“How exactly do you propose we get that?”
Zeke turns to look at me again, his beer bottle dangling between his fingertips. “We feed him to the feds.”
“The feds,” I echo. “You want to turn my brother over to the FBI.”
“Unless you’ve got a spare army hiding in your back pocket, that’s the only way I see it happening. Aleksei’s got more men and more money than we could ever hope to match. But you know what he doesn’t have? Immunity from federal prosecution.” Zeke takes a swig of his beer. “The Bratva operates how they want because the local cops are bought off or shitting their pants in fear. But the feds? That’s a different ballgame entirely. You know they’ve been trying to build a case against organized crime in Chicago for years. You could hand them Aleksei on a silver platter.”
“And what happens to me in this scenario?” I ask. “Last I checked, I’m not exactly innocent here, Z. I’ve got bodies on my conscience. Literal fucking bodies.”
“I know that.”
“So, what, I just waltz into a federal building and say, ‘Hey, I’ve killed a dozen people, but my brother’s worse, so please arrest him instead of me’? They’ll cuff me before I finish the sentence.”
“No,” he agrees, “that won’t play. We have to go about it from an angle.”
We throw ideas back and forth for a while as the morning sun climbs higher and the dew evaporates off the grass around us. Each one is worse than the last. By the time Zeke starts suggesting elaborate disguises and tipoffs to the feds written with letters cut out of different magazines, I know we’ve emptied our collective tanks and come up empty.
“We’re fucked,” Zeke summarizes at last. “Aren’t we?”
“Maybe,” I admit. “Probably.”
But even as the pessimism leaves my mouth, something in me rebels against it. Ican’tbe fucked. I have a child on the way. A little boy or girl who will need a father. If I’m fucked, so are they.
I’m never going to let that happen.
“You don’t actually believe that,” Zeke says, reading me like he always does. “You’re still hoping.”
“Hope is for suckers.”
“Then call me a sucker.” He tips his bottle toward the sky like he’s saluting the angels. “Because I’m not ready to give up on any of this. So long as there’s breath in our bodies, we’ve still got a chance of finding our way to whatever fucked-up version of a happy ending we might still be able to scrape together.”
“Happy endings,” I say with a scathing laugh. “You really think those exist for people like us?”
“I think they exist for people who fight for them.” He drains the last of his beer and sets the empty bottle in the grass. “And brother, we’ve been fighting our whole lives. Might as well fight for something worth having, right?”
28
ELIANA
the pass /T?H? pas/: noun
1: counter where finished dishes await pickup.
2: the moment you stop listening through walls and start walking through them.
I leave Bastian to bro-handle whatever personal crisis Zeke is going through and I keep heading down the hallway toward Yasmin’s room. If Zeke’s as upset as he sounded, then Yas is probably in hysterics, about to commit several felonies, or both.
I tend to handle my traumas inwardly. Yasmin, on the other hand, is the polar freaking opposite. Everything that’s ever happened to her, good or bad, is processed through a series of sometimes entertaining and more often terrifying episodes. We’re talking dramatic soliloquies, floors scrubbed with violent intensity, the occasional soft (or not-so-soft) object hurled at a wall. For the good of all the breakable items in this house, I need to calm her down.
I knock on her door. “Yazzy, babe? It’s me.”
I’m greeted with silence at first, then a muffled, “Go away.”
“You and I both know that’s not happening.” As I slip inside, I detect the aroma of lavender incense, which increases my concern by several levels. Lavender, in Yasmin’s world, is the smell of impending meltdowns. “Wanna tell me what’s going on, or should I just start guessing?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re a terrible liar is what you are.”
