12
LYRA
Ilook up at the ceiling, counting the shadows that dance across it from the streetlight outside. The neighbor's TV blares through the thin walls, some sitcom with canned laughter.
I'm bored.
And I love it.
I never knew boredom before. I was always busy. Back then, my nights were filled with chaos. Screaming. I'd be hunched over a half-conscious man, trying to stop all his blood from spilling out, or patching up a woman so broken inside, no number of stitches could hold her together. There was always someone bleeding, always someone dying, always someone threatening what would happen if I failed.
Now, the murmur of voices and laugh tracks almost feels like a luxury.
It's been a week since Declan called. Seven days of silence from that black phone he gave me. Seven nights of checking it before bed, making sure the volume is up, the battery charged.
Not because I'm waiting for him to call. I mean, I try not to think about him, but my mind has other ideas. Not because I'm semi-intrigued by the whole brooding, green-eyed thing he's got going on, but because he's my payday. Money. That's the only reason he's taking up more mental real estate than any mafia prince should.
That's what I keep telling myself anyway.
I turn onto my side, punching my pillow into submission. My tank top twists around my torso, and I yank it back into place.
Just the money.
The sitcom next door ends, and for a moment, there's blessed silence. Then a commercial starts up and I swear I hear the wordluck,and my memories kick in.
Lucky. That's what the other girls called me when they found out. Lucky, in terms of how lucky someone sold to the mafia can be.
I remember the doctor's face when he told me I'd never have children. Straight-faced. Like he was reading simple lab results, not changing my whole future.
I remember the Albanian who was with me, his reaction even more. How he hurled a glass jar of Q-tips at the wall like it was the doctor's fault. How he yelled at me like it was mine. How his breath reeked of cigarettes.
I also remember the sickening feeling of realizing that his reaction wasn't because he cared about my loss, but because damaged goods are worth less.
"Now what the fuck do we do with you? What good are you? Huh?" he said to me in the car on the way back to their compound.
That was the night they tattooed the scalpel on my wrist and sent me to be trained as a fixer. The night they decided if I couldn't make money one way, I'd make it another.
Fast forward a few months and they gave me a new name, The Ghost Angel. That's what they started calling me after I saved a man everyone thought was dead. Brought him back from the brink with nothing but a sewing kit and cheap vodka.
Fuck, I hate that name. And that fucking tattoo.
I shut my eyes. Enough of that, I think, pulling the thin sheet up to my chin.
Sleep comes, but it's not peaceful.
A buzz pulls me out of the half-sleep I drifted into.
The phone buzzes on my nightstand, jolting me awake. It's the black one.
Declan.
My heart jumps as I fumble for it, squinting against the harsh blue light of the screen.
It's a text.
OPEN YOUR DOOR. HURRY.
What the hell?
