She's going to change things.
And I intend to be ready when she does.
The next morning, I make a call.
"I need everything you can find on a woman named Monika," I say. "Works at a diner on LaSalle. Grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania. Late teens, early twenties. I want to know where she was born, where she went to school, who her friendsare, who her enemies are. I want to know what she's afraid of and what she dreams about and what she'd kill to protect."
The voice on the other end doesn't ask questions. It never does.
"Forty-eight hours," the voice says.
"You have twenty-four."
I hang up and look at myself in the mirror. Twenty-three years old. My father's son. The heir to an empire I didn't ask for but will never refuse.
This is a problem, I think.
I smile at my reflection. It's a good smile. Charming. Disarming. The kind of smile that makes people trust you, right up until the moment they shouldn't.
I'm going to enjoy this.
5
The Stitch
Monika
The blood is always the first thing I notice.
Not the wound itself—not the shape of it, the depth, the things that are cut and the things that are still intact. The blood comes first, because blood tells you everything you need to know before you even look. The color tells you if it's venous or arterial. The flow tells you how much time you have. The smell tells you if there's something else wrong, something underneath, something that won't show itself until you're already inside.
I learned that in the barn. I learned it again in the diner, on a night I've been trying very hard not to think about.
Tonight, the blood is dark red and seeping slow. Venous. Not life-threatening, not yet, but the kind of wound that will turn into something worse if nobody does anything about it. The kind of wound that needs cleaning and closing and someone who isn'tafraid to push a needle through flesh that's still trying to hold itself together.
The man holding the towel against his arm is young. Younger than me, maybe—nineteen, twenty, the kind of age where you still think you're invincible even when you're bleeding through a dish rag in a diner at one in the morning. His face is pale, but he's not crying. He's not even shaking. He's just sitting in the booth with his jaw tight and his eyes fixed on the door, like he's waiting for someone.
Like he's waiting for permission to fall apart.
"The hospital is twenty minutes," I say, kneeling beside the booth with the first aid kit in my hands. "Maybe less if you run the lights. But you're not going to make it twenty minutes with that towel. You need stitches."
"Can't do a hospital." His voice is young too. Scratchy. Like he's been shouting. "No hospitals."
I've heard those words before. From another man, on another night, with different blood and a different wound. The echo of it makes something cold settle in my chest.
"Let me see," I say.
He hesitates. His eyes dart to the door again, and I realize he's not waiting for permission. He's waiting for someone specific. Someone he's afraid of disappointing.
"I don't have time for you to make up your mind," I say. "You're bleeding on the upholstery. Del will kill me if you ruin another booth. Show me your arm or get out."
That does it. He pulls the towel away, and I see the wound for the first time.
It's a knife wound. Clean entry, no jagged edges, which means the blade was sharp and the person holding it knew what they were doing. The cut runs along the outside of his forearm, from the wrist to halfway to the elbow—not deep enough to hit the bone, not shallow enough to ignore. The muscle beneathis visible, glistening pink and wet, and I feel my stomach do something that isn't quite a flip.
Not because I'm squeamish. I'm not. I've seen worse. I've put my hands inside worse.
Because I recognize this wound. I've seen it before, on animals that got into fights they shouldn't have started. This is a defensive wound. He put his arm up to block a blow, and the blade caught him on the way down.
