Falling for a Trained Killer

Chapter Two

It is too late to move as it just registered Louis just struck his back hand across my lip. I fell back against the tiles of marble catching a large venetian plastered vase with red roses trellised into the balcony wall. I looked at a scratch from a thorn drawing a line of blood down my wrist. 

Well that hurt. This is the first time a man has ever hit me, is somehow my first thought. How did I end up with this jerk? I remember my father who died four years ago. He taught me far better than this; to ever been in a relationship with an abusive partner. I have let him down, somehow enters my thoughts, and I am ashamed of it. I feel myself on the ground with embarrassment as if I had tripped. I didn’t trip, I remind myself, Louis knocked me over. As I turn to make sure that he is gone, he is in fact stalking back inside. His back is unflinching as though he had just been in a bar fight.

I lift my trembling hand to my lip standing with a shaky stance. I hardly felt a tear from the pain fall down my cheek. I did not, in fact, even notice that as I stood, that the shadowy figure had emerged from his dark corner. Another rush of embarrassment that this man had to witness a guy beat his girlfriend crosses over me. Did he hear our entire conversation? The stranger offered me a white hanker chief. I look at the offering and notice a cursive gold ‘M’ stitched into it. Who carries a hanker chief anymore? I take it, running it against my cheek from the tear. My hand still shakes a little and he seems to see it as his glance is intent on my wrist now dripping several drops of blood across the balcony edge. I place my other arm over it to apply a small amount of pressure and stop the little amount of bleeding. 

“Thank you.” I say offering it back to him.

But he did not say a word taking the fabric back and placing it neatly in the fold of right breast pocket. He eyes me with a cold blue stare that sends a shiver down my spine. No one has looked at me that way before. The path his eyes take over me is nothing short of inappropriate and he does not seem to care about the move they make at all. His eyes wondered to each of mine then my lip. And, with blatant disregard for blunt staring, then to my chest tightly constricted in the emerald green dress. Should I slap him as well for the glance, and why did I feel like I enjoyed it?

His hair was black like a midnight ocean wave and was neatly layered back. His skin was tan and my eyes too move to his chest which seems so defined, making him clearly muscular in build. This stranger is extremely attractive and I feel an unfamiliar pinch in the pit of my stomach, or perhaps that is just a feeling the result of the strike from Louis. 

That brings me back to the current situation. I let the strange feeling in this man’s presence fall away as if it never happened. Time to get out of here, I tell myself.  

“It was strong to stand up to him.” He barely hissed in a coarse low voice yet with a commanding tone.

“Your lover?” he asked.

Lover? I think the word to myself. Who calls another guy a lover? I would have thought that the term boyfriend was more appropriate. I think about how many of the elite are in the room behind us. This man could be a millionaire who speaks to women differently than a normal man would. And, clearly thinks it is fine to look over a woman’s body as he has just done to mine in such an uncomfortable objective way. Maybe he is some other level of man that us women have learned to forget ever existed.

I look up at the question awkwardly and remind myself: this is a stranger. He eyed the back of Louis’ suit as he moved back into the groups of people at the party. His question seems genuine to offer me comfort and is highly personal. 

“Not anymore.” I say determined with a dash of sarcasm.

He turned his gaze directly back to me. There was something in the sea of his eyes. A serious danger that sends needles over my skin. A smile crossed his face making me very awkward and unsure how to respond.

“Marcus.” He nods lifting his hand for me to take. 

I can smell the recent cigarette on his shirt. The inhalation of it is toxic. Marcus, he said his name like he was an old English Lord, creepy. 

“And you are?” he enquired innocently as why I did not give my name after his own. 

He lowered his hand again when I did not take it. Rather, I kept my hand on the drop of blood from my below my watch. 

“Going home.” I say with a little bit more than sarcasm from before and look back at the party. 

I thought he would show a mark of insult that I brushed him off but he continued to smile in that ever so sinister way.

“As I said thank you.” I repeat and turn back towards the party. 

“A pleasure.” He said with a nod.

The smell of tobacco lingers as I stepped from the marble stone balcony back into the apartment. I never liked smokers for that exact reason but it was mingled with something else. Lavender, I placed the scent, from his hair. A normally feminine scent but the wasp from him filled my lungs pleasantly. I have met plenty of wealthy British men in my line of work selling high end Fine Art, and his accent is perfectly matched with the rest of them. A dialect only possibly refined at a school such as Oxford or Cambridge.

