After His Kill Order, I Unmasked Him

I am a former assassin. I laid down my weapons years ago. To earn enough money to buy a house and marry my fiancé, I decided to come out of retirement for just one last job. That very night, I received an order from a client whose codename began with the letter S. But the moment I opened the target file, cold sweat soaked right through the back of my shirt. The woman in the photograph was none other than myself! I stood frozen in front of the screen, unable to steady myself for the longest time. Mr. S: Everyone talks you up as some top-tier assassin. What is there to think about... killing one single woman? My hands shaking, I lit a cigarette. The nicotine helped calm my nerves a little. After a long moment, I stared at the photo on the computer screen and tapped lightly on the keyboard. Assassin: Mr. S, how exactly do you want her to die? Mr. S: Any way works fine, as long as the police never trace it back to me. Client S clearly seemed to be in a rush. I had barely hit send when his reply popped up right away. Mr. S: Oh, and one more thing... make sure all her internal organs remain completely intact. Minutes later, an overseas transfer hit my account. I stubbed out my cigarette and sat staring blankly into space. I had no way to confirm the client's real identity, but the target he had sent was far too familiar. That woman with the bright, happy smile in the photo was me. I typed... Assassin: May I ask what your connection is to this woman? I wanted to test the hunch already turning cold in my chest. But the man on the other end was surprisingly careless, and answered straight out, no hesitation at all. Mr. S: She is my fiancée. I bit down hard on my anger, and kept pressing. Assassin: If you are about to marry her... why do you want her dead? This time my question was too sharp, and he grew guarded. Mr. S: What does it matter to you? You are just the one doing the job. Sebastian Maxwell and I have been together for years. We are practically already married. From everything I know about him, he is the kind of man who gets upset even seeing someone kill a chicken. There is no way he would know the first thing about how this world works. So I made up a reasonable excuse to get past his guard. Assassin: If I am going to make sure no one suspects you, I need to know everything about who she knows and what her life is like. Otherwise, once the police start digging, they will walk straight to your door. Even then, I could not get anything more out of him. Only one last line appeared in the chat window. Mr. S: Just do exactly what you are paid to do. The rest is none of your business. No more messages came after that, and a moment later, his profile showed he had gone offline. But that was already more than enough. At the very least, I now knew for a fact that the man I lay beside every single night was out on the dark web, hiring a killer to end my life. When I chose to marry him, I went against every rule of my old organization. I walked away from that life completely, and never looked back once. And worse, just last night, after we had lain together, he had held me tight in his arms, his face soft and full of regret. "It is all my fault for being so useless," he had said. "All these years, I have made you live in this cramped, run-down apartment. But just wait... once I get hired as a permanent staff member soon, we will buy a nice little place out in the suburbs. The company housing allowance will cover the mortgage easily. And then... I will give you the big, beautiful wedding you deserve." I could still hear every warm, sweet word like they had been spoken only a second ago, and for a foolish moment, I wondered if this was all some terrible mistake. But then I looked at the transaction notice on my screen, and it hit me like a bucket of ice water, waking me up cold and sharp. Half a million US dollars. Exact payment, no less. Sebastian was nothing more than a low-ranking intern at an ordinary firm. Where on earth could he possibly get that kind of money?