She picks up a dumpling with two fingers, lets it drip, then sets it on the lid with a little tapping gesture. She glances around at thepeeling paint, the rusted rails, the shattered windows smeared black with soot. She shudders. Her perfume fights the room and loses.
“Funny, isn’t it,” she begins, “how quickly the world decides what you’re worth.”
The gag is just a gray strip of cloth. It burns the soft corners of my lips. I breathe through it. I don’t try to talk because I know that’s what she wants.
She takes a step closer and peers at me. “You want to know why I’m here. You want to know what happens next.”
I slow my blinking until she has to work for it.
“I’ll tell you anyway,” she says with a small, cruel smile. “Ivan and I planned this together. We’ve been collaborating.”
Her hand circles in the air. A flourish. The diamond at her wrist glints once like a small white eye.
She leans in as if sharing gossip. “I’ll be blunt, Cassie. I don’t like you. You are in our way.”
The bulb swings. Her face moves from light to shadow and back again. She leans so close I can feel the warmth of her breath. She smells like citrus and winter, and a little like fear.
“But here’s the thing,” she whispers. “I have a plan of my own. I’m going to kill him. Isn’t that delicious?”
The words hang in the air.
“Ivan thinks he’ll get the crown at the end. He won’t. I will shoot him, and then I will carry my own bruises to Damien. Can you see it? The story? He abducted us. He kept us in this filthy place. He killed you, Cassandra. He was going to kill me too, but I—”She puts a hand to her chest, eyes shining, mock-innocent. “I managed to kill him first.”
She’s nearly breathless with her theatrics. Her voice drops lower. “And then I take care of Damien. I console him. I rebuild him. I give him something to hold when he thinks he has nothing left. He will be grateful.” Her smile sharpens. “Grateful men are very loyal.”
There’s a buzzing in my ears. I taste copper under the gag. She wants me to crack, to cry, to plead with my eyes. She wants to drink it all in. I refuse her. I hold myself still. I hold myself tight. I picture the ribbon. The careful knot. The way his fingers move when he ties it, thumb steady, index finger pressing the last loop down. I carry that and breathe it like air.
Raquel tilts her head. “Ah. There. See? You do understand.”
Her heel clicks as she shifts her weight. She lifts the dumpling, lets it wobble in the air, then drops it back to the greasy lid, wiping her fingers on a napkin like she’s erasing a signature.
“Eat,” she says, bored now.
It feels like a joke, her asking me to eat with my mouth bound.
I blink once. Slowly. My hands burn from trying the tape again. The chair’s uneven leg trembles when I shift my weight. I count ten heartbeats, then ten more. The drip in the corner keeps time.
She turns, half listening to something only she can hear. But then I hear it too: more footsteps, quiet and flat, not a heel. There’s a shift in the air pressure, the way the room breathes. She doesn’t notice it yet. She is still into her role-playing.
“Anyway,” she says to the table, adjusting the lid, the cartons, anything, everything, because control is how she breathes. “We’re almost done here. I’ll light a match and?—”
A gunshot cracks the world in two.
Raquel’s head snaps to the side, hair lifting, mouth still shaping a word she doesn’t get to finish. A red hole blossoms neat and wicked in her temple. She drops straight down, knees first, then shoulders, then face, the sound heavy and ugly. One heel falls off her foot.
I flinch hard, the chair bindings biting at my ankles.
Ivan steps out from the dark like he was there all along.
He’s calm; there’s no rush in him. He’s still holding the gun up. His eyes are like winter. Not the beautiful winter of Damien’s eyes. Ivan’s are cruel winter, bleak and empty.
He looks at Raquel dismissively.
“I knew,” he says, gentle-like, as if explaining something to a child. “Of course I knew. She and I planned this. She believed she could keep her little secret from me. She believed many things.”
He crouches down near her. He doesn’t touch her face. He lifts the scarf at her throat, wipes his pistol, then drops the scarf on the floor with a flick of his fingers. His coat whispers when he stands.
He meets my eyes and smiles, a terrible, ugly sight.
