I swallow hard and remind myself I’m not the traitor here. Petyr is. He lied to me. Set me up and threatened to ruin me.
If I stuck around after that, I wouldn’t be able to look at myself in the mirror anymore. At least, like this, I’ll still have a soul to piece together.
Every time I think about the way he looked at me, or the cruel things he said, it steels me harder for what I have to do. If Petyr never really trusted me, then I don’t owe him trust, either.
Matter of fact, I don’t owe him a goddamn thing.
I grab the last receipt, crumple it in my fist, and step back out into the night.
One stop down. A thousand more to go.
Next up is Angel’s place.
I take the Q to Coney Island. The urge to jump up every time a passenger comes in a black suit is strong, but I fight it. Instead, I force myself to focus on what I have to do.
I haven’t seen Angel in years. Twelve years, specifically. But I’m desperate enough to pay her a visit, and she’s the only person I can think about.
If you’re in my kind of trouble, she’s the one you go to. Especially if you’re a woman and don’t feel comfortable telling some basement creep that you’re alone in the world, have already been presumed dead, and no one will come looking for you if you disappear.
Angel isn’t exactly a friend, but she’s safe. Safe enough that I know the worst she can do to me is turn me down. And with enough cash on the table, she can bend the world to makeroom for a new me. Hell, she could probably hack the Pentagon if she cared enough to leave her apartment.
Back then, she gave me everything I needed: fake papers, a name that wasn’t mine. Even tips on how to survive on my lonesome. How to keep hidden.
Without her, I don’t even know if I’d still be alive.
The building looks exactly like I remember it: crooked shutters, windows covered in grime, and layers of peeling paint everywhere. The only sign of life is the faint glow leaking through the blinds.
My stomach knots as I walk around to the backdoor. I stop, take a shaky breath, and knock three times.
There’s a pause in the noises coming from inside. Then a voice, flat and muffled: “Password.”
My brain blanks. “Rainbow six?” I try.
“That’s an old one. Wrong.”
“Uhh… Blue phoenix?”
“Still in the wrong decade, buddy.”
I groan. My forehead drops against the door.
“Angel, it’s me. Sima. Open up, please.” My voice comes out more desperate than I want it to.
Silence stretches, long enough that I wonder if she’s already walked away. Tears gather at the corners of my eyes. Without new papers, I’m done. Lost.
Then, finally, I hear the scrape of metal bolts sliding one after the other.
The door cracks open.
She looks the same. Twelve years older, but the rest is unchanged. Thick round glasses, messy curls piled into a gravity-defying knot. Her black hoodie is still covered in crumbs, though hopefully not the same ones as last time.
Her expression, too, hasn’t changed one bit. She’s still bored, unimpressed, like the world is an inconvenience she barely tolerates.
“Well?” she demands, hands on her hips. “Are you waiting for an e-vite?”
I slip in fast before she has a chance to change her mind. The stale pizza air hits me right away, but somehow, it’s comforting. A piece of my past I didn’t know I remembered.
This is where Sammi Banks was born.