I walk back to the party. My locked determination is on the door to fetch my coat to go home. There was no point in staying and facing Louis again. He was not in sight, thankfully. I had not reached my coat, when I am stopped by a woman who begins to make dull conversation.

“I thought you weren’t coming Diana?” Irene, an elderly woman who is Louis’ secretary at the firm addresses me. “You are with Mr. Greystone?” She asked naming her boss’s, Louis, last name. 

I looked over my shoulder as the stranger, Marcus, who followed me in from the balcony. He moved towards a second man. Now that I am farther from Marcus, I can see just how perfectly he wears his suit. There is not a hint of a crease throughout the entire ensemble. Below the black silk shirt with the pearl buttons is a black leather belt and a silver buckle over a set of plain black pants. His shoes are a polished dark brown. If I had thought his frame was tall and well-built outside the way that he now held himself in the party made him stand out rather of factly from the rest of the crowd. While the others drank champagne and told of their positions of wealth and prestige, he seemed to be only superior to them. The task of making such conversation was unnecessary in order to show his prominence. I almost feel a hint of jealousy that someone can seem to fit so perfectly in an engagement such as this when I myself feel so out of place here among this class of people.

The other man that he is with does not hold the same appeal. He too wears a set of black pants, a black shirt, and a brown leather belt. He was blond with a military cut hair style. His eyes a dark chocolate like brown. The two of them are engaged in conversation while looking at their watches. And, given their seriousness, that feeling of danger seems to have tingled back. The second suit was clearly not just a friend, but rather a colleague. 

Marcus caught me looking in their direction. I dodge my attention back towards the loose acquaintance, Irene, who now is wavering on about politics. I hate these parties. I despise the people that attend them. Wealthy beyond reach, arrogant, and snobbish. Yet, as an art dealer, I know I work in the same throngs. I can’t help but school myself that I don’t like attending such parties for the sheer fact that it makes me feel like I am at work surrounded by the same cold mannerisms of the extreme affluence that I do not like to hold conversation with. Any attempt at chatting with these people is a task where you have to think of everything you say carefully. Comments are placed with hidden compliments to make the superior feel even more so. Such discussion always made me feel ingenuine. 

Irene is one of the few people here that I recognize from Louis’ office and I absolutely cannot stand her. I have caught her lying several times to him about things that just simply did not take place in order to increase her position or make herself look like she had done more than she actually had in order to protect the office. I know that even now she is only talking to me because she thinks that I am still Louis’ partner and that might help her with her working alliance with him. 

I could feel that Marcus was still watching me. His eyes are reminiscent of how a cop performs an investigation, looking for answers in their suspect. It was clear from the corner of my eye that the two men discussed something urgent. He followed me with his eyes despite the focus of their conversation was different, something imperative to the both of them given their austere postures and continuous glances to their watches. I try to ignore it but I feel like pins have crossed over my shoulders. My wrist from the cut thorn has stopped bleeding, of which Irene completely ignored that I was holding my left arm tightly with my right to cover the small trickle of blood.

I looked down where the scratch was and lifted my hand. There was no more blood, just a reddish brush over my fingers from applying a bit of pressure. I lowered my hand again looking back at the strange duo. 

Marcus finally looks away from me, allowing me to look back at him again. His eyes are on the door as if someone was about to barge through it. He looks at his watch once more, a pristine Rolex, with a twisting flick of his wrist and nodded to the other man as they both looked at their watches in unison. I look at my own. It is midnight exactly. 

What was going on? The situation was strange and yet it felt critical. Like they were late to a meeting they both had to attend. But it was none of my business. I knew very few people at this party and this British Marcus was one of them. 

I also thought it odd that he offered me the hanker chief, thinking back on it. He could have easily left me to my own business yet made a point to give me ‘assistance’ if that was what I would call it. Marcus, the stranger, had made no move to interject in my argument or when Louis had roughly taken my arm but why did I want assistance from a stranger in that manner anyway? I should not expect some kind of rescue. 

I looked at the door as the blond military cut moved towards it himself. It would be easy enough to leave avoiding Louis. My mission is to get out of here. Louis would not approach me again inside the party after he had just hit me. I could call a cab. I would be gone. I felt stupid that I had even let the relationship last as long as it had. Three months of degradation which had finally led to violence.

Now Louis would calm down and apologize. He would constantly try to call me and I would make sure that I never had to see him again. It was a pity that we shared some of the same friends because I would definitely not be going out anywhere that I knew he was invited to. 

It was then that I heard the first gunshot.