Hey all! I decided to rewrite some of the chapters to fit the plot better. Everything will remain the same for the most part but I will be editing chapters for a couple days until I'm happy with how everything is written. That means the new chapters will be paused for at least a week. I know I haven't updated in about a month and I'm super sorry but I've been out of the state for about that long. I promise I'll have new chapters up starting next week. Until then, enjoy the edited and updated chapters, cause it's kind of like new content anyway.

Cheers!

- Rachel

Prologue

New York City, New York – Rego Park, Queens – 5:00 PM – November 10th, 2012

"Sai cosa devi fare?"

"Si, Papa,"

"Un buon soldato, Usignolo,"

The line clicks dead. The dark-haired teen slides her phone into her back pocket before replacing it with a .45 caliber Remington pistol – named Uccisore (killer) – the metal heavy in her gloved hand. The car she's sitting in is cold. Her fingers feel like ice as a result, more so than they usually do. Looking down at her hands and Nightingale finds it hard to distinguish between the black of her leather gloves and the black of her fingertips. The house she's sitting in front of is quiet, void of light and has about 2 feet of nicely manicured lawn. As with most lawns in this area of the city, it's small and has a thin strip of pavement running from the sidewalk to the front door. On either side of the pavement is brightly colored grass, thriving from years of nurture and regimented care. The house paints a frighteningly friendly picture for all the horror that The Nightingale was about to unleash inside.

Nightingale opens the car door quietly so as not to disrupt the silence in the neighborhood. Cars are lining the streets, snug against the concrete curbs. Each of them similar in their suburban setting. On her way out, she had taken the friendliest looking car from the garage specifically for that reason. Nightingale closes the Friendly Looking Car door as quietly as she had opened it before walking up the thin strip of pavement to the front door. Her boots tap gently against the concrete as she crosses into the front yard, bypassing the open metal fence lining the tiny yard. The front door sits before her offering some semblance of protection to the family sleeping behind it. It's embarrassingly ineffective protection, however, considering there's no security system in the house and no gate to seal the fence line she had crossed through earlier. For a city prone to robberies, especially in such an expensive neighborhood like the one she was in, it surprises the teen that there's no system in place. She decides it doesn't matter, however, because her father has footholds in each of the 10 most-used security companies in the country.

She reaches the door cautiously, unsure that everyone in the house is asleep, and gingerly tries the doorknob. It's locked, unsurprisingly, so she fishes her lockpick off her tac belt – momentarily replacing the gun with her kit - and gets to work. She's quick and silent, getting into the house with no other noise except the click of the lock opening. The house smells sweet, like flowers and pine, when she crosses the threshold into the house. She closes the door behind her and creeps further into the house. Her fingers twitch.

Her task is simple. In and out. Kill the family, grab the log book, leave. She's reciting it in her head like a mantra, her mind having been altered for her situation hours ago. She's a killer. She's not a 17-year-old working for her fathers will. She's a soldier and nothing more.

The wood paneling she's standing on creaks lightly as she shifts her weight, crouching into an attack position. It flows into the rest of the house, only obstructed by an occasional throw rug or bulky furniture. It's a single floor house with two bedrooms and two bathrooms. The kitchen is lined with cheap linoleum, ironic because the husband put down a million dollars when he bought the house and has a vase of nearly dead flowers on the rickety glass-topped kitchen table. There's no dining room. The house is too small. Same goes for a movie room or a game room of any sort. The teen deduces the only rooms she needs to worry about, therefore, are the bedrooms. She crosses into the kitchen, checking for warm bodies or signs of recent activity. There are none. She moves to the living room, noticing the TV has been recently turned off. The screen is still warm. Her fingers twitch again. She winces. The last thing she needs is an energy explosion in a suburban neighborhood with easily 20 houses all built side by side.

Her Papa would not like that.

The bedrooms are on either side of the house. One on the right side of the living room. One on the left. It would make it difficult to kill the kids if they ran after hearing gunshots because their rooms are closer to the door. She decides she must kill the kids first.

In and out. Kill the family, grab the logbook, leave. Nightingale repeats the mantra to herself like a prayer, maintaining the Good Soldier persona her father wants her to keep.

She goes to the left. The wood paneling giving way to the plush carpet as she moves into the hallway, edging closer to the bedroom. There's a cutout of a princess on the white wood door at the end of the hall. Darcy and Reina's Room. Princesses only! Is scrawled across the wood childishly, revealing just how young the girls behind the door are.

In and out. Kill the family, grab the logbook, leave. Nightingale repeats the mantra to herself again.

The soldier in her surges forward quietly, her combat boots padding gently across the plush carpeting. She is cloaked in the dark. The void of light only helping conceal her black clothing and black hair. Even the tanned color of her skin is cloaked by a Kevlar tactical muzzle across the bottom half of her face. Only the green of her eyes is visible. The door is getting closer as the soldier approaches it. She notices the pink glitter dusting the princess cut out and there's a pang in her supposed-to-be-hollow-chest as she realizes it's 100% homemade.

