Hi everyone! So once again I am the absolute worst for not updating sooner, I am so so sorry about that. I'm back at school now so updates are likely to be slower than they have been (if that is even possible? I'm trash) so again super sorry about that. To make up for it, here is a very loooong chapter which I hope you will all like! If you do, I would be eternally grateful for any reviews you want to leave. It makes me so happy reading the ones I have and inspires me to keep writing this story. Thank you all so much for your patience! (By the way, has removed the 'insert line here' thingie from their formatting?)

Lots of love, Isabelle xx

The fifth time she tried to kill him, she decided to return to the knives.

They were her old favourite weapon, the tools she had learnt to kill with. There was nothing, nothing she was more comfortable with resting in the middle of her palm, the silver hilt glinting in the sunlight and the edge of the blade pointed and sweet, ready to kill. Clove took pride in her knives, pride in keeping them sharp and shining and ready to move at any moment in time. And, up until the night she had first tried to kill Cato, they had never failed her.

Well, she thought to herself as she tucked them one by one into the inner pockets of her leather jacket, testing the blade edge of one on her middle finger, now you're getting a second chance.

She scrapped the idea of killing him in a public place. Normally, she favoured making her kill somewhere busy, with a lot of distractions, because it made for a confusing set of circumstances and also made it easier for her to slip away in all the commotion. Cato Monroe, however, had not presented himself as a normal kill.

She knew where he lived, of course. It had been one of the first nuggets of information she had skimmed over the day Snow had handed her the piece of paper with his face on; number 23 Kensington Heights, on Alison Avenue. She had it memorised, imprinted in her brain like a tattoo. As she made her way down the neatly lit street, her hair bouncing off her back, the address pounded around her mind, reciting in time with her steps. Number 23. Kensington Heights. Alison Avenue. By the time she took a left off of the main street and into the sleek, high class housing development, she was muttering the words under her breath.

In a particularly bold move, she entered the building through the main door, a doorman dressed in black holding the door open for her and giving her a curt nod of the head. Inside the main lobby of the apartment block, the building was decorated in a minimalistic fashion Clove could only admire begrudgingly; abstract art in cool grey tones on the white walls, smooth, black boards of flooring and neat, curving furniture tucked in corners about the lobby. Declining the lift, Clove took the stairs two at a time to the twenty-third floor.

The stairs let her out onto a narrow corridor, an almost exact copy of the lobby décor just in a smaller, narrower size. The only exception being a potted plant drooped in the corner. Cato's front door was black, with the number 23 written in silver at the top. For a moment, Clove stared at it, imagining Cato coming home from any number of nights out, his jacket hanging over his arm and his blonde hair tousled. She imagined him digging his hands in his pocket for his key and struggling to fit it in the lock, the scent of liquor still lingering on his shirt. When she inhaled, she could have sworn she could almost smell it.

Clove took a deep breath. Enough.

Before she could change her mind, she took out the security camera aimed at the door with a flick of her wrist and a slice of a knife and strode over to the door and gave three hard raps to the wood. The door opened almost before she had pulled her knuckle away from it, almost as if it had been waiting for her knock. Unease churned in Clove's stomach. Something wasn't right.

She opened her jacket and took out a knife. It wasn't her favourite; she had lost that the first night she had tried to kill Cato back in the alleyway behind the bar. She had gone back for it the next morning but it had gone. This was a good knife though, it weighed heavy in her palm but didn't burden her fingers and the blade was sharp and clean. It was a blade that could kill.

Cautiously, Clove took a step inside Cato's apartment, and then another, and another, keeping her feet light and ready to jump. The pads of her fingers touched the grip on the knife as loosely as she could manage without losing control of the blade. She kept her breathing even.

Cato's apartment was not unlike the rest of the building Clove had seen so far. Everything was open plan, the kitchen, living room and dinning room bleeding seamlessly into one another, the floor was polished black oak and the leather furniture followed smooth lines and curves. There were small differences though; small things that stood out, made it different, caught Clove's sharp eye. T-shirts and socks bunched together under the couches, dirty plates and wine glasses with red rims scattered on the floor. Out of habit, she wrinkled her nose up in disgust. Men were such pigs.

No sooner had the thought left her mind, Clove's ears pricked up as she heard a slight rustle behind her, like a tiny lizard scurrying through a flurry of leaves. When the door slammed, Clove knew she had hesitated just a split-second too long.

