I’ll be an assassin for real.
I’ll have killed my brother as surely as if I’d pulled the trigger myself.
“I have to go.”
“No, stay. Bunny—” he cuts me off, voice deep and authoritative.
“Don’t contact me again.”
“You can trust?—”
“Good bye.”
With shaking hands, I hang up. I press my lips together to stop them from wobbling as I block Blake from the TelUBox messaging app.
I stare at the red circle with a line through it and the frozen messages that we last exchanged.
I loved talking with Blake, and it’s over.
My heart is doing something painful that I can’t label breaking, because I can’t have been in love, so I’ll call it reshaping into a scrambled jigsaw puzzle.
I should tell Aaron all about this, then enact the escape from London I’ve avoided planning. But I don’t. I tell myself it’s because staying low is safer than running and appearing guilty. It’s not. The truth is, I don’t want to share my secret.
Even though I can’t message the mafia boss anymore.
2
NINA
A week earlier
“What’s wrong with the normal messaging app?” I grumble to my brother as I poke my phone.
“It’s not as secure. TelUBox is far safer. And faster, and the interface is better.” He’s at the kitchen table of the little apartment we rent.
“But why?” I insist. Even though I know the real answer. I’m installing the app because my brother says he won’t communicate with me otherwise. “It’s not like we’re saying anything important or in need of being protected.”
The app has the icon of one of those American boxes for post that I’ve seen in movies, complete with a little red flag thing that goes up and down. I find it pretty ironic that it’s supposed to be super safe, since how is a box at the end of your drive a protected place for your letters?
“Security is always good,” he says with the sort of superiority only elder brothers can manage.
“This is ridiculous. Is your new job in the secret service or something?” He’s been very tight-lipped about this role, except that it’s more money.
“It’s impressed on me the importance of security.”
“Are you in the mob?” It’s a joke. Mostly. I’ve asked him this at least forty-three times now.
He rolls his eyes. “You have a vivid imagination. It’s just logistics and project management.”
“That’s not a no, is it?” I tease. “I reckon you’re working for the Westminster mafia.”
“Piht!” He pretends to spit in disgust. “As if I’d work for that bunch of brutal toffs.”
“Why does everything have to be about being optimal levels of safe?” I grumble.
I’m fed up with it. My life is dull and secure. Yes, I’m curvy, yes, I’m shy. But I’ve been creeping towards the realisation that I could stilllive. I can’t even remember the last time I took a risk on anything.
“Because my baby sister enjoys not dying and not having her data stolen?” he suggests.
