Page 101 of Ballistic

“You’re welcome to finish him off.” Reaching into his pocket, Dmitry pulled out a cigar and lit it up.

“Where is she?” Dax ignored his offer and glanced over his shoulder, but not far enough to see me. “Is she here?”

“I want you to forget about her. From this day forward. she’s no longer your concern.”

“See, I can’t do that. Because all I do is think about her. From the time I wake up, to the second before I fall asleep. I can’t just fucking forget about her.”

Tipping my head back to the ruined ceiling above me, I blinked hard to hold back the tears, the urge to break down. I understood every bit of what he meant, because I’d felt it, too. The unrelenting ache. The sleepless nights. The phantom strokes of his hands always reminding me of what I’d left behind.

“I’m not asking you, Mister Wolfe. Believe me when I say, if Nicoleta wants to be found, she’ll find you first.”

“Eden. Her name isn’t Nicoleta. It’s Eden.”

I listened to the way my real name rolled of his tongue, how sweetly it sounded in his voice.

“Eden. Of course. It’s been so long since she went by that name. Now, if you’d like to finish him off, I’m gifting you the opportunity. She wanted you to have some closure. Otherwise, I’ll ask you to leave, so I can pick up where I left off.”

Dax’s gaze scanned the room, and I crawled back to keep him from noticing where I sat crouched. “Thanks. But no thanks.” He shoved his gun into his pocket and backed himself away from Tesarik. “I didn’t come here for closure. I came here for her.”

I twisted around with my back against the adjacent wall and slid to the right, taking cover in the corner across from the staircase.

As Dax strode through the doorway, I held both hands over my mouth to trap the sob begging me to call out to him. To run back into his arms where I felt most safe. Instead, I let him go.

Love was a weakness, after all. A liability. One I couldn’t afford. I didn’t trust that Dmitry would feel the same and cut Dax out of my life for me.

It was better my way.

The moment Dax exited the building, I felt the weight crash down on top of me, pushing me under the surface again.

38

Nicoleta

One week later …

Throughout my life, my mother had prattled off a number of verses from the Bible, most of which I’d ignored out of anger. The one that’d stuck with me, though, was the one she’d spoken as she lay dying of a heart attack on the bathroom floor.

Water becomes hard like stone, and the surface of the deep is imprisoned.

My mother had always taken Bible versus in a literal sense, a result of her own ignorance, I supposed. And the words she’d spoken that day had only exacerbated my rage, as I’d imagined she was trying to tell me that only through God’s love could the water be thawed or some shit. After all, she’d accused me of lying about what’d happened to me, had told me it was an unbelievable story, because what young girl could find the strength to cut herself free from being tied to an anchor, and then crawl back onto that dock?

When she’d fallen to the floor that night, I hadn’t called an ambulance. I hadn’t screamed for help, or attempted to save her, at all. I’d sat beside her, contemplating life without her, and the kind of strength I’d need to survive on my own.

I’d watched her take her last breath, her eyes pleading for my help, and had never once shed a tear.

It wasn’t until years later that the meaning of those words she’d spoken to me through choppy breaths had come to light.

In her own way, she’d been asking for forgiveness. Confessing that her heart had grown so hardened by life, all the words she’d wanted to say lay trapped and imprisoned within her.

I’d have to live with the fact that’d I’d denied her forgiveness, and instead watched her suffering. My first kill, a merciless act that’d landed me another admission into the psych ward, and the only one I’d regretted.

Perhaps she’d have changed over time. Maybe she’d also had a hard time communicating with others throughout her life, and the verses she’d spoken had deeper meaning than the credit I’d given them.

My mother and I weren’t entirely different in that respect.

I’d always allowed the icy surface to act as a barrier to the truth inside of me. Dax had been proof of that. So many times I’d wanted to show him the turbulent nature of my heart that lay hidden beneath the glassy surface of my smile. Instead, I’d fed him lies, my own verses, never fully expressing what he’d come to mean to me.

Cloaked in the darkness, I lay in the obscurity of my room, where I’d spent most of the week. Could’ve gone anywhere in the world with the money I’d stolen from Tesarik, but like a fool, I’d chosen to stay with Dmitry. He’d insisted, after I’d successfully delivered Tesarik to him, as promised. A deal I’d made with him, in exchange for the names of the men who’d hurt me, and where to find them.