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Romy
Only when the burning in my shoulder blades and glutes becomes too much do I stop doing the front crawl. I pull myself out of the water, legs wobbly and chest tight, and sit on the ledge to catch my breath.
Between reading, writing, and cooking, I’ve added another verb to my daily routine: swimming. Something about gliding through water gives me a sense of peace, even if it’s a false one.
Exhausted, I wrap a towel around me and step into the waiting elevator, drip, drip, dripping chlorine-filled water onto the plush velvet floor.
In the penthouse, I find Donnacha in the kitchen, shaking a sizzling pan.
“Cooking without me?” I pout, creeping up behind him and resting my wet head on his back. “Were last night’s tacos really that bad?”
It’s the way his muscles tense. That’s how I know something’s wrong. Before I can ask him, he turns around, pulling my head into his chest like he couldn’t give a flying fuck that I’m wetter than a seal. He rests his chin on my hair and says, “I can see why you like doing this. It’s relaxing, I suppose.”
I pull my head away to study his face. Dark circles underline his eyes, and the lines around them are deeper. “You’re stressed. What’s happened?”
His sigh comes out as a grunt, and he rubs his thumb over my cheekbone. “Business shit. Nothing you need to worry your pretty little head about. Have you heard of a hairdryer, by the way?”
But my heart does a double-beat. “Business shit? What’s happened? Is it Belsky?”
He purses his lips, then his shoulders sag. “Yeah,” he says reluctantly. With another groan, he twists around and pulls something from the back pocket of his jeans. A note. He holds it up, then chunks it on the island behind me.
I wriggle out of his embrace to pick it up with trembling hands.
“Our candidate is dead,” he says quietly, snaking his arms around me from behind and leaning his chin on my shoulder.
My blood turns to ice. “A-Are you sure?”
“Unless he’s like a chicken and can survive without his head.” He plants small kisses up my damp neck—something that’d usually make my knees weaken but not tonight. “It’s currently in a box in Poppy’s office.”
I look down at the note in my hands. Thick card and folded in half with a crisp line.
“It won’t make good reading practice, I’m afraid. It’s in Russian.”
Cyrillic symbols in Belsky’s staccato handwriting glare up at me, the words easier to read than any of Aisling’s children’s books.
Let the war begin.
A fat droplet falls from my brow onto the paper, making the ink run like blood down the page.
“We’ve had it translated. He’s declaring war, Romy,” he says quietly, peeling the towel from my body and letting it drop to the floor. “This…arrangement of ours, it’s going to last a little longer than expected.”
His hand dips under the neckline of my swimsuit and massages my breast. For a moment, my eyes flutter closed as my nipple stiffens against his palm. But no matter how good it feels, lust gives way to panic, and I step out of Donnacha’s grasp and turn my attention back to the note.
“Was this it?” I croak. “This note and the…head?”
He huffs behind me. “What, were you expecting more? A finger or two, perhaps?”
“I—”
“There’s also a drawing on the back that’s freaked Poppy out to no end. Lorcan, too.”
I flip it over, greeted immediately by more Russian.
And to your wife:
Underneath, there’s a sketch of a spider tangled up in its own web.
“He’s not exactly Picasso, is he?” Donnacha grunts from behind me.
