“Pawns are useful,” he says. “They move in straight lines. They tell you everything about the board.”
He starts to circle me, each step slow, balanced, as if he’s walking the rim of a glass. I track him with my eyes. My pulse thunders in my throat, my heart beats against my ribs. The tape on my wrists feels tighter by the second.
“You were almost a queen,” he says, half to himself. He glances at the plastic bag, the cartons, the dumpling cooling on its grease-slicked lid. He looks back at me. “Almost.”
His shoes crunch on the grit. He stops behind me. The back of my neck tingles with the knowledge that he could easily put the gun to my skull, and that would be the end of me and my baby. The bulb hums overhead.
“When Damien gets here,” Ivan says, voice flat, “you all die.”
The words drop like lead, denting the floor.
He moves to my left so I can see him again. “He will watch you die first,” he declares confidently, like a fact, not a threat. “Then his men. Then himself. I will give him the kindness of a quick death.”
I start to breathe too fast. I force myself to calm down. I try the tape again. It burns, tearing skin, but doesn’t give. My throat works against the gag, and the cloth scrapes my mouth. I taste metallic panic. I swallow it back.
Ivan takes a step closer, his eyes softening like he’s recalling a fond memory. “He thinks he can simply go clean, overturn the order and ways of this city.” He tilts his head. “He should have learned by now. Men like him do not lead.”
He puts a fingertip to the chair back and taps it once. The uneven leg shivers. “You shouldn’t have let him tie you with pretty things,” he says. “Pretty things make pretty corpses.”
I want to scream at him. I want to bite him when he gets close. I want to break my own skin to make the tape slick and pliable. I want Damien to walk through the door. None of that happens.
I sit very still and count again.
I think of knots. I think of the way you can train your hands to undo them in times of impossibility. I press my thumbs together and try to slide one nail under the tape edge. It doesn’t work. I keep trying anyway.
Ivan studies my face. There is boredom there, with joy underneath.
“You should eat,” he says, nodding at the dumpling. “You will need your strength.”
With that, he reaches forward and yanks the tape from my mouth. The pain is instant, intense. I spit out the gag, but I don’t scream.
I close my eyes for two beats, then open them slowly. The bulb swings and throws his shadow long and thin across the room. He watches it move the way a cat watches a laser pointer on a wall.
“Screw you,” I snarl. “You’redead. Damien’s going to come and?—”
“Soon,” he says, cutting me off gently. His calmness is creepy.
There’s a sound out in the hall. Not a footstep but more like a whisper of air that wasn’t there before. Ivan turns his head a fraction. The gun shifts in his hand.
My heart kicks hard. My mouth is dry. My wrists burn. The drip in the corner speeds up.
“Soon,” he says again, as he makes his way out of the room.
I keep my eyes on the doorway. I don’t blink. I don’t even breathe for a count of five, six, then?—
The light flickers. The hall darkens. The air tightens. And the factory, old and full of ghosts, holds its breath patiently with me.
CHAPTER 42
CASSANDRA
The shot that killed Raquel still hangs in the air. Ivan steps away to see what the noise is, his shoes scraping grit, his shadow peeling off the wall and sliding down the corridor until it’s gone. I finally breathe again.
I make myself swallow. My tongue is thick. My wrists throb where the tape is biting deep. Raquel’s body lies twisted near the table, the loosened heel on its side, the other still on her foot. Perfume and gunpowder dance in the air. I can hear rats skittering in the dark corners.
I count four breaths. Then four more.
I test the tape again. Nothing at first—just the burn on sweaty skin. My fingers go numb, then tingle again. I flex, loosen, flex once more.
