shadow to turn into a bit of scruff that softens his hardened features slightly. He looks less intimidating somehow.

Moments pass and just when I think he won't say anything more, he surprises me. "My mother was a teenager when she got pregnant with me. Only fourteen. She was paid a large sum of money to hand me over to The Agency once I was born. I've been training to kill even before I could talk."

There's a pinch between my brows from the scowl that's formed there. That's horrible. People actually sell their children? I understand adoption but this doesn't sound like that's what happened with him. I wonder if his birth mother knew who she was selling him to. She was a child having a child, young and naïve. Do any of us know how disingenuous the world truly is at that age?

I know I didn't.

She probably thought she was giving him a better life while also getting a leg up financially herself.

"So you really are a hittman?" I ask.

"Yes." He nods, confirming my assumptions all along. "They call me Agent Seven." He tells me.

Wait. My eyebrows pinch quizzically.

"And... Matteo? Is that not your real name?"

He sighs softly before capturing my eyes from across the room. They're deep pools of obsidian. Mysterious yet brutally raw. They don't linger for long as he flicks his gaze back up to the ceiling relaxing back into the chair once again. "You had asked me for a name." He lifts one shoulder contritely. "You were scared, and I knew that if I left you there without giving you one, you might think you couldn't trust me to come back for you."