“Stop looking at me!” Camila’s voice broke halfway through, turning near-shrill and unrecognizable.

Calm and Collected. A cold hearted bitch. That was who she was. It was what she was well known for. Men, women, children. Whatever the job was, she got it done, and she slept just fine at night. There was no room for regrets in her line of work. Kill or be killed, get them before they get you, hesitation meant death. All lessons she’d learned the hard way as a little girl.

Her hand still wouldn’t stop shaking.

With your eyes looking up at her, wide and full of unprocessed shock, the grip she had on the handle of the kitchen knife faltered. She tried once more to force it harder against your neck, desperate for this to be over- but couldn't. Her body was refusing to cooperate, and- Fuck! Fuck. Why couldn’t you close your eyes and accept your fate? You couldn’t be stupid enough to think this was some kind of foreplay. At the very least you could have done her the favor of being angry.

“I’ll make it quick, I can promise you that much.”

Except she could hear doubt dripping from those words, the way they wobbled and shook towards the end. Twenty years of doing this and you were going to be where she failed? How pathetic was she? She’d done in her own mother with less reluctance.

You were her mission. That's all you were supposed to be. Dating you was a part of the act, one she'd done hundreds of times. She wasn’t some debutante blindly going into their first job. This was supposed to end with you dead, your father's secrets stolen. After, Camila was meant to send your head in a box to his doorstep. A message. Brutal and unforgettable. There were consequences for someone thinking they were smart enough to play double-agent with the FBI and Camila’s own father. Unfortunately, pretty things like you just so happened to be collateral damage.

…Okay, ‘collateral damage’ admittedly wasn’t exactly what was coming to mind currently. No, the only thing she could think about was that this morning, she had cooked you waffles with chocolate chips in them. In the afternoon, she’d watered the plants the two of you had spent the better part of an hour bickering over a few months back. Twenty minutes ago, right before she got the phone call that turned your life together upside-down, she was delicately using a paring knife to peel the skin off of a potato while you laughed next to her.

Now, she was going to lose you forever. One way or another, there was no coming back from this.

She never should have fallen in love with you.