The two guys remaining stampede into the basement, clomping down the stairs and firing. But I’m already stationed in the outside stairwell, the crisp air greeting me with the phantom remembrance of a town that will never boast of wicked imprisonment again, if I have anything to do with it.
I hover above Darren, my heart hammering my sternum from sheer adrenaline, and when the last two foot soldiers surface, I land a quick shot in each of them. They collapse to the ground mere feet away. When people have to chase you, they don’t expect you to be waiting for them.
Pulling out the .45 caliber pistol that I used to shoot Darren, I curl one of the foot soldier’s fingers around it, tucking his own weapon into his waistband. Then I move over to Darren with the Stribog, wrap his palm around the stock, carefully position each fingertip correctly, and shoot it toward the door because authorities will verify that there’s gunpowder residue on his hands. That’s how I leave them.
This will be an open-and-shut case. There’s even a motive because right before he arrived tonight, I hadClaudiaemail him that the Morelli and Vittori Mafias would be cutting a deal with the Feds about who was backing their trafficking business. That’s the email I opened on Darren’s phone earlier.
The forensic download is complete, so I retrieve the device, return Darren’s cell phone to his pocket, and snag the wad of cash he had stuffed in there.
Before I flee, I stroll around to the convenience store. A young kid, about seventeen years old, works behind the counter. He’s done nothing to assist in the trafficking ring, but he’s certainly on the wrong path.
I stop inside, and he tracks my every movement until I slide the cash across the counter to him. It’s about fifty thousand.
His eyes snap to mine—they’re a blue and brown mix, which is a rare form of hazel, much like Jax’s. That only reinforces my decision. It’s apparent this kid was already on edge because of the commotion in the back. I had a silencer, but the foot soldiers didn’t.
“Take it and run,” I instruct him before shooting the security system in the corner and walking to the door. “Don’t look back, and don’t get involved with monsters who sell people again.”
“Who are you?” he asks, his voice shaky.
“I’d say I’m your second chance.” With that proclamation still glazing my lips, I set off to the next stop for my own fresh start.
And for the first time in days, I acknowledge how beaten I feel. How lost and lonely and devastated. A boulder of turmoil clogs my throat, my eyes burn with acidic affliction, and my chest cracks open, a heart bleeding jagged tears for the beginning that became an ending.
For a snippet of time, I belonged to a part of the world that only existed in fairy tales and snow globes—at least for me. It was the warmest I’d ever felt.
Does he still love me? Will he love me if I explain it all to him?
A quote from Pablo Picasso springs to mind.“Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.”
I’m creating a path, but destroying myself in the process.
Axel would understand that. I have to believe he’ll understand, or I’m not sure how to keep going. And if I don’t, the wrong people will die.
One stone.
He was the bullet I never saw coming.
AXEL
Snippets of sanity whiz by me, but I can’t quite grab them.
It’s my mother pacing in the trees and the cries of her babies and ashes where her body wasn’t supposed to be. It’s failure to the beat of casino chings and up-tempo jazz. An empire composed of soil and souls, spirits and skulls.
It’s six and eight, twelve and fourteen, nineteen and twenty-one.
Forever frozen to black and red and low and high.
But then it’s zero, and it’s Zara. Everything shifted when she arrived.
Cherries and poems, pain and pleasure, beauty and thorns.
Heavy and light.
No lungs. No breath. No heart. No rhythm.
December has never been so cold. My bones ache. I can barely put one foot in front of the other, let alone attend to business. How am I supposed to function when it’s like all my vital organs have been ripped out? I’m a walking corpse.
And I’m currently hovering in that space of here and gone—lost to the panicky world of my mind, but present enough to know I’m stuck.
