Black Rose

The cold New York air rushed past me as I reached for the buzzer to Miss Avery’s apartment, slipping beneath the collar of my coat and making me question, why anyone chose to live somewhere that became this unpleasant for several months of the year. I hated winter. I hated the way the cold seemed to settle into my bones regardless of how many layers I wore, the grey slush that gathered along the pavements, and the amount of effort required simply to leave the house without losing feeling in my fingers. It was a season nobody needed, and one I would have happily traded for a beach somewhere warmer, preferably with a piña colada in my hand and nothing more demanding ahead of me than deciding whether to order another.

Unfortunately, there was no beach waiting for me tonight. Instead, I was standing outside an apartment building on the Upper West Side on a Friday evening, waiting to have dinner with Miss Avery. She wasn’t nearly as exciting as any number of plans I could have made for myself, particularly when Gabriel had spent most of the afternoon trying to convince me to join him for drinks downtown, but there were some invitations that could be ignored and others that came with expectations attached to them. Tonight belonged firmly in the latter category. A job needed to be done, and however much I might have preferred to spend my evening somewhere with better music and significantly more interesting company, I had to be here.

The buzzer sounded after a few moments, followed by the heavy click of the lock releasing, and I pulled the door open before the wind could make another attempt at ruining the hair I had spent far too long fixing. Warmth enveloped me the moment I stepped into the lobby, bringing enough relief that I paused for a second before continuing towards the elevators. The building was exactly what I had expected from the address: expensive without trying hard to prove it, with polished marble beneath my heels, soft lighting across the walls and an enormous arrangement of fresh flowers occupying a table that served no purpose other than giving the entrance something pleasant to look at.

I pressed the button for the elevator and caught sight of myself in the mirrored doors while I waited. Despite the wind, I looked presentable enough. My blonde hair still fell neatly over my shoulders, the makeup I’d applied before leaving home hadn’t moved, and the black wool coat concealed everything it was supposed to.

Seven twenty-seven. Miss Avery was expecting me at half past, which gave me exactly three minutes to reach the fifth floor and knock on her door.

The elevator arrived with a quiet chime, and I stepped inside before pressing the button for the fifth floor. I’d barely begun moving when my phone vibrated in my hand, Gabriel’s name appearing across the screen for the second time since I’d left home. He knew I was working tonight, which meant whatever he wanted was either important enough that he would call again or insignificant enough that he could survive being ignored until later. Knowing Gabriel, I suspected the latter, and I declined the call before slipping my phone back into my bag.

By the time the doors opened again, the warmth of the building had begun to settle into me, but I made no move to remove my coat as I followed the numbers along the corridor. Miss Avery lived in apartment 5C, something I already knew along with a considerable number of other details about the woman I was about to spend my evening with. I knew how long she had lived here, where she worked before retiring, which restaurants she frequented and which grocery store she visited most Wednesday mornings. I knew she preferred red wine to white, rarely stayed out past ten and had cancelled the cleaning service she had used for almost six years only three months ago.

Most importantly, I knew she was expecting me.

The smell of food reached me before I reached her door, something rich and savoury carrying through the corridor and making me realise that the coffee and half a sandwich I’d managed earlier hadn’t been enough to sustain me through the day. Apparently Miss Avery had taken the dinner portion of our evening seriously, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. If I had to sacrifice a Friday night for work, the least I could hope for was decent food.

I stopped outside 5C and smoothed one hand over the front of my coat before knocking. There was movement almost immediately, followed by footsteps approaching from inside and the muted sound of locks being turned. I arranged the pleasant expression I’d worn through countless meetings, dinners and conversations over the years, although when the door finally opened, I found I didn’t have to force it quite as much as I’d expected.

Miss Avery looked more ordinary in person than she had in the photographs. Her dark hair had been loosely gathered at the back of her head, with several strands already escaping around her face, and instead of anything elegant, she was dressed in dark trousers and a cream sweater with the sleeves pushed towards her elbows. There was something maternal about her standing there in the warm light spilling from the apartment, and for a moment it was difficult to reconcile her with the woman whose life I had spent the last several days examining in uncomfortable detail.

Then she smiled. “Emilia. I was starting to wonder whether the weather had scared you away.”

“Almost,” I admitted, returning her smile as she stepped aside to let me through. “If you’d lived another ten blocks away, you might have been eating alone.”

