by Ashley Hall
“Wanna talk about it?” she asked eagerly. She had way too much energy this morning. Did she have a triple shot in her coffee?
“Not really.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. Already I could feel it—the start of a bad headache. I had been getting a lot of them lately, and I figured stress was the reason for it. Too bad the likelihood of my stress levels going down was zilch.
Ignoring Pamela as best as I could, I sat down on my chair and pretended to settle into work, hoping, praying even, that she would get the hint. Sometimes, she could be a little slow, although I had a feeling that might just be her way to try to get more gossip, or maybe to avoid work. Whichever the case, I wished she would find someone else to pry gossip out of or that a supervisor would see her slacking and yell at her to get to work.
Should’ve said her name to Greg. But no. One, I wasn’t that person, and two, Pamela was Greg’s second cousin or something like that. They were somehow distantly related. I doubted he would fire her. Which was why she had such a long leash.
“You sure?” Pamela pouted, her purple-painted lips tugging downward.
“Sure,” I muttered, staring at the computer screen, sending her telepathic messages. Get to work. Leave Rachel alone.
Reluctantly, she straightened, still frowning. “Did you hear about—”
I grabbed my phone and put it to my ear, pretending it had vibrated. “Hello? Yes. Dr. Franklin, it’s Rachel.” I looked up at her and shrugged as if to say I was sorry. She’d have to leave now, right?
Pamela waved and backed away a step or two. Unreal. She still wanted gossip!
I pretended to continue the conversation for a few minutes, with long stretches of silence to act like I was listening until, finally, I heard her footsteps retreat. Unbelievable.
Breathing out a sigh, I resumed gathering my things. No way had I wanted to continue packing while she was there. She was smart. She’d put two and two together and realize what was up, and I didn’t need more grief.
The last items I gathered were the few pictures I had. One was of my father and me. We were playing tag at the park. Mom had taken the picture. A nice candid shot. My mouth was wide open, probably from laughing, and my dad had just grabbed me for a hug instead of just tapping my shoulder to tag me. It had been taken a week before he died. I had been ten. Massive heart attack. If Mom died, I’d be all alone. Neither had any siblings, so I had no aunts or uncles. I’d be the only Nevison left. It was a sobering thought, especially when I considered how young my parents would be when they died.
The other two pictures were of Mom. In the first, she was smiling at someone off screen. She hated having her picture taken so this one was my favorite. The last picture was of the two of us. We had gone to a mother-daughter dance back when I had been in high school. We’d dressed up in poodle skirts, really fifties style. So much fun. She was kind of smiling in this pic too. Happy times. Now she never smiled, and I couldn’t blame her, even though I still tried to get her to.
With a grimace, I gathered everything up and laid it all gently in a large pile. It was a little hard to carry everything without a box, but I wasn’t about to go back to Greg and ask for one, and I sure as heck wasn’t going to ask anyone else if they could find me one either.
As soon as I got back to the parking lot—without dropping anything by some miracle—my phone really was vibrating from a call. I performed a juggling act of shifting everything to one arm, braced my loaded arm against the car, finagled my keys from my purse, unlocked the door, dumped everything onto the backseat where it scattered like crazy, and then got out my phone. But before I could answer, the caller hung up. Of course. Just my luck.
I checked to see who had called. It was Denise Carver, my best friend since, well, forever. We met in the second grade and had been inseparable ever since. Now she, unlike Pamela, I actually wanted to talk to.
I climbed inside my car and pulled out of the lot and drove down the street and parked in the back of another random office building, just so no one from my former employer could look out on the parking lot and see me. Didn’t need an audience for what might be a breakdown, which was why I figured it was better to park than to talk and drive at the same time.
Denise answered on the first ring. “Hey, girl!” she yelled. “I can’t believe you called me back. I know how you never answer when you’re working unless you’re on lunch. I was leaving you a message.”
Must be a heck of a long message, then, unless I didn’t feel the vibration from when she left it.
“Anyhow, the reason why I called was because I thought that you and I—”
“Whatever you’re planning, I can’t.” My shoulders slumped. Hadn’t had much time for fun with her before this, and now all of my new free time would have to be split between taking care of my mom and finding a new job.
“But you don’t even know the date or what I’m planning,” she whined.
“Don’t need to. Can’t afford it.” Can’t afford fun.
“I can spot you.” I could just picture her waving her hand to brush my words aside. “No worries. It’s this amazing new band—”
I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. I loved listening to live music. But it wasn’t the band that I’d have to miss that had me wanting to break down. It was all the weight and the worry about the future and what it would hold. For too long, I had been juggling eggs, and a large one had just cracked. I couldn’t let any more drop, and I had to add another one back into the mix.
“Oh.” Denise quieted a moment, which was saying something because she normally never stopped talking. “Is it your mom?”
