“Do you have a plan?” Kelly said. “Like… any kind of plan?”
With my dad’s paranoia in mind, I had the front foyer renovated so that you had to walk down the hallway to get to the rest of the home. I didn’t want there to be a ton of ways to get around from the front, just in case we were hit with a situation like this. For that reason, Kelly and I were managing to hold the Narzand brothers back from getting any further into the house, but so too were they preventing us from getting any closer to the front of the house.
It was a stand-off.
“Do you think they’re still over there?” Kelly asked, looking across the hallway to me from where she was crouched behind one corner. “I haven’t heard them in a while, maybe they left?”
“No. They’re here for Avion, they’re not going to leave. They know she’s pregnant.”
“Avion’s pregnant?!”
“Shhh,” I barked. “Yes.”
Kelly frowned at me. “But you haven’t even told her you love her yet.”
“Now is really not the time for that,” I replied, “and yes I have.”
“You have?!”
“Kelly, shut the fuck up,” I huffed.
She rolled her eyes. “Goddammit. Now I owe Avion $20.”
“I’m about to shootyouinstead,” I said. “Some of New York’s most dangerous killers are about fifty feet from us. Can you focus?”
“Sorry. I’m nervous. I’m a cleaner not a killer,” she replied.
“Yeah. I sent Punk to Avion because I thought they’d be the ones who needed a killer.” I looked up and sighed. “Things have been quiet for a while up there too.”
“Milli may be good, but he’s not gonna be able to take down both your parents, Punk, and Avion,” Kelly said. “We should worry about our own killers.”
The terrifying thing was, the Narzand brothers knew how to play a long game. They were experts at it. They’d made their way into this world playing the long game, and they’d gotten this far working with Milli and playing the long game. If Kelly and I sat there for the next two days, the Narzand brothers would too, waiting for someone to eventually go waltzing down this hallway assuming they’d left, and they’d take the kill, at the very least use it to their advantage.
“So I say again, do you have a plan?” Kelly asked.
“I’m thinking,” I said.
“Can you think any faster?”
“Can you shut the fuck up?”
Even if this design method had bottlenecked the Narzands in the front, it meant I couldn’t get to them either. That was what was stumping me for the moment. I didn’t want to give ground I couldn’t afford, especially now that I had a girlfriend and a child to stay alive for, but someone had to do something, otherwise the next unsuspecting person that stepped off the elevator was going to get blown to pieces.
“That’s it.” I looked back at the elevator. It was centered right at the end of the hallway and made a nice, loud, ding. Looking at Kelly, I nodded back towards the elevator and mouthed, “Press the button.”
She crawled backwards and pressed the button before quickly snapping back to the safety of her corner and looked at me. “Taking a trip?” she whispered.
“Shh,” I hissed.
We both sat in total silence while the elevator activated and we could hear the car in the shaft moving down to meet the call on this level. It was just loud enough that I was able to wager that the Narzands could hear it too. I propped myself around the corner, waiting for the elevator to reach our floor, when I heard something that sent a chill down my spine.
A voice from the elevator.
“Yeah. I’m headed down now. I’ll call you as soon as I see them.”
Kelly and I locked eyes and she clenched her face with frustration.
It was Punk.