Miss Avery laughed as I entered, closing the door firmly behind me to shut out the last traces of cold that had followed me inside. “You say that now, but wait until you’ve tried dinner. I was promised that my chicken was worth travelling for.”

“That sounds like an impressive amount of confidence to place in chicken.”

“I’ve had very few complaints.”

“Then I suppose I’ll reserve judgement.”

“You do that.”

She started towards the kitchen, expecting me to follow, and I did, taking in the apartment properly for the first time as I moved farther inside. It was warm and comfortable in a way the immaculate lobby downstairs hadn’t been, filled with books, mismatched photographs and furniture that looked like it had been chosen because somebody genuinely liked it rather than because an interior designer had instructed them to. Somewhere nearby, music played quietly enough that I couldn’t immediately recognise the song, while the smell I’d noticed in the hallway grew stronger with every step towards the kitchen.

“Can I take your coat?” Miss Avery asked, turning back towards me.

My hand moved almost unconsciously towards the belt tied at my waist before stopping there. “No, thank you. I’m always cold.”

It was an easy lie, delivered with enough of a smile that there was no reason for her to question it. More importantly, it meant the weight of the .45 calibre handgun concealed beneath the wool remained exactly where it belonged.

Miss Avery knew I was coming for dinner. She did not know I had already decided how it would end.

I sat down at the dinner table, my coat now resting over the back of my chair. Miss Avery hadn’t seen me take it off, which meant she hadn’t seen the handgun strapped securely against my waist beneath my clothes. I wasn’t an amateur. I had been doing this for far too long to make mistakes that careless, and by the time she’d returned from the kitchen carrying the first of the dishes, there had been nothing unusual left for her to notice.

She laid dinner out between us with the kind of care that suggested she didn’t often have people over but still remembered exactly how a table was supposed to look when she did. The plates were beautiful, white porcelain edged with a delicate gold pattern, accompanied by immaculate silver cutlery and wine glasses that looked as though they had survived several generations before either of us had been born. They were the sort of glasses I imagined came with a warning from someone’s grandmother about never putting them in a dishwasher.

Miss Avery reached for the bottle of red wine she’d left breathing on the table and poured some into my glass before filling her own, exactly as I had expected her to. Red had been listed as her preference, although the file hadn’t gone as far as telling me which bottle she would choose. A French Bordeaux, old enough to be expensive but not old enough to be ridiculous. I took a sip after she raised her glass and found that whoever had compiled the information had, at the very least, been correct about her taste.

For the next forty minutes, we simply had dinner. Miss Avery talked about the people who lived around her, including an upstairs neighbour who had recently developed an enthusiasm for moving furniture at unreasonable hours and another across the hall whose inability to collect parcels meant half the building had become his personal delivery service. She told me about a restaurant a few streets away that had changed ownership after nearly twenty years and, according to her, had committed the unforgivable mistake of changing the menu along with it. From there, the conversation moved to the book she’d been reading, one she had recommended to enough people that I was surprised she hadn’t started receiving commission from the publisher.

I contributed when necessary, laughed when something genuinely amused me and asked enough questions to keep her talking whenever the conversation threatened to disappear. It wasn’t difficult. People generally enjoyed talking about themselves when someone appeared interested enough to listen, and Miss Avery was good company in a way I hadn’t expected her to be. She was funny without trying hard, opinionated about strange things and possessed an impressive ability to turn completely ordinary stories into something worth listening to.

Occasionally, I even forgot what I was there to do. It happened more often than people might have expected.

A file never quite managed to tell me who someone was. It could give me their full name, date of birth, current address and every other piece of information somebody had decided was relevant. I knew where Miss Avery had grown up, where she had worked, the year she’d bought this apartment and enough about her finances to know that the wine in my glass wasn’t something she’d bought without thinking about the price. Those were the easy facts, the ones that could be found in databases, public records and carefully gathered intelligence.

The files never mentioned the silly things. Nobody had thought it would be necessary to tell me that Miss Avery hated coriander with an unreasonable passion, or that she had bought the book she was currently raving about because a stranger had recommended it to her while they were both standing in line for coffee. There had been nothing about the way she pushed the vegetables she didn’t like towards the edge of her plate while continuing to insist that she wasn’t a picky eater, or how every story about her neighbours ended with the reluctant admission that she quite liked them despite spending most of dinner complaining about them.

