The Red Ledger: 8

by Meredith Wild

  I swallow over the knot in my throat and focus on the floor. If I lose myself in Tristan’s eyes, I’ll fall apart. And it’s too early to fall apart. This isn’t over.

  “Probably not.”

  “You did the right thing,” he says gently. “And if you hadn’t done it, I would have.”

  It’s probably what I’ll tell myself for the rest of my life. That I did the right thing. That maybe it was better to have one less name in Tristan’s book.

  “Maybe I need my own ledger,” I mutter.

  It’s an ill-timed play at humor, but the second I say it, I’m gripped with a fresh kind of horror that we’ll be fighting this war long enough to warrant my own list. My own red ledger…

  I close my eyes. Please, God, no.

  The elevator dings with our arrival, saving me from more of those troubling thoughts.

  When I open my eyes, Tristan reaches out his hand. I hesitate a second before taking it, but the contact fills me with a sudden overwhelming relief. Whatever haunts me now…whatever haunts me tomorrow, I know I’m not alone with it. No one will ever understand the way he does.

  We walk to the back of the building in silence, searching for any signs of life. The bay is closed, and there’s no sign of the driver.

  “He must have left. Coast is clear,” he says. “Let’s get out of here.”

  We hurry back to the enormous lobby and reach the doors where Mateus waits just beyond. The elevator opens, and Crow walks through.

  The bottom of a white lab coat that’s far too small for him billows behind him as he walks briskly toward us. “Let’s go. Come on.”

  “That was fast. Is it all set?” Tristan asks.

  Our wounded accomplice passes us and barrels through the double doors with a bang, not answering us.

  We don’t wait for one as we pile into the vehicle. Mateus turns around in his seat, eyeing Crow. He opens his mouth to speak, when an explosive boom shakes the vehicle.

  “Fucking drive!” Crow smacks his hand loudly against the window.

  Ford puts the car into gear as another boom louder than the last rattles the windows. I grip the edge of my seat as we whip out of the lot and onto the street.

  “What the hell did you do?” Tristan shouts.

  “You wanted it taken care of, so I took care of it. It’ll take them weeks to find out what happened in there. By then, we’ll be long gone.”

  I twist around to look through the tinted back window and see flames glow from the floor we were just on. A third blast pushes a cloud of smoke into the midnight air, but we’re too far to feel it much.

  Crow leans back on the headrest with his eyes closed, seemingly oblivious to the vibration and faraway boom. “Where are we going?”

  Mateus makes eye contact with Tristan in the rearview mirror, silently asking him the same question.

  “We can’t take him to the hotel. Not like this,” Tristan says, resignation laced in his tone. “Is there someone else we can stay with?”

  Mateus doesn’t answer right away. He’s the one with connections in the city. If he doesn’t help us, I don’t know what we’ll do with Crow in his current state.

  I don’t blame Mateus for his hesitation, though. Crow isn’t a friend. His missteps are the only reason our paths have crossed again, not his loyalty nor his willingness to help. Even if Tristan just saved his life, I doubt he’ll ever count Crow as someone who can really be trusted.

  Still, leaving him to fend for himself seems cruel after what we’ve all just been through. One thing Mateus isn’t is cruel.

  He types into his phone, delaying his answer, the bright screen lighting up his face as we drive through the night. He directs his next words quietly to Ford.

  “Take us to Cristóvão’s.”

  TRISTAN

  We drive down Sebastopol, past cafés and clothing shops. Most of the restaurants look like they’ve already closed up. We’re miles away from the explosion at Chalys and the carnage we left behind. Crow might be crude and unpredictable, but trying to torch the building at the last minute wasn’t necessarily a bad call. The less there is to trace, the better. I don’t care if Simon pieces it together. I’d prefer if the authorities don’t.

  “We’re here,” Mateus says, pointing ahead to an ornate gated arch built into the strip of connected buildings.

  Ford parks at the curb.

  “Looks like a dark alley to me,” Crow mutters groggily.

