For one second—one fraction of a heartbeat—something opens in my own chest. It’s the memory of a different man. A path not taken. A pinky not cut.
Then it’s gone.
I grip his left hand, still zip-tied to the chair arm, and position the scalpel above his index finger. He’s shaking so hard the whole chair quivers against the concrete.
“This is for the money you stole.”
I push down.
His scream bounces off the cinderblock walls, high and animal. The finger comes away with a wet, tearing sound. Blood wells up, dark and immediate.
“This is for making me come down here on a Tuesday.”
The second finger is harder to grip because his hand is slick with blood now. But I manage. I always manage.
By the time I reach his third finger, he’s stopped screaming. Shock, probably. His head sags forward as his consciousness fades like a dying bulb.
That’s good enough. I pull the gun from my waistband. A Glock 19, clean and simple.
“Look at me.”
He doesn’t respond. I grab his hair again, force his head up. His one good eye finds mine, glassy and unfocused. I open my mouth to tell him to rot in hell with all the rest of the thieves and traitors.
What comes out instead is, “I’ll tell your kids I’m sorry.”
Then I press the barrel against his forehead and pull the trigger.
The gunshot is deafening in the enclosed space. The man’s head snaps back. The chair tips, taking his body with it, and he hits the concrete with a gruesome thud that I feel through the soles of my shoes.
Silence rushes back in, broken only by the fluorescent lights’ persistent hum.
I stand there for a moment, gun still raised, watching blood pool beneath the overturned chair. My hand is steady. My breathing is even. My heart rate hasn’t changed.
I lower the gun and pull out my phone. One text to Aleksei’s cleanup crew:In the basement.
They’ll be here within the hour to make this disappear. They always are.
I step over the body on my way out, careful not to track blood into the hallway. There’s a small bathroom at the end of the corridor. I stop there to wash the red from my hands.
Blood on the tile.
So much blood on the tile.
I’ll tell your kids I’m sorry.
Where the fuck did that come from?
I push through the service exit into the alley behind Olympus. The sun is bloody red. Feels like it’s been that color every dawn and every dusk for weeks now. It comes in hot streaks through the gaps between buildings. I blink against it as my eyes adjust slowly.
That’s when I see him.
Zeke leans against the brick wall about twenty feet away, hands shoved in his pockets, looking thinner and gaunter than ever. There’s a faded, yellow-green shadow of bruising along his jaw. He’s wearing a Cubs cap pulled low and sunglasses despite the overcast sky.
I consider turning around and walking back inside, because he’ll know at first glance what I’ve been doing, even though I made sure to leave no blood caked underneath my fingernails.
“You look like shit,” he says when I’m close enough.
“Right back at you.”
