The Break Up

"All right, lass…I know you're a wee bit upset with us, but can we please talk this out?"

Katja listened to her former lover, her mouth actually hanging open in shock as she processed what he had just said to her. "Talk?" The rising anger in her voice was as evident as her thick Russian accent. "After what you did to me? You are insane!"

"C'mon now, Kat. Nobody's perfect, but we were good together, aye?"

She leaned against the wall next to the closed bedroom door, almost wanting to laugh at the absolute absurdity of it all, even as her heart was being ripped apart. She knew that ending things with Eddie permanently was best for her, but things like that are never that black and white. There had been some good times with him, she couldn't deny that… the weekend getaways to tropical locales, the parties that lasted till dawn, and the intimate times that they had just spent lying around in bed together all day on Sundays. She felt her face become moist as a few glistening tears trailed down from her pale blue eyes when she realized that if she were perfectly honest with herself, Katja had to admit that most of the time they were good together. Very good, as a matter of fact.

Unfortunately, it was the times they weren't so good together that had brought them to the point they were now, heatedly arguing with each other with a locked bedroom door separating the two. Holding on tightly in her heart to the memories of how Eddie had so wronged her, she took a deep breath as she tried to will the tears to stop falling and embraced her fury at him.

"Fine!" she screamed, still leaning against the wall and turning to face the door frame. "We had good times, yes, but it no longer matters! You betrayed me!"

"That's such a strong negative word, betrayal is." Eddie replied in what she thought was his attempt at a soothing voice. "Let's call it more of a 'slight indiscretion' and move on, shall we?"

"'Slight indiscretion'? You cheated on me with that whore!"

There was a small pause as silence reigned on Eddie's side of the door. 'Most likely sorting through different lies to spew from his mouth!' she thought, the rage in her growing from a small fire to a full fledged inferno as she remembered learning about his cheating ways. It was bad enough to make a fool of her as he told her such pretty lies on a daily basis while screwing around with various sluts, but did he have to sleep with her best friend as well?

She was brought back from her hurtful memories as she heard him clear his throat from the other side of the door. "Ah, that. Right, then…all right, that was bad taste, I'll admit. But in my defense she … she seduced me! I was a helpless lad trapped by her evil charms!"

Shaking her head in disbelief, she wondered what she had seen in her ex-lover. Yes, he was fairly handsome in the sort of dangerous bad boy kind of way, and he had his moments of charm at times, sure… but it didn't cover up the fact that he was a liar, a cheat, a thief and worse. Did Valentina seduce him? Did she cause all this misery for them, drawing him into temptation? Katja realized it didn't matter exactly who instigated it, the important thing was that it had happened at all. She had already solved her differences with Valentina, and there was nothing else to be said after they last saw each other. Her best friend, the person she had trusted more then her own family, had called upon their long friendship and begged for forgiveness. There could be no reasoning with a woman truly scorned, however. The heartbroken woman's reply had been as cold as a Siberian winter night when she ended the friendship forever.

But the cheating wasn't the end of the list of Eddie's crimes against her, she thought. There was always more with him.

"And when you left me, not only did you do so in the worst way possible, you sunk so low as to take something that was mine... mine! You lied to me, you cheated on me, you stole from me and then you did the unthinkable to me!" she yelled at him heatedly. "How am I supposed to forgive you when you've done all that to me? How much abuse do I have to accept from someone that says they love me?"

He was quiet for a moment again, and then she heard him sigh heavily. "So that's it, lass? No forgiveness, its all over for us, aye?"

Katja shut her eyes tightly and fought back the sob caught in her throat. She hated to admit it to herself but even after all he had done to her, she almost wanted to open the door and just jump in his arms, forgiving all and trying to move on. Maybe she could've forgiven him and started a clean slate, but unfortunately he did one thing that could not be forgiven or forgotten. Taking a deep breath and praying for strength, she forced her reply out.

"No," she answered in a quiet sad voice, eyes still closed. "I cannot let it go, I just cannot. As much as I hate to do this, you know you put us in this position, not me. You know the person I am, you know how I feel about and react to things that cause me pain…how I deal with loss and betrayal. Did you really see this happening any differently?"

Another deep sigh. "No, I guess not."

"I really hate this part, yes?"

"I know. Hey, Katja?"

"Yes, Eddie?"

"I really did love you, you know."

She couldn't hold back the tears any longer at that, putting a hand to her mouth and sobbing quietly. "I know, my love," she answered, her voice cracking with emotion "And I want you to know I still love you, even after all this."

Vision distorted with tears, Katja still managed to see well enough to check her H&K Mk. 23, ejecting the full clip and seeing it was ready before slapping it back home. She then rapidly screwed the custom made suppressor onto the barrel, not wanting the gunshots to attract any more attention than the very vocal fight might already have. Brushing back her long dark red hair from her face, she moved off the wall and stood in front of the door, readying herself. With another deep breath she activated the laser scope attachment on the gun, pointed the weapon at the lock and pulled the trigger, blasting it away into many misshapen jagged pieces that went flying in the hallway. Having disposed of the lock she then used her high heel booted foot to violently kick the door in, bringing her gun up in a two handed grip as she quickly entered the room and surveyed her surroundings.

