After Happily Ever Afte- Astrid Ohletz Page 0,24

bow.

After the chilling deed was done, no one had met her eyes. Not even Lola. Natalya had been sent to do her homework.

The wet slap of flesh—pleasure and pain—it all sounded the same. Natalya had learned that lesson often over the years.

Christiane’s blows became harder, stronger. Punishing. Like…hatred. Wariness curled through Natalya, her eyes sliding open as she processed the unexpected sensations.

A lone, oiled finger slid up the scar next to her spine and dug in viciously. She gritted her teeth at the pain and stared at the woman’s feet. White socks covered them, bisected by the black silk of the sandals.

“The plant outside needs watering,” Natalya said softly in German. “It is in terrible condition.”

Christiane merely hummed evenly and gave no reply. As if she didn’t understand her words. Those telltale toes in the white socks, however, briefly clenched.

Natalya shifted her hands up to sit flat under her chin, lifting her face just a few inches out of the headrest.

“What part of Melbourne are you from?” she said in English, taking a guess. She used her friendliest tone. Her hands slowly edged apart, feeling the roughness of the white towel beneath her fingertips, as she mentally mapped the edges of the massage table.

“Prah…” The word, begun reflexively as a thoughtless reply to small talk, stopped halfway through “Prahran”, a distinctively Melbourne suburb.

The masseuse’s toes clenched just as the hands on Natalya’s back froze. Natalya’s narrowed eyes flew open at the confirmation, the knowledge of imminent danger filling her with an electricity she’d not felt in three years, eleven months, twelve days. The numbers came to her without conscious calculation. She knew them each day the moment she woke. The days since she’d hunted as Requiem.

She felt her alter ego slapped from her slumber, unleashed, burning, alive—like molten metal coursing through her veins. In her mind, she could hear the thrumming, primal drum beat of Two Steps From Hell’s Protectors of Earth shaking her.

Alertness and adrenaline ripped through her with the familiarity of an old friend. She had not felt this sensation since the night she’d ended a corrupt, killer cop—a man she’d choked and drowned in pig swill. Even almost four years on, she could still taste the twisted jubilation mingled with ice-cold rage over what he’d done to the woman Requiem had claimed as hers. Over what he’d done to Alison’s family.

Without warning, Requiem flung herself from the table, smashing the masseuse to the floor with her bent elbow and snatching up the towel she’d been lying on.

She stood above the groggy woman, bouncing on her heels while she spun the towel into a twisted rope and tested the ends threateningly. Requiem studied the crumpled form on the floor—small, lean, and most definitely not the Austrian woman she knew.

“Unless Christiane’s had a lot of work done in the past twenty minutes, you aren’t her,” Requiem said, voice cold. “Who are you?”

The woman offered her a mutinous look but didn’t answer.

Requiem kicked her solidly in the ribs. “Speak up.”

The intruder was a short, wiry-looking Asian woman, with brooding, dark eyes, and an appraising stare. She didn’t seem alarmed by Natalya’s reaction. Rather, she appeared to have been expecting it.

“Where’s Christiane?” Requiem demanded.

“Linen cupboard. She’ll have a bad headache when she wakes up.” The woman’s voice and eyes openly taunted Requiem.

“Who are you?” she repeated, menace mixed with danger.

Silence.

Requiem’s leg swept out and smacked the side of the woman’s nose, snapping her head to the right with the momentum. A satisfying spurt of blood spattered across her white kimono robe.

Still she didn’t speak. The woman ran lazy eyes over Requiem’s nude form with a hint of appreciation before focusing higher, meeting her furious gaze. Finally her amused lips parted. “I am someone confirming a theory.” She wiped her nose and examined the blood on her fingertips. “I see you’ve lost none of your edge.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Requiem’s tone became low and dark. She tightened the ends of the twisted towel, snapping it straight and relaxing it. Anyone with any self-preservation instincts would have scuttled back.

Her prey did not. Instead she tilted her head back, studying Requiem. “A woman making a garroting cable out of a towel wants me to believe she knows nothing about killing?” came the sceptical response. “That she’s not Australia’s most infamous assassin, Requiem? A woman who police can’t find for years? Not that they’re looking too hard. I mean, I found you.”

“I’m a cellist,” Requiem said with a sneer. She bent