Because I can’t afford to.
She isn’t here to stay. She was bait. Then a liability. Now, a witness who knows too much and doesn’t even realize it. People like that get you killed if you let them. They don’t mean to. They just do.
I know how to handle problems: apply pressure until they break the way you want. People are unpredictable, but they all have levers. Fear. Pride. Hunger. Guilt. You find the lever and you move them. That’s the job.
I tell myself I’ll do the same with her; keep the guardrails tight, keep the boundaries tighter. Train her enough to survive, then keep her out of the way until this is over. Ignore the rest.
I can do that. I know I can.
6
Mary
The kitchen is the opposite of the firing range; warm, sunlit, welcoming.
Somewhere beneath the adrenaline, I finally notice my stomach rumbling like it’s been abandoned. Which, to be fair, it kind of has.
My ears are still ringing from the gunfire, and every time I lift my arm, my shoulders remind me I actually used them today.
I missed most shots.
Didn’t care. Pulling the trigger felt like opening a pressure valve I didn’t even know was welded shut. Not because I suddenly love violence or want to join a girl gang, but because… for once,I wasn’t stuck in my own head. I wasn’t apologizing. I wasn’t second-guessing. I just aimed, breathed, and fired.
And earlier, Anton’s voice, low in my ear:“You’re not weak, Mary. Not with me.”
It keeps looping in my head, hitting somewhere soft and sore.
He’s right. Maybe not about all of me, but about something.
All the swallowed comebacks. All the days I let someone talk over me. All the ways I made myself small because it felt safer.
And then today, I didn’t. I didn’t shrink. I stood there trembling, and I still pulled the trigger.
I stop just short of the island.
They’ve already piled around it—no plates left clean, so it’s cartons and chopsticks and a stack of paper napkins that look like a failed origami class. Anton’s at the head, completely ignoring the fact that someone wrote“Yum Palace”on the side of the rice box in marker.
“This is shit.” Lev lifts one of the containers and makes a face. “Who orders food from a place called Yum Palace? That’s not a restaurant; that’s a threat.”
Boris, who looks like he hasn’t slept in two days and might actually be coding someone’s surveillance system from memory while he chews, lifts a single sauce packet like he’s presenting evidence in court. He’s got the dead-eyed exhaustion of someonewho works in a Silicon Valley basement, not for the Russian mafia.
“For the record, our usual Sunday spot is closed. I left three separate notes begging for extra chili oil. They sent one.” He shakes it once. “One.”
“You bought it. You can’t roast it now,” Lev says, poking a glossy cube of General Tso’s like it might poke back.
“I tipped for effort,” Boris says. “Which means I’m allowed to critique execution.”
Dima hasn’t touched anything. He’s posted by the fridge, arms crossed, looking like he’s trying to decide which carton is least likely to kill him.
I hover awkwardly for half a second—because sitting and eating like this with four dangerous men isn’t something I trained for—and then my stomach growls again, louder this time, clearly staging a protest.
“Sit.”
Anton doesn’t raise his voice. Doesn’t even look up from whatever container he’s opening. Just says it, low and final, like the word itself has gravity.
But when I glance over, his gaze is already on me. Direct. Steady. There’s no bark in it—no sharp edge. Just… certainty. Like of course I’ll sit, because I’m meant to.
Before I can even move, both Dima and Lev reach for the same chair.