The lamp on the table next to her exploded into a shower of crystal shards, causing her to dive to the floor as she listened to the muffled pfft pfft pfft of the suppressed submachine gun's many bullets racing above her. The fully automatic assault resulted in the door becoming even more damaged until finally being ripped off the door frame, large pieces of the mahogany being blasted back into the hallway. The costly chaise lounge that was a few feet in front of her was completely shredded by the attack, sending up pieces of cloth and stuffing flying across the room. A huge mirror on the other side of the door shattered from the hail of gunfire striking it, razor sharp debris falling all around her and forcing her to cover her head and eyes.

The gunfire suddenly ceased as quickly as it had begun, letting Katja know that Eddie had foolishly wasted his whole clip in the first attack, and had to switch out. Counting the seconds off in her head that she calculated it would take him to change clips, she moved with haste. Standing up, she quickly and expertly leveled her gun at her former lover and reluctantly squeezed the trigger. The first shot hit exactly where the small red laser dot had landed on him, like she knew it would. The bullet ripped through the skin, muscle and tissue of his right shoulder and shattered the bone inside. It then exited out of his back in a large crimson spray of blood and tiny bits of wet flesh onto the wall behind him to create a morbid mural of sorts. The brutal single shot forced his now useless arm to drop the submachine he had been firing as he cried out in agony, the gun clattering away from him and nearly under the bed. Realizing he was no match for her, Eddie moved to try and make a break for the hotel fire escape door in the adjacent room and possible safe passage. The teary eyed woman adjusted her aim to another locale on his body, the well-defined body she had loved to touch and kiss so much, and pulled the trigger again. The report of the gun was deceivingly quiet in the room thanks to the silencer, and close to the exact same moment of the pfft his left knee was blasted apart almost completely, making him scream like a wounded banshee as he fell to the floor in a heap.

In an almost stunned state, she slowly made her way across the room towards where he lay whimpering in a growing puddle of his own life's blood. Katja looked at the pitiful creature that lay bleeding before her and fought with herself to not be overcome with remorse or regret for what she had done to him, and what else she had to do. She stood over her former reason for living, the once most important thing in her life, and then aimed the gun at the wounded man, the little red dot appearing directly in the middle of his forehead.

"There are two things you need to realize before we sever ties for good, Eddie" she said in a low voice as she looked down at him with tear filled eyes. "One, you and Valentina deserve each other after what you did to me. She'll be waiting in hell for you…I sent her ahead earlier to make sure you wouldn't be lonely there."

Eddie coughed, blood trickling down his chin as he forced himself to look up at her and give a sort of grisly half smile. "You're kind…ahh!…to a fault, Kat." he managed to get out. "What…what else did…I need to know?"

Kneeling down beside him, she reached out with her free hand to stroke the mussed, dark curly hair out of his face. "The second thing you should realize is that perhaps I could have forgiven the lies, maybe even the infidelity if I tried really hard." she whispered as she moved her hand to caress the handsome face she would so dearly miss. "But you should never, ever have stolen money from and tried to murder an ex-GRU Spetznaz trained assassin, my love. And if you were foolish enough to try? You should have remained to make sure I was very much dead from your bomb."

Katja placed the muzzle of the suppressed handgun to rest directly on his forehead, the touch of the still warm metal making him flinch a little. "I love you, Eddie, I truly do…but I always said that this American capitalist lifestyle that you loved so would be the death of us when you made us move to Los Angeles, yes?" She paused briefly to gaze at him through her freely flowing tears, her heart shattering at what she knew was coming next. "Well, it seems as if I was half right. Dosvidanya, my love."

As she walked out of the first class LA downtown hotel carrying the recovered briefcase of stolen money Katja felt a sense of numbness, due to the third and very final gunshot she had reasoned. She gazed at her reflection as she moved past the huge mirrors of the hotel's entrance and breathed a little easier as she saw that none of Eddie's blood was on her Prada boots, her black Dolce-Gabanna mini-skirt or miraculously not even on her white Christian Dior long coat. She stepped to the corner of the street and hurriedly waved for a cab, receiving another stroke of luck as one instantly stopped for her. Taking a brief moment to look back up at the hotel room where Eddie's body would eventually be found, she then slid into the taxi and shut the door, sinking down into the seat as the cab sped away from the curb.

"Where to?" the cab driver asked in a bored tone. Thinking for a second, Katja realized that she had nowhere to go really, now that her final act of vengeance was completed. She thought about maybe returning to mother Russia and getting back into the game, working for one of the two main Russian spy agencies, the military intelligence entity GRU or the Soviet version of the American CIA, the SVR. Thoughts then shifted to the possibility of going freelance and hiring herself out as a hired gun to the various crime syndicates battling for the black market. Or perhaps she's take the elderly 'Company' agent at Langley up on his offer and use her special talents in the service of her new country. She didn't know what her long time plan was, but in an instant she knew what she needed to do in the short term.

"Take me to a bar, any bar that serves good, strong vodka. I need to get completely…how do you Americans say…'jack-hammered'?"

The cabbie chuckled a little. "Think you mean 'hammered', lady."

Katja's cheeks reddened a little at the correction. This damn language and its myriad of difficult and unusual slang words would surely drive her mad one day. "Ah, 'hammered'. Yes, spaceba."

"No problem. Hard day at work or something?"

"No." she replied as she looked out at the scenery rapidly moving by. "I just broke up with my boyfriend. And you know what they say, yes?"

"Uh-uh. What?"

"Break ups can be murder." Katja said softly, wiping away the last tear.

A/N: This is a small sample of hopefully many stories to come of the brokenhearted Russian ex-assassin, Katja Petrov, on her quest for revenge. Lemme know what you guys think, OK? -VM