by Nicole Fox
When I’m finished with the cake, I can’t even consider eating a slice. My stomach is a ball of nerves, wondering what Luka is doing and whether he’ll be home tonight. I want to leave the mansion and go look for him, but my tracker bracelet would tip him off immediately, and I don’t want to incur his wrath for leaving.
I lean against the counter and tug on the gold band. It is strong, definitely fortified with another kind of metal. When I first arrived in the mansion, I tested out various methods of breaking it from my wrist with no success. I gave up the pursuit pretty quickly, but now that Luka hates me and is feeling murderous, perhaps I should take up the pastime again. I may find myself needing to make a quick escape sooner rather than later.
Still, not wanting to go upstairs to my room, I walk into the sitting room and sit on the couch. The same couch where Luka and I came after our first date. The same couch where we kissed for the first time.
I know he won’t want to see me when and if he comes home, but after seeing him covered in blood, I can’t imagine falling asleep before I’m certain he is safe. That my husband is okay. So, I sit in the same spot where Luka sat the night of our first kiss and tuck my legs up underneath me. I wait for what feels like hours. My eyes grow heavy, and I do my best to keep them open, but eventually, all of my sleepless nights catch up with me, and I fall asleep.
I see Cal Higgs, standing in the kitchen of The Floating Crown. He looks exactly like I remember him. His face is pale and doughy, and he is kneading dough for bread. I watch his technique, the way he rolls the ball to one side and then the other, switching hands with each pass. I always under-knead, so I study his movements, hoping to learn from him. As I’m watching, however, I begin to notice his fingernails going black. I don’t say anything because I know he’ll be annoyed with me for interrupting him, but the longer I stare, the darker they get. Then, the color begins to spread to his fingers and his wrists. Like vines climbing a chimney, the color wraps up his hands until it looks like he is wearing elbow-length navy-blue gloves with his chef’s apron.
“Cal, what is wrong with your hands?” I ask, walking around the counter so I’m standing in front of him.
He looks up, and his eyes are milky. I stumble backwards, startled.
Cal opens his mouth to respond, but blood pours out.
I try to scream, but I can’t make any sound, and then there is an arm around my shoulders. I turn, expecting to see Luka, but it is Samuel Notarianni, my father’s top advisor.
“We need to get you out of here,” he says, grabbing my shoulders and pushing me towards the back doors that lead to the alley behind the restaurant. I follow him, desperate to get away from Cal Higgs and whatever was happening to him. But when we walk through the back doors, we don’t walk into the alley behind the restaurant, but into a parking lot outside of a church.
People dressed in black swirl around us, heading to their cars, and Samuel points to his car in the far corner of the lot.
“Do you want a ride?” he asks.
I start to walk with him, but halfway across the lot, he pulls ahead of me and a bus drives between us, blocking him from my view. When the doors open, I step inside without hesitation.
There is no driver or passengers. I’m alone on the bus, and every seat is taken by small black boxes with wires coming out of the sides and small display windows. I know immediately they are bombs. Rows and rows of bombs, wired and ready.
“What are you doing here?”
I turn around to find Luka standing in the center aisle, one arm resting casually on the back of the driver’s seat, the other held over his head, gripping one of the plastic straps that hang from the ceiling. He is effortlessly handsome, the sun shining from behind him, casting him in a golden glow like a halo.
“Why do you have all these bombs?” I ask, stepping forward to grab his hand.
Luka wraps his fingers around mine, warm and soft, and then presses a kiss to my forehead. I’m enveloped in the cedar smell of him, and I take a deep breath. “I don’t use bombs, baby.”
“Since when do you call me ‘baby’?” I tease, pulling back to look up at his face. “And why don’t you use bombs?”
“I prefer more intimate acts of murder,” he says, just as something outside explodes, rocking the bus from side to side. He pulls me against his chest, the warmth of him leaking into my body and warming me from the inside out. I bury my head in his chest, content. “I prefer more intimate acts in everything I do.”
