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“I know. And I’m gonna catch you again.”

He closes his eyes. Right there in my bed with his gun next to my head and his hand on my neck, like he lives here.

I lie there a long time with my eyes open, staring at the brand-new laptop on my desk.

Mama always said, if a man shows you who he is, believe him.

He’s showing me.

Lord, help me. I believe him.

Five

Sasha

She falls asleep on top of me at 1:12 a.m. She fights it. She lies on my chest in that little twin bed with her eyes open, staring at the laptop on her desk, holding herself stiff, like if she relaxes for one second I’ll do it to her again. She’s right. I would.

But her body’s done. It’s been fucked and scared and fucked again, and it doesn’t care what she wants anymore. Her breathing goes slow. Her fingers uncurl on my chest. Her thighs go soft on either side of mine, and my cum’s still slipping out of her, warm and slow, soaking into my pants.

I lie there and listen to her breathe.

This bed is fucking ridiculous. My feet are hanging off the end. The mattress has a spring in it that’s been stabbing me in the kidney for an hour. There’s a stuffed bear on the floor staring at me with one eye. The window’s got a crack in it. The heater ticks. Somebody upstairs is walking around in boots at one in the morning. You can hear the 405 from here.

She’s lived like this for three years. Alone. Broke. Thin walls and broken gates and a lock any junkie with a credit card could open.

Not one more fucking night.

I pick up my phone off her nightstand, next to my gun, and text Misha.

Now.

* * *

They come in quiet. Misha, Yuri’s cousin Gleb, and two more. Soft-soled shoes. Flattened boxes under their arms. Nobody says a word. They know better.

I don’t get up. I lie right there with her asleep on my chest and point.

Closet. Dresser. Desk. Books. The shoes by the door. The beat-up work flats. The hair stuff in the bathroom, all the bottles and jars and the little silk pillowcase on the towel rack. The pictures on her mirror. Her and Tasha at some party. Her and an older woman with the same eyes, standing in front of a church.

Her mama.

I’ll be meeting her.

Misha holds up the bear and raises an eyebrow at me.

“Everything,” I say, low.

He puts the bear in a box.

They work around us for forty minutes. Her whole life goes into eleven boxes and three garbage bags, and the room gets emptier and emptier around her, and she doesn’t wake up once. She sighs a couple of times. She mumbles something about Paul D. She grinds her face into my chest and tightens her fingers in my hoodie.

When they’re done, there’s nothing left but the bed, the desk, the cracked window, and us.

Misha comes back from the kitchen. “The roommates?”

“Leave them something.”

He takes an envelope out of his pocket, thick enough to choke a horse, and puts it on the kitchen counter. Her share of the rent through the end of the lease. Plus enough that Tasha won’t call the cops. Plus enough that she’ll think about it, and decide it’s sweet.