I didn’t know anyone at the party, not even the host. But it had been a while since I’d done anything sociable and I needed human company. I was excited to attend, even.
I was wearing a new suit I hadn’t been able to use yet. It was off the rack—I had the figure for it now—but it was Armani, and it made me feel like my old self for the first time in a year.
In my previous life, I’d loved managing a hotel and casino for my crime boss, ambling among the guests and attending to the high rollers. It was hands down the best job I’d had in my lifelong career in crime. If I could return to it without drawing attention to myself, I would in a heartbeat.
In lieu of it, an event with nameless wealthy people who were solely concerned about themselves was a safe way to be among people. That didn’t mean I hadn’t run a thorough check of my host, Dominique Fabre.
He was in his late forties and had made his fortune with a series of technology startups which he had sold one after another with ever increasing sums. Currently he was busy helping other startups to the next level. The party tonight was for such companies and their potential investors, and select people living in the building. I’d been invited as the latter.
Or so I thought.
“I took the liberty of checking you out,” Fabre said affably as he shook my hand, the words guaranteed to make me break out in a cold sweat.
“Oh?” I managed to say, hopefully indicating mild interest instead of an acute onslaught of panic, but I was locating the exits for a hasty retreat.
The penthouse was a two-tier cube on top of our long, rectangular building. There were three similar penthouses sticking out of the roof like studs on a Lego brick, and his was the closest to the river.
The upper story of the cube was smaller, and the garden where the party was being held spread outside it on the roof of the lower tier. A small foyer with an elevator and a stairwell from the lobby gave access to the garden and to Fabre’s apartment. Only one door led to the foyer, and Fabre was standing between me and it.
Before I managed to act on my first impulse and jump over the brick railing lining the roof garden, Fabre continued with his fairly good English. Everyone spoke English to me the moment they realized I wasn’t local. I could speak French, I’d learned for my job as hotel manager, but what had delighted hotel guests in America made the locals here roll their eyes.
“Yes, I noticed you’ve been investing in technology companies recently. I have just the ticket that might interest you.”
Not waiting for my answer, he took me by my arm—not something the old me had ever had to endure—and led me across the garden to a group of three men who were trying to hide their nervousness behind champagne glasses. The moment Fabre introduced me, they launched into a well-practiced elevator pitch about their company—the first of many that night.
I’d intended to keep a low profile, have a drink or two, and then slip away unnoticed once I’d filled my need to socialize, maybe with a willing woman if I was lucky. But people were flocking to me to pitch their business ideas, and it would’ve gained me the wrong kind of attention if I’d fled. So I stayed, mingled, and listened to the pitches. I even found myself warming up to a couple of them.
When you’ve spent years looking for twisted business opportunities for laundering money, you became surprisingly good at spotting the real deals.
But not for a moment did I forget to keep an eye on new arrivals for faces I might recognize—and who might recognize me in return.
That’s rule number six: keep away from anyone you’ve met before. There isn’t a disguise so good that you couldn’t be made by a random, friendly acquaintance.
Obviously, I’d made myself look as different as possible without extensive plastic surgery. I’d only had my nose fixed, as it had been very recognizable. It had been broken several times during my years as an enforcer when my crime boss had still needed me for physical intimidation. I’d been good at it.
Now the nose was an elegant Greek, straight and narrow—heh—which, considering that it had started as a very Italian nozzle, was a testament to my plastic surgeon’s skills.
As a side-effect, I could breathe more easily, I didn’t snore as much, and my voice had lost the nasal pitch of Jersey Italians.
The other changes had been slower to make, and took self-discipline I hadn’t known I possessed until it became a matter of life and death.
Jonathan “Jonny” Moreira—the old me—had been three hundred pounds of bulging muscle and hulking frame. When he walked into a room, people noticed—and feared.
The look was deliberate and had taken years to build. In my adolescence, I’d been a short and scrawny runt of the litter with curly red hair and the inability to keep my mouth shut. I got beaten up a lot.