I feel the dream slipping from me, and I don’t want it to. I want to stay there with Luka. Surrounded by bombs or not, I want his arms around me and his scent in my nose. I want to feel his heart beating under my cheek. I squeeze my eyes closed, desperate to stay there, but no matter how hard I fight, it is gone.
When I finally give up and open my eyes, the room is pitch black and it takes me a moment to adjust. I move to stretch and realize there is a blanket laying on top of me.
Suddenly, I remember Luka appearing in my dream. His smell and his warmth. The kiss on my forehead.
I sit up and look around the room, but I’m alone. He isn’t there with me. But I know he was.
No one—not help or soldiers—has access to the mansion this late in the evening. If anyone came inside, it would have been Luka. Which means he covered me up. Which means…something. On some level, he still cares.
I pull the blanket tighter around my shoulders and lay back down on the sofa. I try to close my eyes again and slip into the dream, but the only images my mind will conjure are of Cal’s blackened, grotesque hands and bloody mouth and Samuel’s smiling face moments before the explosion.
20
Luka
Midnight shrouds the house in darkness, but I’ve seen it enough in the daylight to know my way around. I’ve been to the house three times before, scoping out my entrances and exits, and preparing my attack. This is usually something I’d bring back-up for, but I want to do it alone. I’ve been doing a lot of jobs alone in the last two weeks. It is more dangerous that way, but the danger appeals to me. The adrenaline allows me to feel something else other than regret. It helps me focus on the present rather than the dangerous landmine of my memories.
In the two weeks since Eve agreed to carry my child, I’ve seen her only to fuck. I thought it would be better that way—easier to hate her if I never talked to her. But it is almost worse. The easy smiles she used to give me, the snarky comebacks, and sultry stares are all gone. But her body isn’t. She still smells the same. She still feels the same under my fingers, and my heart still jackhammers against my chest whenever she gets too close. In a lot of ways, being with her without actually being with her is so much worse.
In the moments when I can’t help but think about her, I liken our predicament to dying of thirst and being handed a water bottle with a locked lid. What you desire is so close you can almost taste it. Almost.
I push thoughts of Eve away and crouch down as I round the front corner of the house. Patrick O’Neill is in his office in the back of the house, which makes my job easier. I can unlock the back door—I already grabbed the spare key from their kitchen and hid it underneath a potted plant on the back porch—tip toe down the short hallway, and be on top of him before he even realizes I’m there.
Patrick has a wife and a baby. I’ve seen them coming and going during my surveillance, and they seem happy enough from the outside, though I don’t know how real it all is. I don’t really care. All I can think about when I see them together is Eve. Our wedding. Our two-week marriage that has already failed and crumbled. I wonder if her marriage to the gunrunner would have been more successful.
If Eve can be believed, it seems like she broke off the engagement, though she has proven she can’t be believed. Not after the way she played me for the sake of her family. My fists clench at my sides, and I do my best to push the memories away and stay calm.
Using my hands will help. Staying active. Eve likes to cook; I like to kill my enemies. Everyone has their thing. Patrick O
’Neill is the next Irishman on my list. He has done more than his fair share of contract work with the Irish, and if anyone would know the name of the gunrunner, it would be him. I’ve considered just asking Eve for her help, but I don’t want her to know any more about my family’s plan than she has to. I can’t trust her.
I told my father we needed to destroy the Irish from within. That we needed to take out their top guys one by one and weaken them, and he agreed. But it was all just so I could reach the gunrunner. So I could look in the face of the man who was engaged to Eve and kill him for…I’m not really sure what. For supplying Volkov enemies with weapons. For being with Eve. For telling people about what it was like to sleep with her.
I unlock the door silently, pushing it into the dark house. Patrick’s office is close enough to the back door that the light spills into the hallway, allowing me to navigate the narrow space. When I reach the doorway to his office, he is sitting in front of his computer screen and doesn’t see me. I creep across the floor, avoiding the squeaky spots I found on an earlier trip, until I’m standing right behind him. When I pull the blade out and press it to his neck, he stiffens but doesn’t scream.
