Darkest Sins (Perfectly Imperfect #9)

“Sure,” I mumble and close my eyes.

As I’m drifting back to slumber, I feel a rough hand wrap around my wrist, and then a light feather of warm lips across the tips of my fingers. Or maybe it was just a dream.

“I’m very sorry, sir, but we don’t have parsley.”

I narrow my eyes at the flower shop attendant and take a step closer. The man quickly retreats, his back hitting the wall behind him. This is the fourth flower shop open twenty-four seven that I’ve checked, and none of them had the damn herb. And I’m losing my patience.

“I need parsley.” I lean forward until I’m growling into his face. “Now.”

“I’m truly s-sorry. I-I,” he stutters. “My neighbor may have some. He runs a local greenhouse and grows vegetables and herbs. They haven’t yet harvested all the crops. If you come back tomorrow, I will have some for you.”

“I have a double hit on the schedule tomorrow.”

The man blinks at me in confusion. “A hit?”

“Kill job,” I clarify. “Give me the address to this place.”

The man swallows, his face turning a greenish hue, then rattles off a street name and a number. I nod and leave the flower shop.

The location he gave me is in the suburbs. It takes me almost an hour to reach a gravel lot in front of a cozy one-story building with a couple of long, glass-enclosed greenhouses on the side, and a half-acre garden out back. The sky is dark, and the glow of the streetlight doesn’t reach behind the main structure, so I have to use my phone as a flashlight while I step among the messy greenery, wondering what on earth possessed me to go on a hunt for the damn parsley at three in the morning. But I know the answer—I owe it to my cub for tonight.

No one speaks to me like I’m just a normal guy. Frankly, other than business-related exchanges I have with Kruger andthe support crew, people rarely talk to me at all. And I’m completely fine with that.

Or, was.

Tonight, in that alley, my girl had talked with me as if I wasn’t a monstrous freak, hiding in the shadows. It was strange. The good kind of strange. For a short while, I actually felt like a person. Something I haven’t felt for a long, long time. And then, she let her guard down, falling asleep in my car. With me beside her. Trusting that I wouldn’t do anything to harm her while she was in her most vulnerable state was beyond reckless.

It shook me to the core.

Not once has anyone ever trusted me with anything, especially their own life. The majority of missions for Z.E.R.O. were assassinations or other nasty shit, however, there were a few times when our unit was tapped for a rescue mission. Typically, it was Az, and on rare occasions Sergei Belov, who was assigned to carry those out. Never me. The only thing I was ever good for, was ending lives. Never saving them.

At first, I figured that Kruger might have been worried I’d go berserk during the mission and get my charge unintentionally killed. But then, it dawned on me—it had never actually crossed his mind to consider me for a rescue. Lennox Kruger selected operatives’ assignments based on their qualifications and skills. And I was deemed unsuitable because, apparently, accepting the notion that someone may need my protection was not an ability he thought I possessed. Maybe he was right.

And still, my girl trusted me with her safety. Even gave me her unprotected back when I asked, then fell asleep while alone with a monster. Allowed me to carry her inside. Into her home. Into her safe space.

I glance down, realizing that my flashlight is off. The fucking phone battery picked the perfect time to die. There’s a bit of moonlight peeking through the clouds, its bluish luster illuminates a patch of greenery around me, but not enough to clearly distinguish between different weeds. I yank the closest green bush that looks like parsley, pulling it out from the ground. It gives after the third tug. I raise it to my eyes and turn it left and right, checking out the leaves. Then, the root, which is long and orange.

“Fucking carrot,” I mutter and throw the thing over my shoulder, shifting a bit to the right. More green shit. In the gloom, the leafy tops all look like the pictures of parsley I searched out earlier online. Walking around the garden, I pull out a couple more at random, lifting the plants toward the scant light overhead. All the fucking leaves look the same. Well . . . almost; the roots are different. Some are long and somewhat skinny—undoubtedly ground veggies. But she said parsley is a herb. What’s the goddamned difference?

I pull on one and come up with . . . an albino carrot? Another, and it’s round like a gnarly ball instead of a normal-looking root. With my phone dead, I can’t check what is what, and I can’t remember what parsley actually looks like. I have maybe an hour before the carpenter is supposed to arrive at my cub’s place to change the door I managed to jerry-rig shut when I left, and I intend to be there while he goes about his business. One, because there’s no way I’d let a man get inside her apartment without me being there. And two, I want to make sure he works quietly as I instructed, so he doesn’t wake her up.

Fuck. I bring each variety of yanked greenery to my nose, smelling the leaves. Jesus Christ. If Kruger could see me now, crouching in the middle of vegetable bushes, he would think I’d finally completely lost my shit. When asked to determine thecaliber of a weapon based on the sound alone, I can answer correctly nine times out of ten. But this? I don’t know shit about this. I keep sniffing at the crap, but everything just smells like wet dirt.

“Fuck it.” I straighten and, fisting a bunch of plants in my grip, head back to my car.

Chapter 9

“I see you have a new door.”

I take another bite of my pizza and follow Zara’s gaze to my front entrance. “The lock was broken. I had the door changed a few weeks ago.”

“You couldn’t have just changed the lock?”

“Um . . . It was a significant break, some of the wood around it had cracked.”

The morning after my stranger brought me home, I woke up thinking I dreamed it all. A shiny new, steel-reinforced front door proved me wrong. As well as two keys that I found lying on the kitchen counter. When I glanced over the balcony, I noticed two guys in overalls loading my old door into the back of a pickup truck. The wood all around the deadbolt was splintered.

“Salvo’s mother called me yesterday,” Zara says as she reaches for her water. “She’s going to a charity event next month and wants me to design a dress for her.”