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I think of Ada back at the safehouse, wrapped up in a white bedsheet like a gift, and my eyes drift to her old bedroom window.
She doesn’t dance alone anymore. She dances with me.
There’s a beep from Guido’s phone with the returning message.
“O’Sullivan’s still tearing your place apart. We have thirty minutes. Maybe more.”
“How many left inside?”
“Five, including mine.”
“Let’s go.”
There’s a soft click as we approach the front door, and it notches open a crack.
“Facci entrare, Ronan,” Guido murmurs, and it opens wider to reveal a stocky man with a scowl.
“They’re all in the back having a smoke,” he says to the Italian, not even glancing at me. “Basement is this way.”
“Key?”
“We don’t need it. Guy’s half dead. He ain’t running anywhere.”
The huge lobby is striped with shadow. Up ahead, there’s a black door carved into a white wall.
“Ladies first.” Ronan swings it open to reveal a wooden staircase heading down.
“Be my guest,” I say, holding his gaze until he shakes his head in defeat.
“This is going to cost you an extra thousand, Guido,” he mutters, pushing past me.
The moment my foot hits the first step, I hear Ada’s voice in my head. She’s calling out to me.She’s scared…I stop dead, earning myself a curse from Guido who’s behind me.
“This isn’t the time to get cold feet, kid.”
“Not cold,” I say, as the dank, earthy smell rises up from below, curling invisible ropes around my ankles. “Just cautious.”
“This isn’t the time for that, either.”
Step follows step, until my boots hit concrete. There’s another odour down here, something beneath the stale fear and the tang of dried blood. Something sour and putrid with a bittersweet aroma.
Triumph.
“You took your time, Lastra,” comes a mocking brogue from the darkness.
A beat later, a blinding white light has me throwing my arm across my eyes as a vicious blow to the back of my head forces me to my knees.
“Jesus…Fuck!”
Another fist comes out of leftfield, smashing into my jaw and sending me sprawling before a heavy boot is making mincemeat of my rib cage and robbing my chest of air.
“Don’t kill him right away, Kirill,” chides the same voice. “In my house, we play with our fucking food before we carve it up.”
Coughing and wheezing, I rise to my hands and knees, trying hard not to vomit as my gun is kicked out of reach. My head is reeling. It feels like my future just got dumped on the concrete floor next to me, and it’s bleeding out a single word:
Betrayed.
“Don’t you know it’s polite to look a man in the face when you enter his home?” Another kick to my side has me rolling onto my back and groaning, staring up at a beast of a man with tattoos all over his arms and a smile on his face. It’s a dirty smile though, full of scorn and violence.“Shall we start with the formalities, Lastra? I don’t believe your father introduced us before I emptied five rounds into his chest.”
