Page 14 of Fastest Kill

Frederica's fork stopped halfway to her mouth. "It's not an interesting story."

"All your stories are interesting. You just decide which ones I'm allowed to hear." Despina looked at Dario. "You tell me."

Dario looked at Frederica across the table. She gave him a warning glare. Don't you dare tell them.

"We met in Rome," Dario said cheerfully. "I was providing security for a client, and Frederica was hired to kill him. She did it while I was in the bathroom."

Despina turned to Frederica with wide eyes. "He is the Rome guy?"

The Rome guy. Frederica had only mentioned that job once to her parents because she had found it funny.

"You told them about it already," Dario said slowly and smiled like he was genuinely flattered.

"I lodged a professional complaint about how sloppy you were."

"To your parents?"

"They were available."

"She talked about it for a week," Tore said, grabbing a piece of bread. "She was very annoyed and said you were incompetent."

"I had to pee," Dario said in self-defense.

"That was the complaint," Tore confirmed.

Frederica stared at the ceiling and prayed it would fall on her.

Dario was watching her like he had been handed a gift and was already working out where to keep it. He would tease her about this for as long as he could make it last, like the asshole he was.

"You talked about me to your parents and even gave me a nickname? That's cute."

"The Rome guy is impersonal. It refers to a location."

"It refers to me. Specifically." Dario smiled at her parents. "She came and worked with the Edgeworths at our place for weeks, and I swear she uses the Rome job against me just to pick fights. The guy I was protecting was such a low-level politician that we had no idea he had an assassin of Frederica's caliber after him. I thought taking a bathroom break wouldn't be a problem. God, was I wrong. My mother gave me so much hell for it, but even she didn't think he had pissed off someone high enough in the political food chain to warrant such a professional hit."

Frederica picked up her wine and drank it. There was nothing useful to say, so she let him enjoy the thirty seconds she was willing to give him.

No, fuck it. She set the glass down. "He raped and murdered a fifteen-year-old girl."

Dario's grin went out like a light. "Excuse me?"

"Your client in Rome." She kept her voice even. "The girl was the daughter of a woman who cleaned his office building. He had government connections, and the investigation lasted four days and went nowhere. He had one interview with the police, and it magically went away. He was free to do it all again. Her mother came to me with fifty euros and a photograph. I took the job."

Nobody around the table spoke. Frederica charged on, too pissed off to stop.

"I deemed it good enough because I saw what he had done to her. Your client was underserving of your protection. He bought his way out of consequences until he ran into someone he couldn't buy. You were lucky I didn't shoot you, too, for protecting a piece of shit like that."

Dario looked like he was rearranging other information behind his eyes.

"Gabriella told me he was a low-level government official," he said finally. "Protection detail. Standard. Pissed off a rival."

"I know what she told you, which is why you didn't get a bullet that night, too."

"If I had known⁠—"

"Your mother still would have made you do it."

He shook his head. "No, I wouldn't have taken the job. I would have shot him myself."