  “It’s a passage. One of the last in the city, actually. Cristóvão owns some of the storefronts inside, but he lives in an apartment upstairs,” Mateus says.

  We leave the vehicle, and Mateus guides us past the locked gate, through the dark alley-like tunnel, and up a set of narrow stairs that brings us to Cristóvão’s apartment.

  “How do you know this guy?” I ask as we wait.

  “He’s a designer from Brazil. He’s made Paris his home now. Before he moved, our paths crossed, and Karina took to him right away. We’ve remained friends.” He looks to Crow. “I’ve asked him to call a private physician to see you. He assures me he’ll be discreet.”

  “Thanks,” Crow answers gruffly.

  The man who answers the door is shirtless with black leather pants and a bright-orange scarf cinched around his head, a vibrant bolt of color against his dark features.

  He brings the bottle of red wine he’s holding by the neck to his lips and swallows. “You bringing trouble to my door, da Silva?”

  “Friends,” Mateus says in a reassuring tone, giving Cristóvão’s bare shoulder a friendly squeeze. “We’re all friends here.”

  Cristóvão moves aside, and we file into his living room.

  Karina jumps up from a weathered chaise across the room and comes toward me. “Tristan!”

  She captures me in a tight embrace I don’t deserve. Isabel smiles, at Karina’s unexpected affection or my awkwardness or maybe both. I hug her back, wishing she were somewhere else, someplace safer. Her being here is a sharp reminder that I’ve done nothing but put Mateus in danger since I landed on his doorstep in Petrópolis.

  Karina pulls back and hugs Isabel too. “It’s good to see you. Both of you.”

  She has no idea what we’ve been through tonight, except when she finally notices Crow—the ogre in the room—her enthusiasm noticeably dims.

  “What happened to him?” she asks.

  Cristóvão looks him up and down, his upper lip curled with disgust. He extends the bottle. “Here. I think you need this more than me.”

  “Thanks, man.” Crow takes it and finishes the bottle in a few gulps. “Keep it coming,” he says before going farther into the apartment and claiming the longest couch, which barely contains his frame. His feet hang off the arm.

  “That’s Crow, by the way,” I say, half apology, half introduction.

  “I’ll get Mr. Crow something to drink. And that outfit has got to go.” Cristóvão says on his way to the nearby kitchen, wiggling his fingertips in Crow’s general direction.

  I follow Crow inside the apartment. Everyone else crowds in, taking every available seat.

  No one expected a meeting with Knight to go this far off course. Now two more people from the Company are dead, we’ve incinerated one of their facilities, and we’ve inherited a new problem. Crow.

  “I thought the police arrested you in Berlin,” I say.

  He doesn’t open his eyes as he speaks. “They did. They interrogated me, slapped me around a little, and threw me in a van. Next thing I knew, that bitch was coming at me with her questions. Wanting to know everything I knew.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  He answers first with a sneer. “Let’s just say when the acid came out, I started getting really gabby. Doesn’t fucking matter anyway. They’re toast now.”

  “It matters if she talked to the Company first.”

  He squints an eye. “Pretty sure she was having too much fun using me as her own personal science experiment. I seriously doubt she stopped long enough
to tell anyone about it.”

  Cristóvão returns with a full bottle. “Been saving this one for some fancy friends, but you look like you need a good vintage.”

  Crow doesn’t bother checking what’s in the uncorked bottle before slugging back a few big gulps, following it with an audible sigh. I can’t imagine what it’ll take for a guy his size to start to feel numb, but he seems determined to get there.

  “As soon as they nabbed me in Berlin, they knew Jay turned on them anyway,” he says, rubbing the back of his hand over his lips. “I don’t think anything else was big news after that.”

  He has a point. The important thing was apprehending him and putting a stop to any more trouble he could create for them.

  “Did you connect with any of the other people who paid for hits?”

  “Nah. I figured this one would be the best payoff.”

  Of course Crow would focus on the money first, the risk later. He went after someone with enough reach to take him down the second they smelled trouble. Hopefully Gillian turning his chest into pizza is enough to change his course.

