by Nicole Fox
But how?
How do I get her back to her normal life without making problems for everyone? I’ve dug myself into a hole, I know that much. The smartest thing would’ve been to leave her in the alleyway, but we’re long past that being a solution.
There are too many loose ends to come up with a plan of action, and I try not to make a noise of frustration. Lucy is still peacefully asleep, and after the past twenty-four hours she’s had, some sleep might do her good. I have things to take care of, anyway.
I need to research Konstantin and learn more about him. Who is he, what is his schedule, and if I have time, just how badly has he pissed off Mr. X?
It takes all my strength to slide out of bed. If it were up to me, I’d sit there watching Lucy sleep for hours. I’d watch the rise and fall of her perfect chest or listen to the mumbling she does when she’s deep in sleep. But I have work to do.
I leave the door open just a crack and head downstairs for my laptop. There are things that need to be researched, and quickly. The faster I finish this assignment, the faster I get Lucy out of my life and back to her grandmother. Old lady must miss her.
I take a seat at my computer and begin looking Abram Konstantin up, but as I continue my search, I find an article about the fire Lucy told me about. There are pictures of her on the front lawn, crying. I never thought I’d care about someone else’s pain again, but seeing her sobbing, just a little girl, makes my heart squeeze.
Jesus.
I’m starting to think I have it bad for this woman. I don’t need the extra drama, yet here I am, complicating things even more. Whatever’s wrong with me, I need to get it together, too, just like I told her to do. If I don’t, I’m sure everything will go off the rails, and more people could get hurt. For the first time in what feels like years, I don’t want that. Rather than kill, I want to protect.
I want to protect Lucy.
Chapter Ten
Lucy
When I wake up, I halfway expect to find myself in my own bed at Nana’s. Everything that’s happened has all been some sort of screwed-up dream where I did things I would never do in real life. I wasn’t kidnapped. I wasn’t given a gun and instructed to shoot a man. I didn’t watch him die in front of me. It was only a bizarre fever dream.
But when I rub the sleep from my eyes and roll over, I realize that this isn’t my bed. I don’t know where I am. I sit up suddenly, my heart pounding. I’m alone. Did something happen to Roman?
Saying his name reminds me of the night before. Listening to the story of him and his family. Before, he struck me as a lone wolf, but I’m starting to see him as something else. He didn’t wake up one morning and decide that a life of crime was something he wanted to do for money or fun.
Before all of this, he was just a boy, with a family that loved him and that he loved back. His life was simple, like mine. I’m not sure what changed for him and turned him into this, but a big part of me mourns for what he must’ve been before we ever met. The little boy that had his childhood stolen from him.
It’s strange to think that I’m empathizing with someone like Roman. What he does is wrong. Good people don’t kill others, and they certainly don’t do it for money. They don’t work with shady underground crime lords who have ominous names like “Mr. X.”
But ever since yesterday, I’m beginning to wonder what being a good person means anymore. Am I a good person? I want to say yes. I want to say that me coming home to take care of Nana was a good thing. Me always being willing to fill in for coworkers without question is a good thing. All the times I’ve ever donated, helped when I didn’t need to, or given someone a hand are all good things.
But I’ve also done bad things. Shooting that man in the diner was a bad thing, even if Roman says that I saved lives. It doesn’t feel like it. It feels like I’m no better than those three men. And now I’m supposed to move on and forget it never happened? I’m supposed to continue living while the knowledge of what I did weighs down on me? Impossible.
There’s a little voice in the back of my head that asks, “How else are you going to take down Konstantin?”
I can’t be soft if I want to make him pay. I can’t be worried about morality when it comes to taking him out. Me being good won’t help me save another life. Shooting one of the attackers in the diner didn’t feel like saving lives, but shooting Abram Konstantin? Shooting him and watching him die sounds like a mercy killing to me.
How can I say that?