She whipped her head around and brought her knife up only to have something hard slam into her wrist and the blade went spinning out of her grasp. Gasping, Clove ducked down and thrust her head forward so it hit into the chest of her attacker. He stumbled backwards and Clove, giving a short exclamation of delight, lifted her leg up to deliver a kick to the floor. Just as her foot was about to connect with his chest, her opponent's hand closed around her ankle and gave it a sharp tug towards him. With a shriek, Clove's remaining leg fell out from under her and she crashed to the ground.

Immediately, her body pushed forward, trying to get her legs up under her again so she was back on her feet, so she was in control again, but her attacker knocked her knees out of the way. Something cold was pressed against her neck and Clove gasped as, even with her head pressed back so she was staring at the ceiling, she recognised the object as a knife blade.

Her eyes flicked down her body and her heart leapt into her mouth when she saw the knife hilt tucked under her chin. But...that's mine.

Standing above her, his blonde hair lit up by the light-bulb behind his head like a halo, Cato gave a low chuckle, his teeth white and his eyes bright.

'About time,' he said. 'I was wondering what was taking you so long.'

Cato sat on his low couch in his shiny, self cleaning apartment and twisted the top off of another beer bottle. He tossed the cap onto the glass coffee table in front of him and listened to the metallic clatter as tin collided with glass.

The cap came to rest next to the knife. The knife. Cato couldn't help a thin smile spread over his lips as he looked at the knife, lying innocently on his coffee table. He lifted the beer to his lips and drank, still smiling. Her knife, the knife she used when she had first tried to stab him in the back in that godforsaken alleyway. He had picked it up after she had vanished over the wall and turned the blade over and over in his hand, marvelling at the way the polished silver caught the dim light of the streetlamps. It had reflected his face back at him like a mirror when he looked down at it, but a mirror that distorted his features and cracked his skin. When he had run his finger down the side of the blade, it had left a red trail of blood on his fingertip. In all honesty, he had initially only taken it with him to piss her off, but, as the days went on and she kept coming back, he began to think of it as a homing beacon. He had denied her something she wanted and she was insisting on tracking it down and taking it back.

He saw her coming down Alison Avenue, her dark hair swinging across her back and her dark clothes almost masking her in the black of the evening, and watched as she headed up the stairs into the building. It had taken her long enough. He took a last drink from his bottle and tossed it onto the white shag rug; a last trickle of beer spilled from the neck and dripped miserably onto the fabric. Cato picked up the knife from the table and let it bounce in his palm before grasping it. He had been testing out holding it in front of the mirror in his wardrobe; trying to copy Clove's movements with it, figuring out where to position it in relation to his body. He was no where near as skilled as she had been, he wasn't stupid enough to kid himself that, but he was good enough.

Cato tucked himself behind the alcove to the right of the door and waited. To his surprise, the feel of the ridges of the knife grip under his fingers was oddly comforting.

When she pushed open the door, Cato's breath caught in his throat like the poison she had intended for him at the nightclub. A rectangle of light cut through the gloom onto the floor and her silhouette appeared in black onto it. As she took slow step after step (cautious, always cautious, Cato liked that about her) into his apartment, Cato was able to see her from the back. Her dark hair was pulled tightly up in a high ponytail and it fell, sleek and sheen, down her back. She was dressed entirely in black; tight trousers, a leather jacket and black boots. The clothes managed to fit her in a way that made them look as if they had been shaped to her body and melded into her skin. Cato swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry.

Once Clove was far enough into the apartment, he slid out from the alcove, holding his breath. He had removed his shoes and socks earlier, so his bare feet padded across the floor as softly as they could. It was not softly enough.

When he saw her neck tense up, her body freeze, he knew he had blown it. Quickly, he kicked his leg backwards to slam the door shut and jumped forward just as Clove whipped her head around and raised her knife hand. He reached up to grab it before she could swing and sent the blade tumbling to the floor. With the edge of his foot, he kicked it out of reach.

Clove recovered from her surprise pretty fast. Within milliseconds, she had bent double and rammed her head into his chest. Cato gasped as he toppled backwards and heard Clove give a small shriek of delight. Gritting his teeth, he regained his balance, just as Clove's foot appeared in front of him. Cato grabbed her ankle as it jutted towards him and twisted it, not hard, but hard enough to send her spiralling to the floor. Cato dropped to his knees, straddling her body and pushed her legs back down as she tried to get up. When her chin lifted, he used the flat side of her knife to force her head back onto the ground. The little gasp of shock she gave as she recognised the blade filled Cato with a warmth, spreading from his head to his toes. He laughed in spite of himself.