“I…” I could hardly get the word out. My throat was so tight I could hardly swallow.
“What happened?” Denise cracked her knuckles, the sound grating me over the line. “Do you need me to beat someone up for you? I might know a guy…”
Despite myself, I snorted with laughter, but then I started to cry. Just a few tears. How could I have let this happened? I should’ve fought harder for my position. Should’ve asked for a pay cut so long as I kept the position.
But a pay cut would’ve been almost as terrible as being outright fired.
“Talk to me,” Denise said quietly. “What’s going on?”
“Just got laid off.” My only source of income gone. Three weeks wouldn’t last. Not when I didn’t just need to support myself. I had to pay for all of my mother’s mounting medical bills. And food. And Mom had taken out a home equity loan shortly a few years ago, so even though there wasn’t a mortgage payment, there was that, and all the other bills, plus food, utilities.
“Now listen to me carefully,” Denise ordered. “Go home. Update your resume. I’ll find out who’s hiring. You eat all the chocolate in the house. And drink all of the rum too. I’ll do my best to help find you a new job pronto. Think you can handle that?”
I sniffed and rubbed my nose. “Yeah. Sure.”
“Good.” She sounded so take charge. Had to love her. “I’ll email you what I find.”
Click. The call ended.
Refusing to cry any longer, I drove myself home. I wasn’t in a good place at all. Yeah, sure, Denise was willing to help me, but the economy was terrible. There wasn’t going to be another job for me most likely. I had to face facts. My mom had stage three breast cancer and she needed chemotherapy, but if I had no money, I didn’t know if she’d still be able to continue treatments. The hospital was already giving us a payment plan at least, but I wouldn’t even be able to afford the smaller payments soon. And even with treatment, there was no guarantee she would make it. I couldn’t risk losing her. I had to do everything to help her. It was all on me.
Soon, I pulled up to our house. I had moved out after college, but once Mom was diagnosed, I moved back home. Twenty-five and living with Mom. And unemployed too. Can’t forget that. The house was bigger than we needed, but there wasn’t a point in trying to sell it. Not with the home equity loan still out on it.
I
fixed a smile onto my face and walked inside. I’d left most everything in the backseat of my car. Except for the pictures. Those I placed on the coffee table. “Mom?” I called.
“In here,” she said quietly.
I winced. Her voice came from her bedroom. She hadn’t even gotten out of bed yet. This morning couldn’t get any worse—for me or for her.
Still wearing that faux smile, I helped her wash up and even blow dried her hair as a kind of bonus treat. Her body tended to be weak, and I did whatever I could for her. She was all the family I had left.
It wasn’t until I offered to make Mom something to eat that she noticed the time. “Why aren’t you at work?” she asked, trying to glare at me. When I had been a kid, her glare had me shaping up real fast, but it had lost its punch with her being sick.
I slowly straightened from having bent down to see what was left in the pantry. The cabinet was looking a little sparse. It would be time for a grocery run soon with money I didn’t have to spend.
I faced Mom. “I thought I would check in on you. That’s all.”
No way was I going to tell her that I lost my job. Mom had more than enough to worry about as it was. I didn’t want to cause her more stress, more worry.
But I couldn’t help feeling helpless. Helpless and worthless. Like I was a failure. Like I was going to be the reason why she might not be able to beat her cancer.
And when Denise emailed me later that night to say that she would keep looking, that she hadn’t even found one lead for me, combined with my own fruitless search, I felt even more helpless.
What was I going to do?
Chapter Two
Ivan
I was outside my bar, on the third story balcony that only my men and I had access to, smoking a fine cigar, when the back door opened behind me, and I just knew my night was going to turn upside down. Just what I didn’t need. This cigar was too good to be ruined. The night was pretty good. Cool. Quiet. Some nights I wanted nothing more than to go out, enjoy myself, maybe have a romp in the sheets. Other times, like right now, I just wanted a little peace.
Peace that was about to get ruined, I had a feeling.
Luckily, my associate knew better than to bother me and to wait for acknowledgement, so I attempted to enjoy the rest of my cigar before acknowledging his presence, but worry colored the taste of it. I growled out, “Yes?”
A stark white envelope was thrust forward. I snatch it, and the man slinked back inside, music and the sounds of drunken good cheer floating up to me for the few seconds that the door was opened. While I appreciated that he was giving me space to read my business alone, that he didn’t wait to be dismissed but dismissed himself raised a red flag in my mind. Who sent the note?
I reached down, inside my boot, and removed my concealed dagger. With a flick of my wrist, I unsealed the envelope and read the short note, my peace shattering into a billion pieces that could never be brought together again.
V. G. back in town. Thought you would want to know.
It was unsigned, unmarked. No way to tell who had sent it, and my man’s disappearance made me think that the person who had dropped off the note was either a possible associate of V.G. or else the note had been discovered without anyone seeing the drop off. I certainly hoped it came from a friend and not an associate of V.G.’s. The thought that someone, friend or foe, could drop off a letter unseen and unnoticed by any of my men was enough to start a rage inside of me, but that was nothing compared to what the contents of the letter inspired.