How can I say that watching someone die would be good? Have I really become so cold in only a few days? Have I become the monster that I imagined Roman to be when I first encountered him in the alley?
Back and forth and back and forth my thoughts go. I can’t settle on one or the other, and I can’t stop the chaos of endless thinking. I see Konstantin and Nana and Roman and my parents, all pointing in different directions and shouting at me with voices that don’t make any sense. It feels like my head is going to split open.
My breathing grows shallow and I bring my knees to my chest, another panic attack on the horizon. I can feel it creeping, sneaking up on me like a creature from my nightmares. I squeeze my eyes and try to breathe slowly, concentrating on something else—anything else.
The time Dad took me swimming. I’d been terrified of the water ever since I stayed up too late and watched Jaws, and after that film, I never wanted to swim again. Dad loved the pool, and after a lot of convincing, I finally gave in and went with him. He didn’t throw me in the water. We eased into it, first with our toes, then our feet, and then eventually our entire bodies.
I can still hear him telling me to keep breathing. To focus on steady breaths and not the anxiety threatening to drown me. Picture all the good times I’d had in the water. Birthday parties, late- night swims, all of it. It took a long time for me to finally swim again, but when it happened, it was beautiful.
I wasn’t afraid anymore. I wasn’t afraid of swimming, or sharks, or anything. Ever since then, I’ve used that technique. Taking whatever scary situation I’m in and remembering the good things. It takes a minute before I’m able to stop panicking, but soon the thoughts come back.
Listening to Roman telling me about his family was nice.
Feeling him on top of me in the motel room and inside of me in the bathroom.
Watching him throw himself into the face of danger to protect the people in the diner.
These are what bring me back, and soon, I feel the anxiety ease away, slipping back under the bed like the boogeyman. Calmer now, I take a deep breath and open my eyes. The house we’re in is silent, save for a bit of noise coming from downstairs. After I pop into the bathroom to look over my face and fix my hair, I tiptoe down the staircase and peek around the corner, following the soft noise.
To my surprise, I find Roman in the kitchen, shirtless, singing to himself as he cooks. I bite back a laugh so he doesn’t notice me and lean against the wall, watching him as he works. I can’t tell what he’s making, but whatever it is, it smells delicious. Roman’s voice isn’t the best, but the fact that he’s off-key makes him almost ... endearing. It’s a strange feeling, saying that about someone who’s killed three people since we started talking.
What finally makes me break and laugh out loud is Roman doing a little dance to go along with his singing. The second I giggle, he stops singing and spins around. I’ve never seen a grown man blush before, but whatever Roman is doing now comes pretty damn close to that.
“What are you doing?” he demands, his eyes hard.
“Just watching you perform. Don’t stop on my behalf,” I say, waving a hand. “Keep going!”
“No,” he mutters. He turns his back and goes back to cooking, this time not singing anything at all.
I let out a sigh and cross the room until I’m right behind him. “I liked your singing.”
“No you didn’t.”
“I did!”
He glances at me, trying to discern whether I’m being honest or pullin
g his leg. “I’m not any good at it. I just like doing it whenever I cook.”
I know what he means. I’m a terrible singer as well, but whenever I’m in the shower, you can’t tell me that I’m not Mariah Carey or Celine Dion. I’ll belt it out to my heart’s content, ignoring the fact that I sound like a dying cat with a cattle prod up its ass. It’s embarrassing, but I think that’s what makes it fun. The fact that I don’t care that I don’t sound good is empowering in a way.
“Do you cook often?” I ask. I take a seat on the counter beside him, watching as he stirs peppers and onions together in a small skillet. The smell is to die for. On the burner in the back, bacon fries loudly.
“I usually don’t have time to cook anything. Breakfast is my favorite, but I sleep through it most days,” he says.
“The good thing about breakfast is that when you have it for dinner, it tastes even better. Pancakes are so much better after dark.”
“You’re right,” he says, looking up at me and smiling.
