Let’s go kill my husband.
For as long as those syllables echoed in that cramped closet and her hand stayed in mine, I believed that there might actually be a way for both of us to get out of this shit alive and intact.
Then came the flinch.
A telltale fucking flinch.
She’s hiding something.
There’s a piece of this she didn’t put on the table. Whatever it is, it’s precious enough that she looked at me, in the dark, and decided I couldn’t have it.
So I’m left to sit here and brood on what she might’ve been preparing to say.
Sighing, I turn my attention back to the folder.
The plan, the way Afon laid it out, is clean. Open and shut. I sneak in after they’re asleep and put a hole in Raymond’s head while he snores. Then I put the gun in her hand and sneak right back out. The cops will do the rest.
The wife is not a person. Not for this. For this, she is a door we walk through.
Fuck! Out of nowhere, my rib pangs like I’m being stabbed all over again. I press my hand flat to it until the wave of agony passes, though it leaves a dull, sticky, sour taste in my mouth for a while after.
My eyes drift to my phone. I could call Afon, but what would I even say?Uncle, this isn’t the route we want to take. There’s another opening somewhere. There has to be.
But what would be the point of that? He’d laugh at me. Then he’d stop laughing, and ask very quietly if I was compromised. I’d lie, then he’d know I was lying, and thenI’dbe the one with the residue on my fingers. Family or not, there’s a certain way things are done in the Bratva, and we both know it.
Or worse, he’d hear me out. He’d let me say my piece. He’d nod in that slow way of his. And then he’d remind me, very gently, of the debt.
Fifteen years, plemyannik. You owe me fifteen years of my life back. Are you really going to abandon me now, for the sake of a woman you’ve known for a few measly weeks?
I put the phone down without dialing.
Soon, the lights click off. I let the room get dark around me. Then I stand up, grab my coat, and leave.
These days, Kir lives in a brownstone in the West Village. It has a black door and a brass knocker shaped like a lion, which Jillian picked out, because Kir’s taste is so minimalistic that it might as well not exist.
I knock at a quarter to eight on New Year’s morning. My timing is a bit rude, but I’m past caring.
There’s a long pause. Then footsteps on hardwood. Then the door cracks open.
But it isn’t Kir.
It’s his fiancée, Jillian.
She’s in a robe, her red hair piled in a knot on top of her head, her freckles standing out bright. There’s a mug of something warm in her hand. Her free hand is resting, very lightly, on the small swell of her stomach.
She’s three months along, give or take. They’re both glowing with joy these days.
“Mat!” she says, happy but perplexed. “What a happy surprise.”
“In the neighborhood,” I say. “Thought I’d swing by.”
“Ah.” She smiles. “Kir’s at the office.” She tilts her head. “He didn’t tell you?”
“I might’ve forgotten to ask.”
“Hm.” She studies my face for a beat. Whatever she sees there makes her step back from the door and open it wider. “Well, get in here. You look like hell.”
She leaves me no room to demur. I sigh and follow reluctantly, then she closes the door behind me and pads down the hall in bare feet. I follow her into the kitchen, which smells like cinnamon. There’s a half-eaten banana on the counter and a copy of the Times folded open to the crossword.
