Page 29 of The Last Dance

His hair was up, but already coming loose. He’d painted his nails a glossy black at some point today, maybe in a display of rebellion, maybe as a nervous stalling mechanism.

“Does your friend always drive like this?” Iren asked, as Yuri threaded the car through a red light without a brake.

“He’s not my friend,” I said. “He’s my lieutenant.”

“Oh, sorry. Is there a rank system? Like, do I call you ‘captain’ now?”

I snorted. “Only in bed.”

He grinned, but the corners of his mouth quivered with the effort of holding it. The closer we got to his apartment, the more he talked. It was like watching a man standing on a sinking raft, naming every item he planned to rescue before the water took it all.

“Are you even listening?” he demanded.

I was. I just didn’t care about the hoodie. It would not survive the week. “I will buy you ten hoodies,” I said. “Any color.”

“You can’t buy attachment,” he said. “That’s not how it works.”

I let that hang. It was a good line. He’d probably practiced it, or maybe it was genuine, but I liked the effect either way.

The car rounded the final corner. Iren’s building was a squat, six-story box with graffiti on every level and a fire escape that had not been up to code since the last Republican president. The entrance was empty except for a courier service bike chained to a pole.

Yuri slowed to a crawl. “One minute,” he said, just for me.

I scanned the block. No pedestrians. No cars idling. No sign of the Tuesday regular in the sedan, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there. Amateurs waited close. Professionals waited three cars down and left no footprint.

Iren was halfway through a rant about Lin’s taste in “statement furniture” when the first shot hit the car.

It was a clean metallic snap, sharp as a judge’s gavel. The passenger window, three inches from Iren’s face, bloomed a spiderweb of cracks but didn’t shatter. The bullet left a perfect dimple in the glass, an inch to the left of the sticker he’d applied himself “Dance Like You’re Already Dead”.

The second shot came a heartbeat later, hitting the same pane at chest height. The glass held, but a circle of white powder—laminate and lead—dusted Iren’s lap.

He went still, every muscle in his body coiling tight as a sprung trap. He didn’t duck. He didn’t scream. He just froze, eyes wide, lips parted around a word he never got to say.

The third shot hit the door, dead center. I heard it punch through the exterior, heard the slug flatten itself against the inner hull with a sound like a spoon hitting a tin can.

I had my arm across his chest before the echoes finished. “Down,” I snapped.

He obeyed, instantly. There was no more argument, no more running commentary. His hands clawed at the seatbelt, but it was already unbuckled. I pushed him down, my palm flat on his back, pinning him to the floor.

Yuri put the car in reverse, one hand on the wheel, the other already reaching for the glovebox. He’d mapped the entire street in his head before we left the mansion.

I trusted him to handle it.

My focus was on the building. The first shot came from the second floor, the window with the cracked air conditioner. I tracked the trajectory, the rhythm of the firing. Too slow for a drive-by, too measured for a warning. Someone wanted Iren dead, and someone wanted me to watch.

My blood did not spike. It settled, cold and structural, into the base of my skull. I felt the rage like a beam poured into concrete. I tamped it down for now. I would use it later.

Iren was hyperventilating. He had pressed himself flat to the floor, hands over his head, eyes locked on the carpet. “Jesus,” he whispered. “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.”

“Don’t move,” I said.

He didn’t.

I scanned the line of windows. There was a flutter of movement in the stairwell. A person-shaped blur, then nothing. I memorized the angle.

Yuri reversed down the block, fast but not reckless. As we cleared the sight line of the second floor, a fourth shot ricocheted off the curb and whined into the empty street. By then, I had Iren crouched low, both of us hidden from view.

I looked at him. His hands shook, his breathing shallow, but he was not crying. Not yet. He met my gaze, and for a split second, there was something like apology in his eyes. Like he’d invited this mess with his running mouth and wanted to make it right.