I’m not prepared for it, because the way my heart squeezes makes me feel like I’m in a silly rom-com. I shouldn’t be feeling this way about someone like Roman. I may have done a few bad things, but this is his life. His life, his main source of income, revolves around killing people, and not just people that have done bad things, like hurt others or endangered people. He kills anyone that his shadowy boss tells him to.
This is like some book that I’d write. There’d be a heroine that knows herself and what her morals are, only to question them when she falls for a dangerous criminal. The only difference is that in those stories, there are happy endings. Something tells me that the way our story ends isn’t as happy and carefree as one I’d write.
We can’t possibly make this work.
Not that I have any feelings for him or anything.
Thoughts of yesterday morning come flooding back to me. The way he held me against his chest as he pounded away, rough and brutal. I’ve never considered myself someone that enjoys sex that way, but with him, it made sense. He couldn’t be sweet and tender, not in a scenario like that. Not after I slapped him and yelled at him. And I’m glad he wasn’t kind. I’m glad he didn’t sugarcoat his advances towards me. There was something undeniably sexier about him telling me what would happen and me pressing his buttons anyway.
Swallowing hard, I look at the eggs he’s scrambling in a small glass bowl. “My mom used to love her eggs super runny. I never liked that.”
“No?”
“Nope. I always ate them when she made them, but I hated it. I like them firmer. One time, I was sick of her cooking, and tried to make breakfast for myself. I had to be seven, maybe eight. I thought I knew everything about cooking.” I can barely start to retell the memory without laughing softly. “I woke up super early and decided that day was my culinary debut. I had all the ingredients laid out and everything. The only problem was that I didn’t know how to work the dials for the burners. I buttered the pan and turned it on, letting it melt the butter while I ran off to go watch cartoons.
“The problem was, I turned on the wrong burner, and the washcloth that we used to clean the counters was sitting on the back burner. By the time I came back after a commercial break, the whole rag was up in flames.”
Roman’s eyes widen, and a smile forms on his face. “Are you serious?”
“Dead serious!” I exclaim. “I almost started crying, but I had to think on my feet. I grabbed the rug and hurried to the sink, soaking it to put out the flames. When I was finished, I wiped my forehead like I got away with it, but my mom was standing behind me the entire time, watching me make a fool of myself.” I shake my head and laugh some more.
Mom was pissed. She never let me forget it, and even now, as I retell the story to Roman, I can remember the angry lines forming in her forehead. She’d told me time and time again not to mess around in the kitchen, but I didn’t listen. I was young and hardheaded, and I had something to prove to her. It’s a wonder the house didn’t burn down then and there. No, that would come a few years down the road.
After we stop laughing, Roman looks at me and says, “You’ve never been good at following the rules, have you?”
“Maybe not,” I say, shrugging. “But following the rules is boring. It’s more fun to learn the rules and then learn how to break them without getting in trouble.”
Roman sighs and glances up at me. “You sound like my brothers.”
“What were they like?” I ask.
“Gedeon was a smartass,” he says, mixing up the eggs. I watch as he seasons them, leaving them chunky and fluffy, just how I like them. “He always ran his mouth. Always got us all in trouble. And Ivan followed him like a shadow. If Gedeon did something, Ivan wanted to do it too. He was that way for me as well, but he really attached himself to Gedeon.”
I smile fondly. I can see that dynamic perfectly. They must have been younger than him. It makes sense, Roman as the oldest. The leader. The role model.
“One time, Gedeon decided that he wanted to be some sort of survivalist. He’d been watching TV shows about it, and decided that forest life was for him. Our mother told him that he wasn’t allowed to do something like that, but he didn’t agree. He packed up his bags in the middle of the night, and he and Ivan ran away from home.”
I cover my mouth. “Oh my God. Your parents must have been terrified!”
Roman nods. “My mother was frantic. She thought someone had broken into the house and kidnapped them or something. Eventually, we found them a mile away, living in a tent they’d set up by the river behind our house. Dad was fuming. Now that I look back, it was kind of funny to imagine them running away and living off the land for a night, but in the moment, we were sure a bear had gotten them or something.”