'About time,' Cato said. 'I was wondering what was taking you so long.'

She glared up at him. 'Get the fuck off me.'

'Yeah, not likely.'

'I swear to God, if you don't-'

'What are you going to do?' Cato asked, a chuckle bubbling in his throat. 'Kill me?'

'I've been trying to all week!'

'No offence, but you're not very good at it.'

She spat in his face.

Instinctively, Cato brought his hand up to wipe his face. As soon as his fingers had moved away from pinning down her wrist, Clove brought it up and slammed his other hand away from her neck. Cato yelped in pain and arched his back away from her. Clove took the opportunity to pull her legs up from under him and slammed her body weight into his side, sending him toppling over. Within a few seconds, she had utterly inverted their positions so she was sitting ontop of him, victory shining on her face. She looks beautiful from above, Cato thought, before reaching up to toss her off him by the neck of her jacket.

Clove went flying back so she crashed into the door, the knife still clenched in her fist. Quickly, Cato scrambled to his feet and retrieved the knife he had kicked away before Clove had the chance to leap at him again.

She stopped in her tracks, her chest heaving under her black t-shirt. Cato grinned at her, twisting the knife so the light bounced off it, drawing attention to its presence.

'Even Stevens,' he said, trying to keep the pride out of his voice and failing.

Clove sneered at him. 'Not exactly,' she said, tilting her head slightly. 'I've been using knives for at least a decade longer than you. I think I could use one better than you could.'

'Yeah, but if you factor in my far superior size and weight and I think we're pretty evenly matched.'

Clove laughed once. 'You wish. Whoever said bigger was better?'

'I was under the impression that that was the general consensus.' He could have sworn he saw her roll her eyes at him in the half-dark.

'What, I'm not your type?' he teased, raising an eyebrow at her.

'You're not my type.'

'I'm everyone's type.'

'Not mine.'

'I was your type back in the bar. In the alleyway.' Or do you not remember? Cato could remember. He remembered her hands on his body, her mouth inside his. It made his skin tingle.

Clove scoffed. 'That's a technique. God, are you really that up yourself? I lured you out there to kill you. And you fell for it, just like the rest of your hacker friends.'

Cato froze. 'That's how you killed them? Flirted with them, lured them away and stabbed them in the back? Jackson and the others?' He wrinkled his nose. 'Even Jasmine?'

Clove rolled her eyes again. 'Yes, that's how I did it. And yes, even Jasmine.' In the dark, he saw her smile wickedly, showing off her pearly teeth. 'Actually, she and I both enjoyed that one the most.'

'You're a bitch.'

'And you're infuriatingly stubborn.' She flexed her knife hand. 'Now just let me kill you and then we can both get on with our lives.'

'Well I fucking couldn't because I'd be dead.'

She waved her free hand. 'Technicalities.'

Cato tightened his grip on the knife. 'Yeah, well, I'm not ready to die today.'

Clove smiled at him, tipping her head sadly to the side, as if she was already picking out the colour of his coffin. 'They never are.' And then she pounced.

Cato caught her wrist as she flung her body at him and twisted it, hard, in a vain attempt to get her to drop the knife. She screamed in pain and brought her teeth down into his flesh. Cato yelped and found that his knife had slipped out of his sweaty palm and onto the floor. Desperately, he tried to push her back, but Clove had locked her knees around his middle so that they were chest to chest with her knife pressed between their two hearts. Breathless, Cato watched Clove's knuckles whiten on the blade and her eyes gleam victoriously before she looked up at him. He saw the victory shining in her eyes dim and something else flash across her face – regret? Sadness? Cato felt her grip on the knife slacken.

With one hand, he reached up and smacked it backwards, sending the blade spinning in an arc into the air, and thrust his body backwards. He and Clove tumbled over the back of the couch and landed with a sickening crack on the glass coffee table. Cato heard her gasp.

'You don't want to kill me,' he said firmly.

'I have to,' she said breathlessly and began struggling in his arms.

'But you don't want to,' Cato insisted, fighting against her punches.

She slammed the base of her palm into his chest. 'How the hell did you reach that conclusion?'

He caught her wrist before she could claw at his neck and held it. She stopped fighting and glared up at him, a trickle of blood sliding down from her nostril to her top lip. Cato licked his lips. 'You hesitated,' he said.

And then he kissed her.