Massimo gives a low, appreciative whistle as he eyes the thickness of the stack.
"Damn." He drops back into his chair and picks up his glass. "The hotter it gets out there, the more of these we get. You want to make a bet?" He gestures at the pile with his drink. "At least ten wishes in here tonight for someone to off somebody. Ten. And I am being conservative." He shakes his head with thephilosophical resignation of a man who has processed too many contracts to be shocked anymore.
"Whatever happened to the cute little wishes? A woman wanting a good time from a masked stranger. Like some businessman wanting a contract signed with no bodies involved, or body bags, and no cement graves or anything requiring a permit from Kon's division."
Konstantin raises his glass from across the table. "Screw cute. I prefer the current clientele. Better job security."
His Russian accent winds around his words. It's faded over the years he's spent Stateside, but evident all the same.
A side of my lip curls up into a smile.
"You would," Drake says, and there is the ghost of a smile on his mouth, too.
I snort and finish my scotch as I turn from the window and cross back to the table. Massimo is right and everyone in this room knows it. The wishes have turned darker over the last year. They used to be damn near innocent. Help with paying the rent. Get a stalker off someone. Find a missing person. You get the idea.
They were ways of us giving back to those in need. Now? It feels like we've become assassin-for-hire in our own kingdom. Sure we're criminals, but damn. The city is getting meaner, greedier and downright cold toward humanity.
Luca breaks the seal on a wish and the huff of disbelief he gives tells me this ought to be good. He kicks one ankle up on his knee, props the letter up like a professor with lecture notes, and pretends to faint from the contents before he has read a single word to us.
"Hold on a minute, gents. You're gonna love this one." He playfully fans himself with the envelope. "Gird your loins. I feel the darkness coming off this one in waves."
"Read the damn letter, Valentina," Rowan says from his end of the table, not looking up from another wish he is reading.
Luca sighs, obviously wounded by his unappreciative audience.
"Dear Red Letter Syndicate." He lifts a dark eyebrow. "They always start with dear. As if we are their favorite aunt." He straightens, his long black hair a mess around his shoulders tonight. "I wish the wife of my lover, Gregory Kingman, would fall overboard on the annual summer cruise they host and never be found, so that I can be the new wife. Name your price."
Luca lets out a low whistle. "Fuck. Cold-hearted, no? And mark my words. Next year his next mistress will want this one bumped off, too. You're right, Kon. Job security is in the bag long into our old age."
Kon's smile rivals Drake's and they all bump knuckles.
Luca sets the letter down and looks around the table with an expression that is equal parts theatrics and genuinely pained. "Bastards. All of them."
He looks to me to signal the final decision, and I nod in agreement. He tosses the letter in the middle of the table with a finality. "Let that be the first of the black pile, then. We don't have time for pettiness. This chick wants the wife dead, let her get her hands dirty. Whatever happened to honor among criminals, for fuck’s sake?"
The black pile are wishes we say no to and I have a feeling we're going to have more of those than anything.
No one argues.
"Gregory Kingman, huh?" Drake draws out the name of the small-time corporate lawyer with a promising high-roller future if he keeps shaking hands with the criminals of the city.
A crease mars the space between my friend's brows. "His name has been making the rounds and not in a good way."
"Noted. Let's keep an eye on him," I add and then signal for someone to read another wish so we can get this over with.
Rowan takes the next several, his delivery clipped and uninflected, a man sorting mail, which is essentially what this is. Three more wishes for someone's death, two financial manipulations, one overdose wish reframed as an accident. The black pile grows while it looks like the red pile might remain empty.
Rowan picks up a letter near the bottom of the stack and I watch the man pause.
Something about his stillness makes me turn away from his reflection in the window that I've been staring out of. "You have something?"
"Yeah, listen to this."
He reads it without the theatrics this time.
"Dear Red Letter Syndicate. I hope I'm not asking for much. I just want to not feel so alone. I don't care how or where. I just want to know the touch of a lover. I want to be kissed, caressed and made to feel alive even if it's by a stranger. Even if only for a night. Please make my wish come true."
Huh. That has me pausing with my glass halfway to my lips. The rest of the room sits with it for a second, too.