I can’t believe that I ever thought what I did was dangerous. I was just cooking inside the house, meanwhile Roman’s brothers were turning into Bear Grylls, roughing it out in the middle of nowhere. My story doesn’t hold a candle to his.
“Were you a good kid?” I ask.
Roman doesn’t say anything for a long while. He takes all the food off the burners and begins plating it, dividing everything into two. Behind us, the toaster pops and four pieces of bread come out, perfectly cooked.
“I wasn’t a bad kid,” he says. “I don’t think I was good, but I didn’t cause trouble. I stayed to myself. I kept out of trouble.”
Roman as a child is a funny thing to imagine. For some reason, I just picture him as the same person he is today, all hard eyes, strong jawline, and muscle. The only difference is, he’s fourteen or so.
“Is what happened with your parents ... what made you decide to do this for a living?”
I can tell that question isn’t something he expected, because his whole body tenses up and his lips flatten into a paper-thin line. I swallow hard, realizing that I’ve crossed a line I didn’t quite know existed. I mean, I knew his descent into darkness was a touchy subject, but I thought maybe he would be more willing to talk about it now that we were sharing stories.
I just want to know how he got from well-behaved and mild-mannered child to cold-blooded, emotionless killer. That kind of drastic change in personality doesn’t come without an interesting backstory.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” I say. After the laughs we’ve shared this morning, I don’t want to ruin this. I don’t want to make things awkward after everything we’ve been through. He’s just starting to open up and not look at me like I’m the biggest mistake he’s ever made. Pushing him further than he’s willing to go would jeopardize all the steps forward we’ve taken.
“I’d rather not,” he says.
“Okay,” I nod. “We’ll talk about something else.”
I rack my brain for a new topic, something that doesn’t make the air in the room feel so stuffy and suffocating. I consider bringing up shows I’ve been watching, but I don’t think Roman will be able to relate to that. If our night in the motel was any clue, i
t seems he only watches the news, and that’s just to check and see if his murders were noticed by the police. But maybe that’s it. Maybe business is the language he prefers to speak.
“We should talk about how you’re going to let me be a part of this now,” I say, bringing my plate to the table and sitting down across from him. Roman picks at his food, eyeing me suspiciously.
“That’s what I’m doing?”
“That’s what you’re doing,” I say. I take a bite from my bacon and chew, staring him down. I dare him to tell me that he’s not going to help me now. “I shot someone, and we left him to die. I’m in this now. I heard what they said. They knew that I was with you. They knew what I looked like. Had you never taken me to the motel, I wouldn’t be in this mess.”
Roman shakes his head. “Had you never gone down that alley, you would’ve never seen me complete an assignment.”
“Had you not been killing people for money, I wouldn’t have seen anything walking down that alley,” I retort, raising an eyebrow at him. I have people on my ass now because of what his job is. Those people weren’t there to kill me; they were there for him. I just happened to be with him, and now I’m caught up in the same chaos.
“Roman, you got me into this mess. No matter how we try to spin it or make it like it was my fault, I’m not the hit man. I’m not the one that goes around killing people. That’s you. And I almost died yesterday, so I think the least you can do is let me help you take out Konstantin. That’s all I’m asking. We can pretend we don’t know each other when it’s all said and done, but at the end of the day, I want to help.”
Roman eats silently, mulling things over in his mind. What I wouldn’t give for just a moment inside it, picking apart his thoughts and seeing him weigh all the options. Does he consider me a liability? Maybe I’m not fully recovered from what happened yesterday, but the fact still remains that I didn’t need him to come and save me. I took care of that masked man on my own, without any help. He may have put the gun in my hand, but I pulled the trigger. And if the next time I do it, as long as I’m aiming at Abram Konstantin, I think this mess will all have been worth it.
