The ceilingof my apartment has a water stain that looks like a bruise.
It starts at the crown molding, a sickly yellow spreading into a dark, mottled purple where the plaster has begun to rot, mimicking the exact shade of the skin covering my left ribcage. I have been staring at it long enough for the light in the room to shift from the grey, watery gloom of dawn to the harsh, flat white of a morning that has arrived without my permission.
My head feels like it’s been packed with wet sand. The whiskey—cheap, biting stuff that I drank straight from the bottle after leaving Gallagher’s—sits heavy and acidic in my gut. It didn't do the job. It was supposed to knock me out, to drag me down into a black, dreamless sleep where I didn't have to think about the wordhusband. Instead, it just blurred the edges of the room and left me on the couch, boots still on, staring at the ceiling and waiting for the sun to come up and judge me.
I sit up.
The movement is a mistake. The room tilts on its axis, sliding sideways before slamming back into place. A groan works its way out of my throat, low and rough. My mouth tastes like copper and ash. I spit into the empty takeout cup on the coffee table, the saliva thick and tinged with pink from where I bit my tongue in the alley.
I look at my hands.
The electrical tape I wrapped around my knuckles last night has peeled back, useless and sticky. Underneath, the skin is split wide open, the raw meat of the knuckle exposed to the air. It’s swollen, the inflammation radiating heat that I can feel pulsing in time with the headache.
Good.
I flex the hand. The scab cracks. Fresh blood wells up.
The pain is a tether. It cuts through the fog of the hangover and the heavier, suffocating weight of the dread sitting in my chest. It reminds me that I am still here. Still solid. Still the Reaper, even if my father has just sold me like a prize horse to the highest bidder.
My apartment is a tomb. It’s a fourth-floor walk-up in a building that should have been condemned during the Carter administration, but the landlord owes the Kavanaghs money, so he looks the other way when I install a heavy bag mount in the ceiling joists. The place smells of stale sweat, gun oil, and the lingering, metallic scent of the city rain coming in through the drafty window. There is no art on the walls. No plants dying on the sill. Just stacks of books on military history that I read when the insomnia gets bad, and a collection of weights in the corner that have rusted from the humidity.
It is not a home. It is a storage unit for a weapon.
And today, the weapon is being transferred.
The lock on the front door engages. The sound is metallic, distinct—the heavythunkof a deadbolt sliding back.
I don't think. I don't breathe.
My hand moves before my brain registers the noise. I reach under the cushion of the couch, my fingers closing around the grip of the Glock 19 I stashed there three days ago. I draw, level, and click the safety off in a single, fluid motion that bypasses conscious thought entirely.
The door swings open.
Rory steps into the frame.
He freezes. He doesn't flinch—he grew up in the same house I did, and he learned early that sudden movements around sleeping men get you hurt—but his eyes widen slightly as he looks down the barrel of the gun.
"Morning, Sunshine," he says. His voice is dry, raspy with sleep. "You going to shoot me, or can I come in?"
I lower the weapon. My heart rate, which had spiked, hammers against my ribs—slow, heavy thuds. I engage the safety and toss the gun onto the coffee table. It clatters against the empty whiskey bottle.
"You’re early," I say. My voice sounds like I’ve been gargling gravel.
"You didn't answer your phone." Rory kicks the door shut with his heel. He’s wearing a coat that looks like he pulled it out of a dumpster, but under it, I can see the paint-splattered jeansand the cashmere sweater he stole from me last Christmas. He’s carrying a brown paper bag that is already staining with grease at the bottom. "I called you four times. I assumed you were either dead or drowning in self-pity. Looks like it’s column B."
"Battery died."
"Uh-huh." Rory walks past me into the kitchenette. He moves with a restless, frantic energy that sets my teeth on edge. He starts opening cupboards, banging doors. "Your fridge is a biological hazard, Kill. There’s milk in here that expired before the Devaney beef started."
"I’ve been busy."
"Busy getting your face rearranged?" He leans out from the kitchen, scanning me. His gaze is critical, clinical. He takes in the bruise on my jaw, the split knuckle, the bloodshot eyes. He doesn't look like a gangster. He looks like a kid who should be in art school, worrying about grades and girls, not stitching up his brother’s stab wounds on the kitchen table. "You look like hell. worse than usual."
"Thanks."
"I’m serious. You look like you went twelve rounds with a concrete wall."
"It was five rounds with five guys. The wall was incidental."
