Night of the Assassin: Assassin Series Prequel, Russell Blake [good story books to read txt] 📗

Jasmine’s mother had died when she was five, leaving Emilio to shoulder the burden of raising her, assisted by his sister and mother. One of the benefits of being a breadwinner of secure means with a generous employer like Don Miguel was that you could help with family members, and Emilio did his fair share. In return for which, the ladies, as he called them, raised Jasmine while he was working. It wasn’t a perfect situation but it had done well enough by her and she’d blossomed into a gorgeous, charming example of classical Mexican beauty, all gleaming black hair, white teeth and coffee-kissed skin.

The only quirk she’d shown was a deep interest in the occult, driven no doubt by a frustrated desire to somehow relate to her departed mother. She was Catholic, of course, as was everyone in Sinaloa they knew, but she’d grown restive with the faith and had taken to reading tomes of dubious virtue, on divining, and psychic powers, levitation and transmutation, and all manner of arcane, esoteric disciplines. Jasmine had of late taken to sneaking out and spending time with an old woman who claimed to read fortunes in one’s palm, as well as through studying tea leaves – all for a price, of course. Emilio had been worried, but the ladies had assured him that it was just a phase; a way to appear more mysterious as she came of age. He’d never understood women, having found them all equally inscrutable and impossible to read, so in the end he’d decided to take the advice of his mother and sister and let the fascination run its course.

Emilio’s days consisted of working with the boy and the horses. Once both children were home from school, his attention focused almost exclusively on the boy, leaving Jasmine to be trained by the ladies – in the feminine ways of the world. This wasn’t because of any lack of love on Emilio’s part. On the contrary, he lived for Jasmine. It was just that as she’d grown from a child into an adolescent he’d felt out of his depth, and now that she was thirteen, and moody, her body sprouting the curves that would attract members of the opposite sex like bees to honey, he had no idea how to deal with her. He rationalized that this was natural, and would hopefully also pass. She just needed to be around other women, to learn whatever it was they learned while he taught the boy how to do masculine things.

One Friday before Easter, the boy had come home from school with a bloody nose and some abrasions on his face, which after some hard questioning turned out had come about from a fight with an older boy who had been bothering Jasmine during recess; he had grown increasingly abusive and insulting as the day had worn on. The boy had rushed to defend Jasmine’s honor, only to be pummeled by the larger student, whose two years of seniority was enhanced by growing up in a household with three brothers who had taught him to fight. The boy’s education hadn’t yet moved to manual self-defense, but, looking at his bruised face, Emilio decided it was time to teach him how to use his fists.

As with most things, the boy learned quickly, and within a few weeks had mastered the basics of the primitive form of martial arts Emilio knew; really just a combination of rudimentary boxing and street-fighting techniques. But the boy was a sponge, and once he’d exhausted Emilio’s capabilities he lobbied for more advanced training – and given that it was Emilio’s job to provide him with the fullest possible education, they researched alternatives and quickly found a plethora of options. Culiacan was the nearest large city, a half hour drive from the ranch. It had a number of martial arts schools specializing in judo, karate, and kung fu. The boy convinced Emilio that his development warranted three classes a week. He added the stylized moves and holds he learned to his exercise routine, striving to perfect those as he had so many others.

There were no more incidents at school after the next altercation, when the boy knocked the older bully unconscious within a few seconds of the fight starting, the bully abruptly lost his taste for hassling Jasmine or picking on either of them. His classmates treated him with polite and cautious deference from that point on.

He didn’t mix with the rest of his peers and showed no interest in friendships beyond casual greetings-in-passing in the halls. That was more than enough interaction for him; he viewed his fellow students as inferior in every way – not because he was arrogant, but rather because he’d run an equation and found them wanting and immature. They were children, given to excitement or emotional flights, whereas he was almost an adult, always restrained. He was quiet and withdrawn and tended to keep to himself, preferring to limit his mingling to Jasmine during recess. They had grown close by virtue of their shared male authority figure. It was a brother-sister relationship, for the most part, but the ladies had cautioned both Emilio and Jasmine that things would have to change once they both matured.

Once he turned sixteen and she fifteen the inevitable occurred; the two became inseparable in spite of admonitions from the adults. Jasmine was gorgeous by then, and at an age when many Mexican girls in past generations were married and having their first children, so it was foolish high hope on everyone’s part to expect that the two wouldn’t find each other, living out in the country as they did, and in the same compound. The boy had grown from a gangly colt into a self-possessed young man with looks that made females glance at him twice. Jasmine had noticed the transformation over the past year and her interest in him had moved from sisterly