In and out. Kill the family, grab the logbook, leave. The mantra returns louder than ever.

With a gloved hand, Nightingale reaches out to the doorknob. Her fingers wrap around it softly, the metal sizzling beneath her fingers as energy bounces around under her skin. The Nightingale turns the knob, the door revealing a pale pink room, mostly cloaked in darkness. In the far left and right corners of the room, there is a night light in the shape of a castle. There are two beds in the room, each holding a single child. The bedspreads are white and there's a glittery gauzy canopy above each of them. The night lights cast a pale pink haze across the bedspreads, only reaching to the very end of each bed and fading before it can reach the dividing side table. There's an equally gauzy lamp in the center of the table with a pink castle alarm clock sitting in front of it. There's a dresser across the room, white like the carpet and bedspreads, it holds another lamp and about six silver—knobbed drawers. The light switch on the white wall is in the shape of a Disney Princess that The Nightingale doesn't have the capacity to remember the name of.

The girls are asleep in their beds, both facing each other from across the room. Their heads are sticking out from beneath the white of the covers, one of them is blonde haired, the other brown. The Nightingale had cocked her gun before she walked in, so all she had to do was point and shoot. It was simple. Just point and shoot.

She lifts the gun towards the blonde haired little girl, her hand is tremor-less as it directs the muzzle of the gun to where she wants the bullet to land. Right in her left ear. The silencer gleams in the pale pink lighting. Nightingale pulls the trigger, the only evidence being the soft puff of air that follows. She moves the muzzle to the other girl, aiming at her right ear. She pulls the trigger again and the soft puff of air is the last sound she hears before walking out of the room and shutting the door behind her.

The house is still silent and dark when the assassin emerges from the room. She pads out into the living room, pausing for any sign of movement. There is none. Nightingale stalks towards the bedroom, noting the door is open instead of closed like the kid's room. She moves with caution but surges forward nonetheless. The path to the bedroom is an open space, obstructed only by a tarnished looking wooden desk against the outside of the wall of the parent's bedroom. There's nothing on the surface of the desk except for a laptop and an empty glass. She passes it without disturbing either item to continue her path into the bedroom.

The parent's bedroom is completely black. There's a single queen size bed in the room book-ended by two side tables with a dresser adjacent to the right side of the bed. The man and women are laying together in an embrace, the man fully encircling the woman.

The man needs to burn, Usignolo. Her father's request dances through her head.

Her fingers twitch again.

Nightingale lifts the gun, points it at the mother, and pulls the trigger. Her body jerks. The man grunts in surprise, his eyes slowly opening at the movement of his wife. His tired eyes widen at the wet pool of blood at the entrance sight of the bullet. She can see the fear and panic explode in his eyes. She knows now its time for her to move. So she does. Nightingale approaches the man's side of the bed, revealing her presence to him. He gasps in fear, moving back to the headboard, scrambling to get away from him.

"W-wh-who are you," the man asked, his voice a whisper.

She could answer. But she doesn't.

Instead, the assassin secures her gun to her tactical belt and slowly peels off her gloves. It doesn't make a difference in appearance though, her hands are as black as the fabric previously covering them. She tucks them into her back pocket, all the while the man is scrambling across the bed – over his now dead wife – to get as far away from the shadow as possible.

Nightingale cracks her neck and steps to the side, intercepting the man as he tries to make it to the open door. Her fingers crackle, electricity snaps in the air. Her right-hand shoots out, grabbing the man by his neck. He would scream if his vocal chords weren't currently being fried. The teen closes her eyes, willing her energy through the hand against the skin of his neck. She opens them when the smell of burnt flesh fills the air. She lets his neck go, shaking her hand to rid it of his now charred flesh. He matches the black of the room now, contrasting against the stark white carpet as his body falls to the floor. A key glints in the moonlight pouring through the closed blinds. It's on the dresser. The assassin grabs it, fingering the metal as her hands cool down from the energy surge.

She feels dizzy, but she pushes it aside as she walks back into the living room. There's a safe under the desk, protected by a shitty lock. She could've broken it, but the noise would've woken the family. There was no point in making a mess if the key was right out in the open. She fills the lock, turns the key and the safe door swings open. For a second the assassin pauses. It almost feels too easy the way this is playing out but then the logbook is right in front of her and the mantra she was reciting is screaming itself in her head.

In and out. Kill the family, grab the logbook, get out.

She grabs the logbook, and then the laptop on the desk before padding into the living room and slipping out the front door. She shuts the door behind her checking the silent street for any sign of life. When there were none, she walks to the car.

Two minutes later she's driving down a quiet street, the house behind her just another notch in her belt.