14
VIKTOR
That conversation at the diner is still stuck with me. I didn’t mean to be as harsh as I was to her, necessary though it might have been.
It’s been a couple of days since and I can’t seem to shake it. The sight of her lowering her head, water hovering in her eyes. Hurting her was the very last thing I wanted to do, even if it was absolutely the correct response.
I can’t let Tati get ideas in her head about us. About me. Whatever fairytale fantasy she has in her mind about the two of us riding off together in the sunset has got to be squashed at the first signs. Defending her against her father that night sparked something in her, and she was trying to get close, trying to needle through my defenses. She and I are not an option and we never will be. That’s just our reality. I thought she understood that.
In the end, it shouldn’t matter and I should really stop ruminating on it. Especially with this job ahead of me.
I’m sitting in my car outside the bank where the target is supposed to be. Nikolai offered nothing in the way of a description of them other than that it’s a woman and she would be wearing a red coat and walking out of the bank at a certain time and that I would know her because she was going to get a phone call right when she stepped out. I didn’t even get a photo.
The worst part is that I couldn’t even have asked any questions. I’m expected to take orders and carry them out. Case closed. Even with such a sparse description. I feel like I’m being set up to fail.
I suppose if that is the case, I deserve it. I did step right in the middle of his chastising his daughter, after all. I’ll bet he spent the entire two weeks dreaming up a situation like this just so that he has good reason to oust me.
But what can I do? I can’t refuse him. He’s a Pakhan. It would be worse on me if I told him no rather than trying and failing.
I’ve been sitting in my car for the past thirty minutes, watching people walk in and out of the bank. So far, there have been three women and four men to come out of those doors. All of them are of different ages, different races, different heights and weights… No one with a red coat.
And then it occurs to me that this could be some sort of distraction. Maybe I’m being kept away from something else. But if that’s so, what could it be? I have no family other than Nikolai. Not even a lover to speak of.
Well… except Tati. But that was only once, and no one knows about that but the two of us.
Unless he found out somehow. But… how? No matter how she feels about me, she wouldn’t dare tell her father. That would be suicide.
I’m overthinking this. I turn on the radio, turning the volume down so that it drones in the background. That usually helps when my focus is off for a job. I need to stop thinking that there’s something up about this. This is a hit, like any other. And I’m going to carry it out.
Two more people, a woman and a teenage girl… An older gentleman stops and holds the door open for…
No. It can’t be her.
I watch as a woman with rainbow-colored hair steps out of the bank and thanks the man. She’s wearing a bright red peacoat and blue jeans and a casual smile on her face. It’s just another day as far as Marla is concerned.
It’s not her. Nikolai would have called her by name. He knows that I’m acquainted with her. And if he doesn’t, he certainly would have given me more than just that she was a woman in a red coat. At least, he would have described her hair. No. She’s not the target.
I watch her walk toward her car parked a few paces away.Get in your car, drive away. Leave before the real target gets here.
She gets about halfway before she stops and reaches in her pocket… and pulls out her phone. She looks at it quizzically and answers it.
Shit. This is very, very bad. Why has Nikolai targeted her?
I get out of the car, my mind working. I can’t kill Marla. For a dozen reasons, I can’t be the one to do it. This has to be some kind of mistake or something.
I jog across the street, rushing to her as quickly as I can. When I get close, I see she’s frowning as she’s talking to whoever’s on the phone. “Hello? Sorry? I can’t hear you.”
“Marla,” I call out.
She looks up at me and smiles politely, hanging up the phone. “Hey. What are you?—”
A shot rings out, cuts through the air, and brushes past my ear as I step up onto the curb. Marla stumbles backward, grabbing her neck. Blood pours down the front of her peacoat in a rush, pouring the life out of her in seconds. Her knees buckle as she stares wide-eyed at me. Her face goes white.
I grab her as she falls to the ground, holding her in my arms as her mouth falls open to gasp for air.
Someone’s taken the shot for me. I look up in the direction that I think I heard it, somewhere in the upper floors of the building across the street. There are a million windows looking back at me, and none of them tell me who the shooter was.
“Vik…” Blood spurts out of her mouth as she tries to talk. I put my hand over the bleeding wound in her neck and apply pressure.
