“You have unresolved issues that are preventing you from being mentally in the moment.”
It wasn’t that I couldn’t get it up. I couldn’t stick it in.
Sally tilted her head. “How are the nightmares? And the panic attacks?”
“They’re not panic attacks! They’re just moments when it feels like the walls are caving in and I have trouble breathing.”
Sally let the silence linger.
“Okay, so I suppose some might say that is a panic attack. But I’d rather not have the label.”
Sally tapped her pencil against her notebook. “You’re taking the pills I gave you?”
At our last session, Sally had listened to my particularly long monologue about the state of the world and how it was impossible for us to believe it was a good place when so many bad things happened every day, she had decreed it was time for medication. Anti-anxiety pills that she said would help me. I’d only started takingthem in the last few days, and so far I’d noticed no change. But then, maybe I was too far gone for help. I chewed the inside of my cheek. I was having anxiety that the anti-anxiety pills weren’t working. That was not a good sign.
“Yes, I’m taking them.”
“You still haven’t told your wife about these not-panic-attacks?”
“I don’t want to worry her.”
Haze needed to rely on me as a tough, capable partner in crime. We were a team. We each needed the other to pull their weight. She’d already had to save me once. I didn’t want her to feel like she had to save me again.
“You shouldn’t keep things from her.” Sally leaned forward and looked me in the eye. “You need to be honest with her.”
I knew she was right. Healthy communication was important for any couple.
I just struggled to actually do it.
Chapter Thirteen
Haze
The problem with killing badmen, especially well-connected ones, was that when a carefully orchestrated hit was made on you, it was difficult working out exactly who was behind it. This was the problem we’d found in the aftermath of Ivrea.
We wanted names and addresses. But all Jenny and her extensive police resources were able to dig up was an alias: The Chameleon. One of the men caught alive had a text message on his phone showing off to a friend that he was doing a job for him.
The Chameleon was a somewhat infamous shadowy figure in the criminal underworld: a violent assassin who had not only managed to evade capture, but had also done so without leaving behind any hint as to his identity. Not even his nationality. We automatically referred to The Chameleon as a “he”: an assumption, but in our experience more often a correct one than not.
According to Jenny’s many reputable sources, including Interpol, The Chameleon worked almost exclusively for The Corporation, a powerful secretive group with confirmed ties to high-profile Albanian and Italian gangs and a monopoly on organized crime throughout Europe.
“The Corporation” moniker came from the fact that they had big money behind them, and also operated more like a tightly run business than a shady criminal enterprise. The way Jenny described it had made me imagine criminals approaching them for aDragons’Den–type pitch where they outlined why their illegal start-ups were deserving of their investment.
Despite repeated attempts by European police forces working with Interpol, no one had got any closer to understanding who The Corporation were. Any violent activity they were involved in happened behind closed doors—no tacky shootouts in the street, no bodies branded with their gang sign. They kept under the radar through fear, respect, and paying incredibly well.
The Corporation had links to two victims we’d killed before Ivrea. Their deaths were clearly what had attracted attention to our little enterprise, and explained why they’d enlisted The Chameleon to engineer our assassination. How could we possibly defend ourselves against an enemy about whom we knew nothing? They could be anyone. This was really not helping my trust issues.
I wasn’t one to assign blame, but really, it was clear Fox had fucked up. He had got too male with his aspirations of taking down big shots, forgetting that in the grand scheme of the big bad criminal underworld, we were just small fry. We might be a pretty efficient, exceptionally well-organized team of three, but we had no backup, no network, no allies. It was just us.
The last year had been a blur. We were playing catch-up. If we were to be free from the threat of The Chameleon and The Corporation, we had to find them. We needed more than the alias of a shadow. We needed more than the name of a gang of individuals unknown.
We had spent yesterday finding our own individual ways to cope with the news that The Chameleon was back in our lives. Jenny had spent the day at the station using every contact and database she could think of to get more information. Fox had slunk off to see Stupid Sally. And I’d sharpened our knives while enjoying a particularly good bottle of Malbec.
This morning, the three of us had reconvened at our kitchen table. Bibi and Felix were transfixed by the television in the next room, and Reggie was gurgling on the floor in his bouncy chair. Our French bulldog, Sausage, was lying alongside him. A pile ofboth dog and baby toys lay between them. This life was real enough; it didn’t seem like there could be a space in it for international gangs and assassination threats. But here we were.
I watched Fox as he took a sip of coffee. He looked wiped out. Although recently, we both looked wiped out—all the time.
“Interpol are the ones that flagged The Chameleon. Now rumored to be in the UK,” said Jenny.