“Tell me what you know about the attack at the Volkov-Furino wedding a few weeks ago,” I whisper, pushing the blade even harder against his neck. A drop of blood blooms and spills onto the blade.
“Don’t kill me,” he whimpers, sounding pathetic. “Don’t kill me here. My wife and kid are upstairs. I don’t want them to find me dead. Don’t kill me here.”
“Tell me what I want to know, and I won’t kill you.” Lies, of course, but I don’t want to leave empty-handed. I want to kill him and walk away with a valuable piece of information I can take to my father. Otherwise, these solo missions will end, and I’ll be forced to spend the night in the mansion again, with Eve only a few doors down. So, I need to keep him calm and get what I came for.
“I don’t know anything,” he says, holding up his hands in surrender. “I deal with some financials for the Irish, but they don’t tell me their plans. They don’t consult me on anything. I didn’t even know about it until after it happened.”
I pull the blade away from his neck, and Patrick relaxes. Then, I swing it around and plunge it into his side.
He cries out, but doesn’t scream, and I’m oddly impressed.
“Tell me the truth,” I say, wiping the blade on his shirt as I drag it up his body and back to his neck.
“I am,” he insists through ragged breaths. “I don’t know anything.”
“What about Eve Furino?” I ask.
“What about her?” There is genuine confusion in his voice.
“She was engaged to one of your men, right?”
He lowers his hands and turns to try and look at my face. I press my knife against his neck and dodge out of sight.
“What does that have to do with anything?” he asks.
I don’t know what to tell him. “Just tell me who she was engaged to.”
He shrugs one shoulder, and I think he is just confused, but I realize a moment too late the shrug was his hand sliding up to the holster on his hip and drawing his gun. Patrick spins in his chair, aims the gun, and fires.
I knock the gun out of his hand, but not before heat rips through my shoulder. I know I’ve been hit, but the adrenaline in my body is keeping me focused. The gun clatters across the floor, and I stab my knife into his chest. A whoosh of air leaves his lungs, blood spilling out of him and across the handle of my knife. I want to stay and finish the job, but I hear footsteps overhead, and I don’t want to confront a wife and daughter. I may be a murderer, but I’m not a monster.
So, unsure whether I’ve killed him or not, I leave Patrick O’Neill gasping and bleeding and run from the house.
Dr. Cruso is working in the morgue when I arrive. It’s after midnight, and it is the only quiet place in the hospital she could meet me. I’m in enough pain that I don’t care how many dead bodies are around me. I just want the bullet out of my shoulder.
“I wish I had some anesthesia I could give you,” she says, digging a long pair of tweezers into my shoulder.
I grit my teeth. “Just get it out. I’ll be fine.”
Just to prove I’m not as tough as I say I am, she digs the tweezers in a little further and twists. I swear she smiles when I groan. “How is Eve doing? I haven’t seen her since before the wedding. How is she adjusting to married life?”
“Fine.” I don’t want to talk about Eve. It is late, I’ve lost more blood than I planned, and I just want to go home.
“You two still trying to have a baby?” she asks.
“Yep.”
She nods. “How is it going?”
I bite my tongue as she pulls a bullet fragment out of my skin and drops it in a tiny glass bowl on the table next to us. “Are you asking how the sex is?”
She lifts one eyebrow. “Well, if you’re willing to tell, I’m willing to listen. My girlfriend has been out of town for two weeks, so I’m desperate for a little action.”
“I’m not willing.” I hope this will be enough to shut down the topic, but Sarah is relentless. Worse, she knows she is irreplaceable to my family. No matter how inappropriate or persistent she is, I can’t even threaten her. She is the only doctor we have who is willing to patch us up at all hours of the day and night, allowing us to avoid emergency rooms and, therefore, the police. She is vital to our operation, and we pay her handsomely for it.
