Warrick finished putting on his gloves. "Hold still,” he advised Fin. “If you move, it won’t be clean.”
"Warrick." My voice cracked. "Warrick, look at me. Don't. Please. I'm asking you. I'm—"
"I'll keep it as clean as I can," he said without looking at me.
And then he took Fin’s finger clean off at the first knuckle.
They’d taken the fingerfour days ago. I’d counted every one of them.
I kept seeing it. Warrick’s gloves, the absorbent pad under Fin’s hand, the sound. Fin hadn’t screamed the way you’d think he would. He’d gone quiet, and the quiet was worse, and I’d stood there with Nikolai’s hand on my shoulder and let it happen, because the alternative was death.
I’d traded the finger again to keep the rest of him, and I couldn’t say that to a living soul, least of all to him. There was nowhere to put it. So it came out the way everything came out of me lately.
The mug went off the wall a foot from Nikolai's head, and he didn't even flinch.
"Feel better?" He picked a shard of it off the cushion beside him and flicked it away.
“No, you insufferable prick. Get the fuck out of my apartment!”
“And leave my big brother all alone with all those dangerous Italians on the loose?” He clicked his tongue. “Désolé, but no can do. Besides, who would protect the injured bird in your bed?”
I clenched my fists. “Keep his name out of your fucking mouth.”
“What name?” Nikolai spread his hands wide. “I didn’t say a name.”
“I’m warning you, Niko…”
“I hear you,” he said in Russian and waved me off. “Now go play nursemaid. My soaps are on.”
Fucker, I thought and stomped out of the living room.
My rotten half-brother had moved in the day after Fin’s amputation on Nikita’s orders. Supposedly, everyone was doubling up. Heightened security, he said. Just until things calm down, he said. What he hadn't said was why. Gregori had logged a gray sedan outside the building twice in one week, different plates each time, gone before anyone could walk up on it. Nobody knew whose it was. Until somebody did, we all got roommates. Meanwhile, my apartment had a new front door, new plaster, and a hole where the TV used to be until Niko ordered a bigger one on my card. Irina had fought the dust for two days and lost. You could still smell it under her cooking.
Well, Gregori didn’t have to host a houseguest. And if he did, it wouldn’t be anyone half as annoying as Nikolai. Most house guests could remember to pick up their dirty socks, or to put the cap back on the toothpaste when they were done with it, or pay for their own fucking DoorDash orders.
But no, not Niko. With him it was always, “I forgot, Aleksi. I used to have people for that, Aleksi,” or my favorite, “My accounts are frozen, Aleksi.”
At least Fin hadn’t been awake enough to put up with his bullshit. That was just what I needed, both of them running their fucking mouths at me at once.
I went to the tap and turned it on to get some water for Fin, ignoring the pile of Niko’s dirty dishes. There was a part of me that missed Fin’s smart mouth, and it was a bigger part than I wanted to admit. You’d think they cut out his tongue as quiet as he’d been the last four days.
He’d slept a lot. That was part of it. But even when he was awake so I could change his bandages or try to force some food down his throat, he didn’t have anything smart to say. It was just, “Are ye done?” and “Aye.” And that was it.
He wouldn’t even look me in the eye. I couldn’t blame him. I wouldn’t look me in the eye either. Not after what he’d lost. Not after the price he’d paid for my stupidity.
And the worst part was, I’d still do it again. I’d replayed the whole damn thing over in my head a thousand times since that day and scrutinized every choice. There wasn’t a single thing I’d do differently. I’d choose Fin over waiting for permission from above every fucking time.
I filled a glass at the tap and shook two Tylenol into my palm from the bottle on the sill. No more of the good stuff that knocked him flat. He didn’t like it, because it barely took the edge off the pain, but he wasn’t complaining about it.
The bedroom was dark. I'd offered to open the blinds the first day, and he'd told me to leave them, so I left them. He lay on his back with the bandaged hand resting on his chest, above the heart the way Warrick had shown me, to keep the swelling down. His eyes were open, and he was staring at the ceiling, still as a corpse.
"Hey," I said. "Tylenol time."
He turned his head, and it struck me then how dull and lifeless his eyes had gone. "Aye."
I set the glass on the nightstand and held out the pills. He lifted his good hand off the blanket and took them without comment or complaint.
"You want the TV?" I said. "I can put something on the laptop in here."
