Page 52 of Ballistic

19

Nicoleta

I hated being alone in my thoughts. Particularly sober. My mother had always told me I overthought things as a child—looking into places I shouldn’t have, seeing things I shouldn’t have seen.

Always defensive and wary of others.

Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, but also trust in me, she’d say to me, as though she’d had any business asking for my trust.

Cigarette half hanging out of my lips, I flipped through Dax’s wallet he’d left on the bathroom sink. About three hundred dollars in crisp bills thickened it, along with a few pictures of Luna. The fact that he’d left it told me he either didn’t care if I stole the money out of it, or trusted I wouldn’t. Either way, I couldn’t fathom putting that much faith into someone.

After all, Dmitry had been like a father to me most of my life, and I still didn’t trust that he wouldn’t kill me if the mood struck him. He’d filled in the holes burned in my memories by the absence of my own father, and taught me things no regular parent had the courage to teach. Yet, the moment he’d gotten wind that the plans we’d made for Tesarik had taken a very selfish and one-sided turn, he’d quickly sought me out like a hound on a fox trail.

If I’d returned to him, I’d have been punished for my betrayal, because even if the end result was the same, there was no I in his game. The idea that I would take matters into my own hands would be unacceptable to Dmitry. He wasn’t a man who tolerated betrayal. Particularly from those he’d trusted most.

* * *

Marty, whom I’d come to know as the accountant, sat hunched over the books spread out across the small desk he’d been designated in Dmitry’s office. At the bigger desk across the room, Dmitry sat studying papers strewn all over the place, his face concentrated and focused.

Moving around them, I busied myself with a feather duster, lightly brushing it over furniture that didn’t have much chance to collect dust, seeing as I’d dusted it the day before. Where I lived, dusting happened when I could write my name on the TV stand.

Looking over the accountant’s shoulder, I noticed Marty working on the same spreadsheet as the day before. Pretty sure it was the same. I recognized the names, each with a dollar amount beside it, with the exception of one missing from the day before. The total at the bottom was off from the day before, too. Didn’t take a genius to figure the list was made up of men who owed him money, with all the numbers showing up green.

With a glance back at me, Marty frowned, and twisted his computer screen until I could no longer see it.

I kept along, dusting the bookshelf to the left of him.

“Excuse me for a moment,” he announced, pushing up from his chair and flipping the screen down.

“Make it quick.” Dmitry glanced up from a document he’d been reading. “I’m paying you by the hour to produce numbers, not to piss.”

“Of course, sir.” Marty shuffled out of the office, since Dmitry refused to let anyone use his personal bathroom.

“I think you’ve dusted enough in here, girl. Go on, find some other way to waste my time and money.”

Asshole.

With a smirk, I swiped the feathers over Marty’s coffee cup, smiling when bits of dust fell inside of it. “Think you need to pay more attention to your accountant.”

“What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

“’The fuck did you say?” He pushed up from his chair and rounded the desk, setting my pulse rate soaring.

I glanced to the computer beside me, and back to Dmitry, who didn’t look the least bit amused by my comment. “He’s skipping out on names. Yesterday, Jerrad Black was beneath Abdul Hemani. He wasn’t there this time.”

Dmitry frowned and strode across the room to the small desk, where he lifted the screen to reveal the spreadsheet. He scrolled back and opened files with other dates, eyes scanning between them. His jaw ticced, and he slammed the screen shut and walked back to his desk in time to the door opening to Marty. The accountant adjusted his glasses, shuffling across the room with his gaze cast toward the floor.

“Please excuse us,” Dmitry said to me, rolling his shoulders back.

I caught a small flicker of confusion dance across Marty’s face, as I passed him to exit the office.

* * *

I’d later learned that Marty had been skimming money off Dmitry for months, cutting deals with Jerrad Black on the side. I never saw Marty’s face in that office again, until it’d popped up on the news, when divers had fished his body out of the river. Jerrad Blacks had showed up sometime later, in a box full of dismembered body parts. And from that day on, Dmitry had me check every spreadsheet drafted by Marty’s replacement.

He didn’t fuck around when it came to someone screwing him over, so I had no reason to believe that I’d be the exception.