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Because despite everything I’ve read, I need to hear it fromhim. I need to look him in the eyes and ask him directly:
Did you kill your wife?
And if so…
Why?
68
RAE
STATE OF NEW YORK — SUPREME COURT, QUEENS COUNTY
ARREST WARRANT | Docket No. 2025-QN-114-CR-00893
THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK v. LUKAS LAZAREV
Charge: Murder in the Second Degree (Penal Law § 125.25)
The subway car lurches through the tunnels. Each stop feels like it takes an eternity and a half. I’m fidgety and restless, and an older woman across the aisle keeps shooting me concerned glances, probably because I look like I’ve been crying on a dirty bodega floor, which, as a matter of fact, I have.
The train finally spits me out at my stop. I take the stairs two at a time, emerging into the cold night air. My lungs burn with the December chill as I run. The crumpled newspaper is still clutched in my fist and little snippets of Jillian’s story keep spiraling through my head.
Not an accidental death…
Several items were also recovered…
Warrant for arrest…
Maybe there’s still time. If I can just warn him, we can buy ourselves a chance to figure this out together, like he promised we would.
Together. He saidtogether.
I meant it. Did he?
Then I round the corner onto his street and realize there will be no doing anything together anymore.
I’m too late.
The street is a bath of strobing red and blue lights. NYPD cruisers are parked haphazardly choke off the whole block, along with unmarked sedans and a black SUV that can only be FBI. Yellow crime scene tape cordons off the front steps of the brownstone, like badly healed stitches on a festering wound.
If that weren’t bad enough, the media vultures have picked up the scent, too.
News vans line the curbs, their satellite dishes extended toward the sky. Reporters clutch microphones and jostle for position, alongside camera operators angling for the money shot. I recognize the logos—NY1, ABC7, even CNN.
We’ve gone from local news at 5 to a national catastrophe.
I stumble to a halt at the corner, half-hidden behind a parked delivery truck. My legs have gone liquid. The crumpled newspaper slips from my nerveless fingers and flutters to the sidewalk, where Jillian’s byline stares up at me.
As I watch, the front door opens.
Lukas emerges from the brownstone, flanked by two uniformed officers. His hands are cuffed behind his back—those massive, scarred hands that held me so gently just hours ago, now bound in cold steel. He’s still wearing the charcoal suit he left in this morning, but his tie is gone and the top button of his shirt hangs open.
His face shows no emotion. No fear. No anger. No remorse. No shame.
Actually, there’s nothing at all.
The reporters surge forward on sight, shouting questions that blend into incomprehensible noise.