The hairs on the back of my neck rose, and despite the warm nighttime air, goose bumps appeared on my exposed arms. I’d rolled up the sleeves of my blue dress shirt earlier. My fingers curled together around the hilt of the dagger still in my hand, to the point that my hand started to cramp up, but still I held on, relishing in the pain.
Vanya Golovkin. The bastard had returned to town, to my town. How dare he show his ugly face around these parts! He had no right to return. No right to step foot on my soil. How long had he been sneaking around in the shadows? It better not have been for long. If my men had grown so lax that they had missed him for weeks…I would not abide by such a lack of dedication.
My other hand had tightened into a fist, and I forced myself to relax, to uncurl my fingers, to return the dagger inside my boot, and to smooth out the letter. I tried to read the words again, but the letters swam on the page. My mind had already been transported back to the worst time of my life.
I had only been eight years old when my life had been forever changed by the likes of one Vanya Golovkin. Memories of my parents’ death reared their ugly head. Golovkin and his men had killed my family, every last one of them, and they had managed to get away before they had been caught. The bastards. I would never forgive them. Death might be too kind for them.
It had taken me years to get over it—the survivor’s guilt. I had been a coward. As soon as I heard Mother’s screams, I hid away in the safe room my mother had showed me when I had turned two. I knew that was what she would have wanted, what my father would have wanted as well, but even then, as I hid away, I hated myself for it. I had curled up in a ball and waited, trying not to sob but failing. I cried as I heard them shriek and scream and attack, and then they made no more sounds.
Of course, the safe room had been soundproof, so as soon as I had closed the door, I hadn’t actually heard the screaming or the fighting back, but I knew my father would not have accepted death easily. My mother either for that matter. That I did not actually hear the sounds did not make what I heard in my mind any less real. Therapy might have been good for me, but I had pushed through the guilt and the grief and reforged my role, taking on my father’s place as leader of the Kovalsky mob. Now I was thirty-two, and I would never allow what happened to my parents to happen to me. I would not be the next to fall.
There had been a clock and food and clothes and other provisions in that safe room with me. Once a single day had passed, I couldn’t wait any longer. I had to go and check and see what had happened. Certainly it had to all be over by now. I thought that since my mother hadn’t come for me yet, I was prepared for what I would see.
Or so I had mistakenly and foolishly thought.
The carnage, though, the stench…my parents’ bodies lay in a puddle of their own blood. Furniture had been overturned. Everywhere I looked, there were signs of chaos, of fighting. My house looked foreign to me. Everything was out of place, out of sorts.
It was all wrong.
There were a few other bodies too. Father had not gone down without taking out others. I knew from the red and gold the men wore that they were Golovkin’s men. Father had never shied away from telling me the truth about his life, and what would be my life one day. My father never thought that Golovkin would go after him, but that hadn’t meant that my father had been careless. We all had bodyguards. I learned to ignore mine, but his presence was a comfortable shadow. Although I didn’t want to have a bodyguard, I understood and accepted why one was necessary.
My bodyguard was dead too. So were my parents’ bodyguards. So much for the protection they offered.
Just before I had left their bedroom, I spied another dead Golovkin man. Buried in his ear was my mother’s dagger. She had fought back too, a fact that did not surprise me. She had been the one to teach me martial arts. She had been born into this life too. She hadn’t married into the mob. It was a part of her, just as it was my father. Or, rather, it had been a part of them.
I had tried to remove the dagger from the dead man’s ear, but it had been buried too deeply, so buried I could hardly budge it at all. Luckily, I did find another knife on the floor, and I grabbed that, just in case. Despite considering whether or not this was wise or if I should return to my hiding spot, I searched the rest of the house.
A lot of good that did me, although I had been smart to arm myself at least.
The living room and the dining room were empty, but another man was lying in wait in the kitchen, his back t
o me as he rifled through our refrigerator. My hand trembled, and my arc was too wide. I thought I could do it, be like my parents, that I could put up a fight, that I could take him on despite being so much bigger than me. If I had wiped my palms first so they weren’t sweaty, if I hadn’t been so afraid, if my nerves hadn’t gotten the better of me, I might have been able to strike him.
But he must have heard me because he whirled around and knocked the knife from my hand. I didn’t even have time to see the gun before he shot me.
I collapsed immediately, onto my stomach. I didn’t cry out. I didn’t move. I just lay there. My father had died. My mother had died. And now I was going to die too. That fright I felt just vanished. I was almost…at peace, strangely enough.
Dimly, I heard voices, one of which belonged to Vanya Golovkin. They thought me dead. They didn’t double check. And then they left.