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Placing my hands on the desk, I drop my head and shut my eyes briefly.
“What happened to her legs?”
“Bad circumstances, a baseball bat and two men who are at the top of my kill list.” Grabbing the phone, I drag it towards me to try Silas again, but there’s still no answer. “Can you hack into dance lady’s studio, like we talked about?”
“Sure, but can we start calling her Ada now?” She spins her laptop around and sets to work as Nancy delivers another triple espresso to the office. “If you drink that, you’ll have a heart attack,” she says, eyeing it suspiciously once my assistant disappears again.
“Good. Would you come to my funeral?”
“Nope. I’d rather stick pins in my eyeballs.” The ‘p’ is more pronounced than ever, but her secret smile gives her away. “Did you know that dolphins eat puffer fish to get high?”
“Maybe I should start dealing them instead of coke. What’s the profit margin? And when was the last time you saw Viper?”
“He made me a crap sandwich around midday, then disappeared. Thiago dropped me off here an hour ago.”
“What remarkable parenting skills,” I mutter, as my iPhone starts ringing. It’s the Texan thundercloud again. “Shit.”
“I don’t think the cameras are working,” she says, showing me a screen of static footage. Meanwhile, my phone isstillringing.
Gritting my teeth, I finally answer it. “Grayson—”
“Get the fuck out of your casino!” he yells, cutting me off immediately, the sound of screeching tyres rising up in the background. “Move! You’ve been compromised!”
A beat later, there’s the rapid sound of gunfire coming from the gaming floor next door.
CHAPTER 35
ADA
This morning, when I wrote Alex and Frankie’s names in the condensation in my bathroom, I pictured us together.
We were in a forest—a place I’ve never been to before—where the trees were like giants and that earthy damp aroma was sweetly overpowering. They were walking a couple of metres in front of me, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying because of all the bird song in the branches overhead.
I called out their names, but only Frankie turned around. Alex just kept on walking, his skinny boy shoulders stooped, his head hanging low. Soon, he was nothing more than a dot, taking half of my heart with him when he finally faded from view.
Frankie took a step towards me, and then his eyes fixed on something over my left shoulder. When I turned, I saw a flash of pink, but the more I looked for it, the more I couldn’t find it.
The rest of the day has been stagnant and stale. I’ve wandered from room to room, finding emptiness in all of them, trailing my sadness behind me like a dark shadow. There’s a strange atmosphere about the place, like there are secrets in the stillness that are tired of being unheard.
I tried to read, but all I saw were words that were blurry and asinine. Any food I ate tasted bitter and bland. I spilled some water on the counter and found myself writing out the number four in it before daring to believe in a life outside my prison walls.
It’s not just this house that is restless. Every time I glance out of the window, there are fewer and fewer Bratva soldiers patrolling the grounds. When I look again at six p.m., I only see one.
In the end, I head back upstairs to lie down, but ten minutes later there’s a loud thump at my bedroom door, followed by another.
“Get up,blyad!” Adrik’s surly voice ramps up again, with another desultory thump. “Your husband is waiting for you.”
Kirill’s here?
Stealing myself, I follow him downstairs and into the kitchen. Kirill is leaning against the counter, ankles crossed, balancing a small, serrated hunting knife on the back of his knuckles. It’s the most relaxed I’ve seen him in days, which makes me instantly wary.
He looks up as I enter and beckons me over, stepping aside to reveal a laptop that’s open on the counter. “I’ve brought you a gift,meelaya,” he greets with a smirk, which tells me it’s nothing good.
I stop dead, despising the glint in his dark eyes. Wishing I could stop the countdown that’s started in my head. The only gifts he’s ever given me have come with his fists.
A rough shove from Adrik has me stumbling forward. At the same time, Kirill clicks a button on the laptop and the screen flickers to life.
I recognise the security feed immediately. It’s my empty studio. My mother’s legacy. My lifeline when everything else had been severed.