“I saw your dad the other day,” she says casually, though I know there is a larger point. “He told me things might not be all rose petals and sunshine in the honeymoon suite.”
God damn him. As if everything isn’t bad enough, he is jabbering to our doctor about my personal life. Whatever happened to family loyalty?
“He shouldn’t have said anything.”
She shrugs and drops another bullet into the bowl. I was upset enough that I didn’t even feel her remove it. “I’m a good listener, and a good extractor. Of more than just bullets, if you know what I mean.” She laughs at her own joke. “People open up to me.”
Probably to get her to stop talking. “That’s nice.”
“So,” she probes. “What seems to be the problem?”
I put up a valiant effort resisting her questions, but next thing I know, I’m telling her about how I received the bullet during my search for Eve’s ex-fiancé who she failed to tell me about. I tell her about the Irish connections and the attack at the wedding.
“I guess, the root of it is that I’m mad at Eve for treating me the same way she did her ex-fiancé,” I say.
“But she didn’t,” Sarah says, raising her eyebrows and pointing the bloody tweezers at me. “She left that man. She didn’t leave you.”
“But she would have,” I say.
“I wouldn’t be so sure. Are you sure you understand her aim in marrying you?”
I pull my lips to the side and think about it. “To tear down my family from within, I suppose.”
“Maybe,” she says, sounding doubtful. “But I have to wonder if there isn’t a bigger plan at play here. I’d be careful if I were you. Don’t get too confident. From the sound of it, this Eve character, no matter how nice she appears from the outside, is a criminal mastermind. She is a master manipulator who doesn’t care about anyone and will do whatever it takes to get ahead. You have no idea what someone like that is capable of.”
I should be nodding my head in agreement, glad to finally have someone who sees Eve the same way I do. Except, as soon as I hear the words out loud—albeit from someone else’s mouth—I realize how ridiculous it all sounds.
“Eve is not a manipulator or a criminal mastermind. If anything, her father used her and sold her for his own gain,” I argue. “Eve has made mistakes, but she isn’t a monster. She cares about people.”
Sarah moves to stand in front of me, a large chunk of bullet held between her tweezers, and a knowing smile on her face. “Sorry. I just wanted to distract you enough to g
et this big honker out of your arm. Though, I think it served two purposes. Sounds like you aren’t as mad at your wife as you thought you were.”
The doctor walks away and my cheeks redden. “Eve still pulled the wool over my eyes. She still tricked me.”
I try to find the anger I’ve been holding towards Eve for days, but it doesn’t surface. The flame has dwindled to a spark.
I hear music before I open the front door, and when I step into the entryway, I realize it is the piano in the sitting room. I also realize the sound is less like music and more like the plunking of random keys.
Eve is in the sitting room, trying to teach herself piano. She’d mentioned it in passing a few times. I told her I’d hire her a teacher, but things had been too hectic, and I’d forgotten.
Her long brown hair is falling over her shoulder, and I can see her biting her lower lip as she tries to arrange her fingers on the keys. She is so deep in concentration that she doesn’t see me watching her. She doesn’t notice as I cross the room slowly, eyes trained on her face. She doesn’t realize I’m there at all until my foot taps the edge of the piano bench, and she looks up, eyes wide.
Her hand flies to her heart, and her eyes flutter closed as she catches her breath. The same way she did the first time I walked in on her in my kitchen and scared her.
She opens her mouth to say something, but before she can get the words out, I grab her arm, lift her off of the piano bench, and pull her against me.
I can see the question in her eyes. The six-day window has passed, so what could I possibly want with her? Why am I doing this?
For me. I’m doing this for me.
I wrap a hand around her neck, tip her head back, and bring my lips down to hers. She goes fluid in my hands and lets me lead her to the couch. Much like the first night we kissed, I crawl over her, running my hands under her clothes and over her warm skin. Only, this time, Eve doesn’t stop me.