Charming and handsome, Ricky Manfredi is living an idyllic playboy life when, out of the blue, he bumps into a shy pretty girl named Hannah. That's not her real name. Ricky has always had his pick of women. But when chance brings them together a second time, he finds himself irresistibly drawn in. Which is exactly how she planned it. It's not long before, to the surprise of them both, Ricky and Hannah are falling for each other. But Hannah knows that can't be allowed to happen. Because murder is only the first stage of her plan...
The Island, Now
“A woman in a red bikini on a sugar-white beach before a baby-blue ocean.
That’s me.
The hunky man in shorts and unbuttoned Hawaiian walking down from the villa to the private beach, weathered, tanned, a little beaten around the edges but all the sexier for it.
That’s my husband.
We were married yesterday.
The chopper with his name on the side dropped us off only hours ago. The staff went back with it. Now, we’re the only two people on this island and we’re pretty much stuck with each other. There’s no way off. The undersea reefs make approach by sea too risky. Even if you survived the rocks and could swim the forty-five miles to the mainland, the sharks and undertow would get you. It’s not on any flight paths and no joyriding speedboaters or chopper pilots have any reason to pass this way. It is quite literally the kind of desert island they mean when they ask you the What If question. As in, if you were stranded on a desert island, what books, or movies, or people, would you want to bring along?
All we brought is each other.
We’re on our honeymoon, after all. We don’t need anything or anyone else.
The next three days belong to us, and nobody else is going to steal even a tiny slice of it away. There’s no internet, no cell service, no TV, cable, Netflix or landlines. Just a satphone to call the chopper when we’re ready to leave. We won’t be ’gramming our honeymoon pics for the celeb-obsessed world to drool over, or posting cryptic updates that the gossip websites try to blow up into a scandal.
For the next seventy-two hours, the outside world doesn’t exist.
It’s just him and me.
He leans over the deckchair and kisses me upside down. I let the book I’m reading drop and kiss him back, tasting vodka and cranberry juice and inhaling his familiar aqua-based cologne. His hand reaches for my breast. I intercept it and use it to pull myself to my feet. I lean in close, breathing on his cheek, and feel the stiffening in his Speedos.
‘Last one in’s a rubber duck,’ I whisper, then break free and run, laughing, down to the water. He laughs and runs after me, overcoming my lead with a power sprint, his muscled thighs pistoning.
The surf explodes as we hit it at almost the same instant. I turn to him, arms raised in a victory gesture. ‘I win!’
‘You cheat!’ he responds, laughing.
The incoming tide is waist-high. The water is warm, just a tad above body temperature. It feels great, the sand deliciously cool between my toes.
He grabs hold of my waist and reels me in, finishing the kiss he started on the beach. This time I let him have his way, and when we break off we’re both breathing hot and heavy.
It’s a shame I have to kill him.
He’s good-looking in a sexy, mature way, fabulously rich and famous, and good company. The sex is pretty good too.
But it’s got to be done.
I can’t forgive or forget what he did to my family, how he ruined our lives.
That’s why I’ve spent my entire life preparing, training, planning.
And now, after all these years and incredible effort, I’m within reach of my goal.
In a little while, I’ll make my move. Catching him unawares, ending his life right here on this private paradise. It’s the perfect place and time, after all. I’ll never get a better opportunity.
But until then, we may as well have fun.
Enjoy it while it lasts. Indulge our appetites. Relish the luxury of the privacy, the beach, the sea, the bungalow, the superb wine cellar and gourmet repast.
And then, when he’s lulled and satiated by sun, wine, sex and indulgence, I’ll take him. Quick and deadly. Ending his life and finally delivering what I’ve worked so hard and long to achieve, what my mother, my family, would have wanted.
Justice.
act 1
Hannah & Ricky
Zurich, Switzerland
1
The first time Ricky sees me, he doesn’t think I’m drop-dead gorgeous. If anything, he probably thinks I’m a plain Jane. That’s not low self-esteem, it’s just a fact. I’m not beautiful and I don’t pretend I am. In reality, I don’t give a damn what he or any other hetero male thinks of me. I’m good with what I am, and what I have going for me is more than skin deep, as all my past lovers would agree. But Ricky being Ricky, I knew I’d have to play to his outdated binary concept of female beauty, and so I am. From the way his eyes track me, I know I’ve struck just the right balance between demure and hey-who’s-that. Gotcha, male gaze.
I’m walking to the Hans Augusten Building where I attend most of my lectures. It’s a cool morning and I’m wearing a blue sweater over a shapeless mid-length skirt with long socks and boots. I’m clutching my sketchpad to my chest and hunch forward a bit to balance the book-heavy backpack. I have bangs this year and they tend to fall over my face, which is angled downwards to avoid making eye contact with the other students. I’ve not made any friends or struck up conversations with anyone on campus yet, even though I’ve been here two semesters, and I like it that way.
An autumn gust blows a dried maple leaf off the grass and on to the path and it crunches crisply as I step on it. It puts me in mind of the sound of the chest cavity being cut open with rib shears. More leaves blow underfoot and now the effect is more like a skull breaker hammering in the cranium. It reminds me I have dissection this week and I need to prep for it.
