I stared at the phone.
What was happening?
I thought I had gotten him off my back. Told him where to put his obligations. Watched the anger flash across his face at breakfast and called it delicious. Named my son. Started planning the headstone. Assembled my odd little family around me within the remit he allowed.
Yet here I was. Back at the beginning. Only somehow worse off.
I stomped to the door and yanked it open.
“I need a gun,” I told Tau.
“Nyet,” he said.
Nothing else. Just a single disapproving eyebrow raised in the air like an African king passing judgement.
“Fuck you, too,” I snapped and slammed the door in his face.
Again.
I eyed my closet.
Within it were shoeboxes full of cash. Payment for services rendered. Monthly stipend. Birth bonuses never claimed. Money that had been accumulating in the dark while everything else fell apart.
I began to pace. Slow and steady.
What would Madame Popova do?
Think, Iskra. Think.
I can’t kill him. Too many people would come after me. The brotherhood. Konstantin. Tau, possibly, depending on which side of his personal interest that fell on.
But killing wasn’t the only option.
An idea began to settle. Quiet and specific and entirely workable.
I didn’t need to kill anyone.
A knock at the door.
“Are we going to the graveyard?” Tau asked.
The headstone had been fitted. I needed to see Makari.
“Da,” I said.
Then I stuck both middle fingers up at the door and moved them speedily up and down before I got caught.
Childish for a twenty-five-year-old woman with a degree, a closet full of cash and a serial killer as a saint.
I didn’t care. It made me feel better.
??????
Radovan drove. Tau sat beside him.
I ignored them both. Arms crossed, eyes on the window, the city moving past without registering.
I could feel Tau’s eyes on me every so often. I resisted the urge to stick my middle finger up at him again. Even though I had done it behind a closed door not an hour ago and it had helped considerably.