  “While you were trying to blackmail Soloman’s clients, we were getting deeper into his circle and figuring out their plan.”

  “I don’t want to know,” he grumbles, and under the pain and the inherent sarcasm, I hear the truth. He really doesn’t want to know. He’s been through enough.

  “You giving up on chasing the rest of Jay’s leads, then?”

  He sighs again. “Yeah. Might be time for an early retirement. I probably should have stuck to the family business. Sure was fun for a while. Money was nice too.”

  I tense. He doesn’t know what we know. The family business isn’t a safe place for him anymore.

  “You can’t go back home, you know.”

  He narrows his eyes at me. “Why the fuck not?”

  “How many people did you tell what you were doing?”

  He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out for a few seconds. “Just a few people. People I could trust.”

  I shake my head and try to think of good reasons I saved his life. The Generazzo family wouldn’t have missed him. Of that much I’m sure.

  “The Company has been spending a lot of time at Luca’s. Some big cash withdrawals came out of their accounts around the same time.”

  He stills, seeming to process this bomb of a realization. Then he tries pulling himself up. I shoot up and push him back down by the shoulder.

  “What the hell are you doing? The doctor is going to be here any minute. Do you really think you’re going to find out who sold you out tonight?”

  He drops back with a grunt, his teeth grinding as he does. “Motherfuckers. Someone’s going to pay.”

  “It’s probably going to be you if you go running back there right now. They’re the least of your problems. As soon as Simon finds out you weren’t in the building, you can guarantee you’re going to be on every watch list from here to the States. Your best bet is to go off the grid for a while.”

  He doesn’t look convinced. “I’ve got people back there. I can’t just disappear. I’m not like you.”

  “The Company wants you dead. Your family figures you’re as good as dead. Townsend does too, and if he finds out otherwise, you’re going to have that lunatic on your tail.”

  “What the hell does Townsend have to do with this?”

  “He’s with Jay,” Isabel offers quietly.

  He frowns. “Like with her?”

  I nod. “Seems that way. I never thought she’d get that close to any of us. But apparently they had enough of a connection that as soon as I took her off your hands, Townsend tracked us down.”

  I decide to skip the part about Townsend being the one responsible for wiping my memories and nearly killing Isabel, because Crow doesn’t care. He only needs to know enough to disentangle himself from this nightmare and disappear for a while.

  “Anyway, Jay’s with him now. And as soon as he found out what happened with your cousin, he’s been obsessed with hunting you down.”

  Crow takes another drink. “Townsend’s always been a pissant. Taught me everything I know about mixing chemicals into explosives, though. Really came in handy tonight. I guess I’ll never get a chance to thank him now.”

  The resignation in his voice gives me hope that maybe he won’t go back to New York after all. I’d rather not have saved his life for him to immediately get himself killed. I’ve never had to deal with the Generazzos, but I’ve never known a crime family that was above taking out one of their own for the good of the whole or the selfishness of one.

  “Do you need help getting out of the country?” I ask.

  If the German government let Simon smuggle Crow into France to settle the score, I’m guessing they didn’t bring his passport with him.

  “I don’t know. I’ll probably figure something out.”

  “I can arrange a private flight,” Mateus says. “New identification if you need it. Depending on where you want to go, if you arrive on a private jet, you’re not likely to get flagged by customs. You’ll have to clean yourself up, though.”

  “Thanks, man. I owe you one.” Crow closes his eyes again. He clenches his hand around the neck of the bottle. His forehead wrinkles. “Red, if you can manage it, I need you to do me a favor when you get back.”

  Crow’s parting wishes aren’t high on my list of priorities, but we’ve come this far, so I can at least hear them out.

  “I can’t make any guarantees.”

  “I know. But if you’re in the neighborhood one of these days, there’s a girl back home. I made some promises that I’m not going to be able to keep. If I’m not coming back, she’s going to think the worst.”

