In a haze, money changes hands. Someone, I register, shoves a bottle in someone else’s face. The chaos is deafening. Through it all, I’m still frozen against the wall, unable to compute what just happened.
All I can do is watch the tall, broad, dark-haired man stride toward my father with the same unharried, menacing confidence he’d launched his weapons with. He doesn’t rush. He isn’t celebrating. He lurks over Dad, several inches taller than him. He looks down on him beneath his austere nose. Myfather, a man who’d been frenzied moments ago, looks terrified. Stunned to stillness, I watch him watch Yuri into his pocket.
Is this how my father dies? Will he kill me, too?
No. He pulls out a fat stack of cash. It’s bigger than the one already in my father’s fist. It’s an amount of money that should make Dad’s face light up like a kid’s on Christmas morning. Instead, his eyes—the same golden brown as my own—dart between the money and Yuri’s face.
“Mick gave you my entry fee. This is for the girl,” he says coolly, shoving the bills into my father’s chest. “Plus interest for cutting in line.”
My father’s hands shake the same as mine do. He takes the money, and I grip the shirt I’ve been left holding to my wound. He counts the money, no doubt already calculating what it means for him.
“I’ll be seeing you again, Driscoll,” Yuri adds.
The way he says it makes my heart drop all the way from my throat to the pit of my stomach.
My father’s mouth sprawls into a grotesque, madhouse grin. “Sure thing, man. Sure thing. Any time!” he nods, practically giddy.
Yuri doesn’t say a thing in return. He turns away without another word and heads for me. His gaze is piercing, burrowing into me like an axe into a target. The crowd has already dispersed, scattering out of his way. No one objects. Everyone knows, on some primal level, this man will not be impeded.
When he reaches me, he holds out his hand. My limbs move of their own volition, commanded by him as easily as Hernandez had been. His hand dwarfs mine. The other reachesabove me and wrenches the knife out. He tucks it away out of sight.
“Come,” he commands.
My feet move.
His hands are as callused as one would expect—and warmer, too. His grip is firm, a leash that leads me away from the wall and across the warehouse.
We walk past my father, who stares at me blankly. What is the look he sees on my face? I don’t know anymore. All I see are the staring faces. The crowd parts for Yuri like the Red Sea. In another minute, we’re past the throwing stations, too.
He pulls me out into the night.
I’m in one of the dresses Dad always insists helps the status of his operation. It makes for a flimsy barrier against a Boston November. Hernandez’s ratty, reeking shirt doesn’t help either. My teeth are chattering before Yuri has me halfway down the lot.
He doesn’t even notice.
Why would he? Why would he care at all?
He yanks me along, dragging me quicker than my legs can keep up with. I have to keep following him. I have no other choice.
It’s someone else who starts hollering, “Hey!HEY!”
Hernandez. He comes stumbling out the door, past the bouncers who look on, unbothered. His face is puce, features contorted with ugly rage. He screams something. Ten feet away, it’s incoherent over the wind whipping my hair into a frenzy.
I don’t see Yuri’s face. He doesn’t break his stride. Hernandez’s shoes are pounding closer and closer across the pavement.
He lunges.
It all happens so fast.
One moment, we are in motion. Next, he’s wrenched me behind himself, and Hernandez is standing alone where we had been a heartbeat prior. His chest heaves. Momentum carried him forward, nearly tipping him over. He braces his weight against the hood of someone’s car.
He pivots to see the knife back in Yuri’s grip.
Drunk and stupid, Hernandez charges forward with a wild howl. Yuri doesn’t move this time. He is the immovable object that meets the fool’s force head-on. The blade disappears out of sight again. He’s buried it between Hernandez’s ribs with a squelch I can’t unhear.
He twists it, and Hernandez drops to his knees. He isn’t screaming anymore. His breaths leave him in choked pants, his mouth opening and closing like he’s a fish out of water. Yuri snatches the blade back, leaving blood pouring from the wound.
“Oh my God,” I scream, dropping to the ground. I scramble to get his shirt on the wound, pressing down as hard as I can. The fabric in my clutches grows damp in seconds. I look back in a panic, just to see Yuri wiping the bloodstained knife clean on his jeans. “You can’t just—”