Those were the things I only learned once I was sitting across from someone. For a little while, they stopped being a photograph clipped to the corner of a file and became an actual person instead. But it didn’t change the outcome. It never did.

I took another sip of wine as Miss Avery continued telling me about the ending of her book, carefully avoiding the details after I’d warned her that I might actually read it, and allowed my attention to settle fully on her again.

I had always thought people deserved that much. If I was going to kill them, the least I could do was listen while they were still alive.

“You’re awfully quiet. Am I boring you?” she asked eventually, laughing softly as she placed her fork against the edge of her plate.

“Does that bother you?” I asked in return, already knowing where the conversation was beginning to lead.

Her smile stayed for a moment before gradually losing some of its warmth. She knew what she had uncovered, and neither of us needed to pretend otherwise. Whatever information had found its way into her possession had been enough for her to understand that someone would eventually come looking for it. That had never been the question. She shook her head, although her attention remained fixed on me as I lifted my wine to my lips.

“People are usually terrified of silence,” I added, watching her over the rim of the glass. “They have an overwhelming need to fill it.”

Miss Avery didn’t answer immediately, and for once I made no effort to encourage her. I could almost see her working backwards through whatever decisions had brought us here, searching for the moment she’d been careless enough to leave something behind. She would be wondering where she’d slipped up, who she’d trusted when she shouldn’t have, or whether somebody had been watching her long before she’d realised there was anything worth watching.

It was pointless, of course. Knowing where she’d made the mistake wasn’t going to undo it.

“I didn’t expect you to look like this,” she said eventually.

I took another sip of wine while the glass in front of her remained untouched. That seemed an unnecessary waste. Whatever else happened tonight, the Bordeaux had done absolutely nothing to deserve being abandoned halfway through a perfectly good bottle.

“Let me guess,” I said, allowing a faint smile to settle across my lips. There was little humour behind it now. “You expected someone older, with more authority and, preferably, a man?”

Something flickered across her face, but she recovered quickly enough. “Would that offend you?”

“Not particularly. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“You’re very young...to be doing this.”

My fingers remained loosely curled around the stem of my glass as I considered her across the table. “You don’t know what I’m doing yet, Miss Avery.”

“No,” she said quietly. “I suppose I don’t.”

But we both knew that wasn’t true. The ease that had carried our conversation through dinner had disappeared without either of us formally ending it, leaving something much heavier in its place. Miss Avery’s plate was still half full, the food beginning to cool between us, while somewhere beyond the dining room the music continued playing as though nothing about the evening had changed.

Her eyes drifted towards my waist. Only briefly, but it was enough.

I placed my glass back on the table. “Don’t start looking for it.” I said.

Her breathing changed. Not dramatically. Miss Avery didn’t strike me as someone who did anything dramatically, but I noticed the slight tightening of her shoulders and the way one hand disappeared beneath the table, settling in her lap.

“I wondered why you kept your coat on for so long.”

“And yet you didn’t ask.”

“I thought it would be rude.”

That almost made me smile. “You invited someone you suspected had come to kill you into your home, made her dinner and worried that asking about her coat would be rude?”

“When you say it like that, it does sound rather ridiculous.”

“It does.”

For the briefest moment, something resembling our earlier conversation returned. Miss Avery’s mouth curved, and mine followed almost involuntarily.

She looked towards the bottle between us before reaching for it, but instead of filling her own abandoned glass, she tipped a little more into mine. “May as well finish it,” she said.

Now I smiled properly. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

We enjoyed the rest of the wine in silence, neither of us making any attempt to return to the conversation that had carried us through most of dinner. There was little point now that the pretence had disappeared. Miss Avery knew what was going to happen, and I had known how the evening would end from the moment I’d been given her name, yet she didn’t beg or attempt to bargain her way out of it. There was something admirable about that, particularly when I had met grown men twice her size who had dropped to their knees the moment they realised there was no longer a way out.

The bottle between us was empty by the time Miss Avery raised her glass again, taking a small sip before allowing her eyes to settle on mine. Her composure had remained intact, but I could see the fear beginning to creep through the cracks she had worked so hard to conceal. Her fingers were wrapped a little too tightly around the delicate stem of her glass, and her shoulders had become rigid against the back of her chair, but considering the circumstances, I thought she was handling herself remarkably well.