  I share a look with Isabel. I never expected Crow to care about anyone but himself. I’m in no position to chide him for having romantic ties when his life is on the line. Never seeing him again will be nothing short of a blessing for me, but no one knows the pitfalls of disappearing out of someone’s life forever better than I do.

  “Who is she?” Isabel finally asks.

  “She goes by Dusty. Red knows the club. Just tell her I couldn’t come back. She’ll understand.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Isabel

  It’s well past midnight. We’ve all been through enough in one night to last a lifetime. The doctor’s shot Crow up with some morphine for the pain, and we’re all ready for a rest. Thankfully his burns aren’t life threatening, though once he manages to smuggle himself out of France, he’ll need more treatment and probably skin grafts to repair his marred flesh.

  I don’t know where he’ll go. He and Mateus will have to work it out. And maybe after all this is over, we can find the girl he’s leaving behind to give her some closure.

  At the door, Mateus holds me in a tight hug that seems to communicate more than a simple goodbye.

  “You are his miracle, Isabel. Never forget that,” he whispers before letting me go.

  His sentiment presses down on me like a physical thing. After tonight, I’m not feeling like a miracle. I feel like someone who’s losing her humanity one devastating moment at a time. I don’t recognize the person I’ve become, yet I’ve become her. Life will change me again, but I’ll never be the Isabel who existed before Tristan found me. I have to come to terms with that somehow. I’m not sure it’ll happen tonight.

  Mateus pulls a piece of paper out of his pocket and hands it to Tristan. “This is the account number Knight gave me to deposit the funds into. Maybe it’ll help.”

  Tristan folds it before putting it into his pocket and meeting Mateus’s eyes once more. “You’ve done more for me than I had the right to ask for. Thank you.”

  “Friends worth having ask only for what they truly need and answer with all they can give. You have to know I was never keeping score.”

  Tristan doesn’t answer but surrenders himself to Mateus’s embrace. In their silent exchange, I can sense the gratitude and the commitment between them.

  After a
last goodbye, Tristan and I descend to the quiet boulevard. The streets are damp from a light rain. The scent of wet earth permeates the air. Tristan’s hand is warm in mine as we linger there. We’re miles from the hotel, but nothing is drawing me back. I should rest and try to wash the events of today off me, but I can’t.

  Once upon a time, when life got scary, I’d want to run to the place that felt most like home. Now I just want to run. If I keep moving, maybe I won’t have to think about everything that’s happened. Maybe we’ll never stop running…

  “Do you want to walk for a while? I’m not ready to go back yet.”

  Tristan looks at me thoughtfully a moment. “Where do you want to go?”

  Nowhere. Anywhere.

  “I don’t care.”

  With that, we cross the street and walk through a little park. We turn down narrow winding streets that carry us again to wider boulevards. Step by step, we wander through a labyrinth of history stacked upon itself.

  Without the commotion of people and cars, I see more. The way the light glimmers off the Seine as we pass over it. The quiet majesty of the churches and old buildings in the darkness, their intricacies taking on new dimensions in the shadows. Restaurants with stacked furniture waiting for the bustle of morning customers.

  The walk is calming. I wonder if it’s the silence or the darkness. I would never have thought I’d be safer in the dark, but tonight, with murder on my hands and sadness heavy in my heart, I know this is where I belong for now.

  We meander around the Left Bank until we find ourselves in front of an old church with uneven towers. We’ve hardly stopped a moment, but my feet won’t carry me forward.

  “What is it?”

  “I kind of wish I could go inside,” I say after a moment.

  Tristan purses his lips as he studies the facade. “Wait here a minute, okay?”

  He unclasps our hands.

  I tense at the break in contact. “Where are you going?”

  “I’ll be right back,” he calls back as he jogs around the side of the church.

  I take a seat on the edge of the grand fountain that sits in front. A handful of pigeons coo casually around me, interested in what I can offer but cautiously keeping their distance. They’re dirty little creatures but fascinating all the same, especially in the otherwise quiet night.