1: a table set for one; a reservation with an empty seat.
2: the heartbreak of a party of one.
It’s dawn when I hear tires in the driveway. I get up and run to the front door, tripping and falling, bruising my shins on every piece of furniture we have. I nearly rip the damn door off its stupid goddamn hinges.
It takes me a moment to place what’s wrong. Then I realize:
Onecar door slams.
Oneset of footsteps approaches.
Onepair of hands grabs my shoulders.
Zeke sinks to the ground with me as I fall on my knees, not caring that they cut open and bleed on the rough concrete stoop.
“I’m sorry, Eliana,” he whispers. “I did everything I could.”
43
BASTIAN
forced march /fôrst märCH/: noun
1: accelerating fermentation or rising through heat and pressure.
2: eight blocks with a hole in your stomach.
The light fades.
Then it comes back.
I don’t know how much time passes between those two events. Might be seconds. Could be hours. The only thing I know for certain is that when life claws its way back into my skull, the blood-orange dawn has turned to dull gray morning, and I’m still fucking here.
The zip-ties have loosened. I realize it dimly at first, then with growing urgency. My thrashing when the bullet tore through me must have worked the plastic enough to create slack. My right wrist slides free with a wet, sucking sound, leaving skin behind. Blood and sweat, nature’s finest lubricant.
I force myself upright.
The world wobbles violently. My stomach—or what’s left of it—screams in protest, and a fresh wave of agony pours outward from the wound, so intense that black spots dance across my vision. I press my hand against the hole in my gut and feel the hot, rhythmic pulse of blood pouring out between my fingers.
Too much blood. Way too fucking much.
I have minutes. Maybe an hour, if I’m lucky.
My phone is gone. My wallet is gone. I have nothing but the clothes on my back and a ragged hole where my brother’s love used to be.
I totter toward the warehouse door. Every step is a fresh hell, but I’ve been through hell before, and this is neither better nor worse. The metal groans as I shove it open and stumble out into weak morning light that feels like needles in my eyes.
The docks stretch out before me. I don’t know where the fuck I am, and even if I did, I’m in no fit state to navigate intelligently. I just pick a direction and start walking. One bloody foot in front of the other.
I press harder against my stomach. More blood squelches between my fingers, warm and wrong.
My options are limited. I can’t go to a hospital. Aleksei owns half the doctors in this city, and the other half are too scared to ask questions. The moment I show up with a bullet wound, word gets back to him within the hour, and he comes to finish the job.
Can’t call Zeke, either. He’d come running, and then Aleksei’s men would either gut him on the spot or follow him straight back to Eliana and Sage and everyone else I’m trying to protect.
Definitely can’t riskher.
Then a building catches my eye and a memory surfaces through the fog of pain: a cramped apartment. An eviction notice crumpled on a kitchen table. A woman sobbing into Eliana’s shoulder while the smell of Glade PlugIns and cheap wine hung thick in the air.
