“Going somewhere special, Miss Orlova?” The security guy asks as I pull up to wait for the gate to open fully.
“Just picking up some fabric for my mom,” I say, smiling up at him.He is young-ish,I think to myself, wondering if I’d swipe left or right if I found him on a dating app.
The drive is twenty minutes of winding road through countryside that quickly changes to urban development. I roll the window down even though it's cool, because the air smells like cut grass and the possibility of rain.
Something loud and stupid that I can sing along to without thinking comes through the speakers and I turn the radio up. I drum my fingers on the steering wheel and think about absolutely nothing, which is my favorite kind of thinking, thekind where the thoughts don't land anywhere, where they just float past like clouds.
Antonelli's is on a side street off the main road. It's the kind of shop that's been there for fifty years, run by a man who knows my mother by name and still hand-wraps everything in tissue paper.
The lace is beautiful. Pink and impossibly fine. I wonder if ma knows Mila is not the type of kid who is going to be able to keep pretty dresses clean. She has too much Orlov in her.
I thank Mr. Antonelli and promise not to be a stranger before stepping out into the warm afternoon with the tissue-wrapped parcel in my hands. I'm thinking about coffee, about whether I have time to stop at the place on the corner, the one that does the almond croissants that are so good I always order two.
A van pulls up a little too suddenly near my car. A delivery for Mr Antonelli, probably, but I still frown at the driver for being so reckless.
He keeps the engine running. The side door slides open so hard it bounces in its brackets.
A chill moves through me. An old and instinctive alarm that lives in the back of the brain. The part that remembers what it means to be prey.
I stop walking.
A man jumps from the back of the van, his eyes on me.
My brothers have told me a thousand times what to do if something feels wrong.Don't freeze, Iris. Don't wait to understand. Just run.
But as I turn to run, his hands are already on me.
A cloth, chemical-sweet, is pressed over my mouth and nose. An arm like an iron bar clamps around my waist. My feet leave the ground before I can even think to scream. The tissue-wrapped lace falls to the pavement as I lift my hands to his, to try and pull the cloth away.
I can’t breathe.
I'm dragged backward, into the dark mouth of the van, and I fight. I kick and claw and bite and scream into the cloth, but the chemical is already in my lungs, already softening my muscles, already pulling me under.
The last thing I see is the blue sky through the van doors as they slam shut.
The last thing I think is:They'll come for me. My brothers will come for me.
Yakob
The notification arrives at 3:47 a.m.
I'm awake. Sleep is a habit I broke years ago, the way you break a bone that heals crooked and never sits right again. I rest in shifts. Two hours here, ninety minutes there. Enough to keep the body functional. Never enough to dream.
I check the phone. A deposit. A sum of money that make my eyebrow twitch. Followed by coordinates, and a single word.
Urgent.
I sit on the edge of my cot in a safe house outside Sao Paulo and stare at the number on the screen. It's more money than most contracts pay in full, and this is just the advance. Whoever is buying my services is either very wealthy or very desperate. In my experience, the two tend to travel together.
The coordinates point to an estate. I cross-reference them against the mental map I keep of every power structure worth knowing. Bratva. Orlov.
I know the name. Everyone in this world knows the name. Five brothers. Connected. Dangerous. The kind of family that doesn't ask for outside help because they've never needed it.
Until now, apparently.
I shower, dress, and pack. Everything I own fits in a single bag. Weapons. Documents. A change of clothes. A med kit. A new burner phone.
That's it. That's the sum of my life.