I began to pump iron until I was strong enough to fight back—and then I kept pumping. To appear taller, I wore platform shoes or hidden heels that I kept using even after I grew six inches during the summer that I turned nineteen, adding an inch to my sudden six two to make me a six three. Or, since I was in France now, the home of metric system, transforming my one meter eighty-eight centimeters to one ninety-one.
At the peak of my enforcer career, I was a barrel-chested behemoth, with a neck that began widening from my ears and a heavy jaw to match, and biceps that made my tailor weep when he tried to fit sleeves around them. With my broken nose and permanently glowering thick brows, I only had to enter a room and people cowered.
I won’t bore you with details of my transformation, which began two years before I faked my death, but it required leaving the weights alone, regulating my intake of protein, and starting jogging and yoga.
It went as well as you can imagine at first. You try lugging around three hundred pounds of muscle—or a hundred and forty kilos in local—but as my muscle mass started to diminish, running became easier.
Incidentally, it’s much easier to lose muscle than fat, so the change was faster than I’d feared. The difficulty was to hide it from people and involved wearing football padding under my suit, among other things.
Now, three years after I began the transformation, Eliot Reed—the current me—who didn’t wear heels, was one meter eighty-eight with the lean, long-muscled, and tight body of a soccer player. I had a normal neck between nice, wide shoulders, and my jaw didn’t look like I could chew nails anymore. The structure of my face had become more sculptured too as I lost weight. Who knew I had cheekbones?
Tired of being bullied for the red hair, I’d dyed it black since I was fifteen, and had kept it tightly combed back with pomade to prevent it from curling. I shaved it off the day before I died. As it grew back, I’d been surprised to discover that it wasn’t red anymore. It was dark chestnut brown with a hint of gray creeping in that aggravated me to no end. I was only thirty-four—sorry, thirty-two.
A hairstylist took care of those. He added strategically placed highlights too, which made the hair look a lighter shade of chestnut that suited me well.
My current hairstyle was longer than I was comfortable with. The front hair fell softly from a side partition over my forehead, which the stylist assured me became me before asking me out. It was layered to slightly shorter at the back and it had begun to curl lightly again, now that I didn’t try to beat it into submission with pomade.
I declined the date invitation, by the way. I wasn’t as opposed to the idea of dating men as a stereotypical Jersey mafia enforcer should be, but I’d never tried it and I wasn’t about to start experimenting now. But I took it as a proof that my transformation was working.
My eyes were no longer the dark brown of my adult years either. No magic involved there. I had a girlfriend when I was about twenty who didn’t like my green-gray eyes and convinced me to wear brown contacts instead. I’d gotten used to the look by the time we broke up and I’d kept using them.
With the straight nose, trimmed brows, and strategically grown facial hair—tightly-trimmed sideburns that narrowed my face further—I didn’t look like a Jersey goon of Italian origin anymore. I looked like any stylish Frenchman of my age. My face startled me every time I spotted my reflection, but I blended in. I doubt even my mother would’ve recognized me.
Well, she probably would, but AI facial recognition systems on borders wouldn’t. Six two was a marked difference from six three for algorithms, and a three-hundred-pound guy didn’t walk like a wiry one-eighty. I’d had to practice walking anew after losing weight.
But it wasn’t the software I was trying to fool here.
Other guests weren’t the only people on my radar. I kept an eye on the wait staff too, in case they’d worked at my hotel before. There was a small army of them serving the eighty or so guests that had gathered on the roof, offering finger foods and excellent Beaujolais the area was famous for.
I found myself keeping an eye on them like I were still a hotel manager. I noticed their efficiency and politeness with approval, as well as the speed with which they whisked the empty glasses away. I even found myself frowning at one waitress when the empty glasses began to accumulate on the low wall around the garden, sending her hastily to collect them.
It was an effort to shake myself out of the habit and start enjoying the party as a guest. The pitches didn’t completely hold my attention though. I was looking for company for the night too.