“What he doesn’t know is that I’ve been watching him for seven months and am intimately familiar with every gesture, every movement, every detail.”
That brief distraction gives me the chance to angle myself in the path of the two girls tossing an American football to each other. One goes long and crashes into me backward, sending me sprawling. I fall sideways into dried autumn leaves and lose the sketchpad, landing hard on my right shoulder, but rolling just in time to avoid hitting the outgrown root. There are leaves everywhere now, under me, in my face, hair, mouth. I lie stunned for a second, spitting bits of dry leaf and grit. The phone I was handling before the collision is nearby, and easily nudged away by my elbow.
An angry male voice yells in American-accented English at the two ball players who reply sulkily in German. I push hair out of my face and see a tall, dark-haired guy jabbing a finger at the wannabe Tom Bradys who both shrug sheepishly and make themselves scarce. It isn’t their fault because I deliberately sidestepped to make sure they crashed into me, but they’re still asses for not bothering to apologize or see if I’m OK. That’s cool. I want them gone.
The dark-haired guy leans over me and offers a hand.
‘You OK?’ he asks.
I sit up, ignoring his outstretched hand. I brush leaves off my sweater, but they break up and I know I’ll feel little pokey fragments scratching at me through the wool for the rest of the day. I swipe at my face, spitting again to get the taste of grit out, and check my shoulder; it’s sore but there’s no real damage. Even though I haven’t been keeping up my Krav Maga, gymming or running since I came to Switzerland, my muscle memory held up well enough to manage the fall. I’ll still bruise a bit, but it looks worse than it actually is, which suits me just fine.
‘Pretty nasty spill – you should get yourself checked out,’ he says to fill the awkward pause.
He thinks he’s being cool and classy. He considers himself a master of the game. He’s trying hard not to come on too strong while using the accidental encounter to bait this unexpected fish that’s just swum into his tidepool.
What he doesn’t know is that I’ve been watching him for seven months and am intimately familiar with every gesture, every movement, every detail, from the way he runs his fingers through his hair, pushing it back on the right – the left side he keeps shaved almost to the skin. The angular shape of his jaw, his heavy eyebrows, the vee-shaped accent of his torso, the bumps and ridges of his eight-pack abdomen, and even the size of his package. There’s not much left to the imagination when a guy is in Speedos on both the swim and dive teams.
It’s been harder for me to keep from being noticed by him, while watching him, these past seven months. Even with my training, it’s taken some doing . . . staying out of his way, making sure he didn’t see me until I wanted him to, and if he happened to look my way, making sure he didn’t notice me.
All that prep pays off now, as he sees me for the first time – or so he thinks – and comes to the conclusion: no bombshell, but definitely on the doable side.
I haven’t said a word yet. I stay silent as I stand. Everything feels fine; no real damage done. I turn in a circle, looking for my sketchbook. He spots it in a jumble of leaves and picks it up. It’s fallen open to reveal some of my little doodles of Zurich cafés, buildings and scenery. ‘Cool stuff. Art major?’
I take the pad without answering and busy myself brushing off the debris stuck to the front of my sweater. He consciously tries to avoid staring at my breasts, which only makes it obvious that he’s noticing them. I start to walk away.
‘Heya,’ he calls out, surprised. This is a guy who isn’t used to women walking away from him without saying a word. I’ve seen how the women on campus respond to him: flirtatious, coy, sometimes matter-of-fact and direct, but always pleased to have his attention. There’s no shortage of rich, privileged students here, but nobody in his league. Billionaire American scions don’t usually go all the way to Switzerland to study business economics; the word on campus was that Ricky Manfredi was only here to party. From hacking his transcripts, I know his history of suspensions and expulsions from US schools; this is his parents’ idea of a fresh start for him. High hopes!
I keep walking, knowing he won’t chase after me. Not his style. A few people rushing to get to class noticed the little accident, but their attention was mostly on Ricky, the big shot on campus. Nobody paid any attention to me after the first glance; I am a non-person to them, just another international exchange student from an Asian country. Ricky calls out to me again. I ignore him. I’ve worked hard to stay invisible on campus and don’t intend to change that by being seen hobnobbing with my quarry now. I’ve done this often enough before to know how the game is played too: the how and when is everything.
Still, I will be careful not to be too cocky; all the other times were test runs, with other misogynists or abusive men whom I have no personal feelings for or connection to. They were to prepare me for this, the main event. Ricky is not just some stand-up comic with a goatee from Astoria, Queens, who makes college girls laugh in bars and then sexually assaults them when they’re drunk on his couch. He’s a Yanagiba fillet knife. One mistake, and I’ll be the one left bleeding.
As I go up the steps, I see his reflection in the glass doors. The blonde and redhead he had been talking to by the quadrangle when I fell are calling out to him and he turns and walks back to them, shooting me one last over-the-shoulder glance as he goes.
I allow myself a small smile, concealing it behind the sketchpad.
I’ve hooked my prey.”
Extracted from A Kiss After Dying by Ashok Banker, out now.
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