“Will it hurt?” she finally asked.

“Of course not. I have great aim.” I finished what remained in my glass before placing it carefully back on the table, unwilling to waste the last mouthful of a perfectly good red simply because our evening had reached its inevitable conclusion.

Something that might have been amusement briefly crossed Miss Avery’s face, although it disappeared almost as quickly as it had arrived. I couldn’t imagine there was much I could have said to genuinely reassure her, and offering some sentimental promise that she wouldn’t feel a thing would have felt dishonest. My aim was good, the distance between us was minimal, and I had no intention of allowing her to suffer. That was as much reassurance as I could give.

I moved my chair away from the table and reached for the handgun concealed against my waist, watching her gaze follow my hand. The moment the weapon appeared, whatever uncertainty had remained between us vanished, and I watched the reality of the situation settle across her features. For all the time she had undoubtedly spent wondering when someone would come for her, knowing death was inevitable and seeing the instrument that would deliver it were two very different things.

Still, she didn’t beg. She didn’t plead for her life or tell me about the family who would miss her when she was gone, nor did she attempt to offer me money, information or whatever else she thought might convince me to walk back out and forget I’d ever been there. She didn’t suddenly find Jesus in the final moments of her life or start promising to become a better person if only she were given the opportunity to see tomorrow. I had witnessed all of those reactions before, and while I couldn’t blame anyone for trying whatever they could when faced with the end of their life, I found myself admiring Miss Avery for refusing to do the same.

She remained seated across from me, her hands now resting together in her lap while tears slowly gathered in her eyes. She blinked several times, stubbornly refusing to allow any of them to fall, and there was something about the determination behind such a pointless act that made me respect her even more. Nobody would have thought less of her for crying, least of all me, but perhaps dignity was the final thing she had any control over and she had decided she wasn’t going to surrender that along with everything else.

For a few seconds, I simply looked at her, remembering the woman who had opened the door less than an hour earlier and immediately complained about the weather before ushering me inside. She had fed me, poured me good wine and spent most of dinner telling me stories that would never have appeared in any file written about her.

“Thank you for dinner, Miss Avery,” I said, because despite everything, my father had at least raised me with manners.

Her mouth trembled slightly, but she managed the smallest smile as she looked back at me. “You’re welcome, Emilia.”

I raised the handgun and took the shot. Miss Avery’s body slumped forward across the dinner table, narrowly missing the half-full plate in front of her as her cheek came to rest against the white tablecloth. The movement disturbed her wine glass enough to send it tipping onto its side, allowing the small amount she’d left behind to spread slowly across the fabric and creep towards the edge of her plate. Somewhere in the apartment, the music she’d put on before dinner continued to play at the same quiet volume, completely indifferent to the fact that its audience had been reduced by half.

I already knew there was no point in checking her pulse, because I hadn’t been exaggerating when I’d told her my aim was good, but habit carried me around the table anyway. I pressed two fingers beneath her jaw and waited long enough to confirm what I already knew before withdrawing my hand and straightening again. Whatever fear had been visible in her face moments earlier was gone, and the woman who had spent the better part of an hour entertaining me over dinner had once again become exactly what she had been when her file was first placed in front of me: a completed assignment.

I retrieved the black rose I had brought with me and removed it carefully from its wrapping, checking the petals out of habit before placing it on the table beside Miss Avery’s body. There was never a note and there was never an explanation. The flower said enough on its own, and whoever eventually walked into this apartment would understand exactly what it meant, even if they had no idea why Miss Avery had been chosen to receive one.

I took one final look around the dining room to make certain I hadn’t overlooked anything before reaching for my coat and slipping it back over my shoulders. Less than an hour earlier, Miss Avery had welcomed me into her home like we were simply two women sharing dinner on a Friday evening, and now she laid motionless across the table beside the remains of the meal she’d spent hours preparing. It might have bothered me once, but if there had ever been a time when taking a life followed me home, I could no longer remember it.

By the time I stepped back into the corridor and quietly closed the apartment door behind me, my thoughts had already moved on to the rest of my evening. It was late enough that Gabriel’s invitation for drinks no longer held much appeal, especially when going home meant I could wash off my makeup, pour myself something stronger than the wine and finally use the ridiculously expensive face mask I’d bought earlier that week.

After sacrificing my Friday night for work, a little self-care felt well deserved.