Unfortunately for me, there were more men than women present, and the few women were older than the men and most of them were married. And while all women are attractive and French women doubly so, none of them were interesting enough to bother with.
I was ready to give up and head home when a woman crossed my line of sight with unhurried steps. Judging by the empty tray she carried under her arm, she belonged to the wait staff. Her light gait gave natural sway to her hips and made the ponytail of her long blond hair bounce.
She was taller than most women here, and some of the men too, even though she was wearing sneakers—which probably helped with the easy walk. But she wasn’t slouching to appear smaller; she was holding her head high.
Her long legs were sheathed in black leggings, and she wore a wraparound tunic that hid everything, unlike the other waitresses who wore LBDs with plunging necklines and makeup that was guaranteed to draw male attention—if the man managed to pull his eyes off the cleavage first.
I watched her cross the roof to the staging area, my head tilting in appreciation. She disappeared behind the screens that separated it from the party and a sudden urge to ask her name quickened me unlike any woman had since my death.
I excused myself, to knowing chuckles of the men with me, put down my glass and went after her. But I was only halfway cross the roof when I saw her enter the foyer. Was she leaving already?
I lengthened my steps to catch her, but I wasn’t fast enough. The foyer was empty, and the digital display above the elevator door was counting down. Driven by a need, I almost ran down the stairs, only to halt before I pushed open the door to the stairwell. She’d be long gone before I reached the lobby.
Disproportionally disappointed for my bad luck, I turned to head back to the party, only to halt with a puzzled frown. The door to Fabre’s apartment opposite to the elevator was slightly open. Had one of the guests wandered where they shouldn’t?
It was none of my business. I didn’t want to walk in on the guests having sex on the host’s bed, or witness someone making off with Fabre’s valuables. The last thing I wanted was to get involved in criminal endeavors.
That was rule number seven, one you should never break if you are on the run. Keep away from a life of crime. You’ve made it out. Don’t go back, even vicariously.
And yet, I found myself glancing around and looking for cameras. There weren’t any, which was foolish of Fabre. Satisfied that no one would see me, I pushed the door open with my elbow and entered the apartment.
It was dark and quiet inside, and I hoped that whoever had forgotten to close the door had already left. I stood still, straining my ears while my eyes adjusted to the dim light that the full moon and the garden lights shone through the large windows.
The upper floor was one open space that doubled as a library and a family room. It was empty. Stairs led down on my right, but it looked dark there too.
I should leave before Fabre popped in and found me here.
But a noise downstairs made me tense. Before I had considered the action through, I was heading down the stairs as quietly as I could. I’d been surprisingly good at it when I was twice the size. Now I barely made a sound.
At the bottom, a hallway led to left and right with rooms on both sides. It was dark, but a door was open at the far end on the right, letting in ambient light from outside that helped me to walk there without tripping.
I paused outside the open door and peeked in. The sight made adrenaline surge through my body.
A form in black stood in front of a wall-safe, silhouetted against the window where one curtain had been pulled aside to give them just enough light to work by. They’d managed to open the safe and were moving the contents to a bag hanging over their shoulder with efficient movements.
My hand went inside my suit jacket where I’d been accustomed to carrying a piece on a shoulder holster, but it met with emptiness. Weapon laws were strict around here, and I was a legitimate businessman who had no need for a gun. I didn’t even own one anymore.
But I had the element of surprise on my side. As the burglar made to close the safe door, I rushed across the floor. A soft Persian rug silenced my approach, but I must’ve made a sound anyway, because as I reached for the thief they stepped aside, twirled around, and kicked me in the gut with enough force that it robbed me off my breath.
This wasn’t the first time I’d been at the receiving end of such a kick, even if I didn’t have the armor of muscle anymore. It didn’t floor me. I lunged after the thief, who was trying to escape, and executed a perfect tackle. I landed on them with my full weight, which even in my diminished size was enough to pin them against the floor.
The body under me felt less substantial than I’d anticipated, which gave me pause. Pushing up, I made to turn them around, and my hand met what was unmistakably a breast.
The thief was a woman.