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“Take it however you want. I’m just here to get rid of the slime, you know? Anyway, I’m tired as shit, I got dried up noodles in my bed, and I haven’t taken a shower in a goddamn week, so I’m going to let you go,” he says.
“Living like a king.”
“King of the rats, maybe.”
I laugh, and we end the call.
I know Bobby isn’t going back to sleep. The prospect of making more money is going to keep him up, and at five thousand dollars per member of The Red Council he whacks, he’s getting a great deal. He could take out a dozen of them in a weekend, and nobody would care to see them go.
I pocket my phone and head to my office, where my computer is asleep on the table. I wiggle the mouse to wake it up, not bothering to sit down as I type in my password. I just want to check my emails to see if I’ve gotten anything from Ivan.
He’s been quiet, which means he’s been busy, but it still makes me nervous that he hasn’t reached out at all since I left Antarctica.
I scroll through various unread emails from the company that provided me the guards who fled the moment they heard that police siren. I’m sure they’d like for me to forgive them so that they can continue to collect paychecks for doing nothing, but trust is earned, and once lost, it’s gone forever.
God’s job is forgiveness, not mine.
I’m about to close out of my browser when I spot an emailed marked as important. It’s from Ivan.
I double-click the email and wait for the computer to decrypt it. I smile when I’m able to read what it says.
The reactor is up and running. All systems go.
That motherfucker finally did it. Pretty soon, we’re going to have so many diamonds that we’ll be bathing in them.
33
Taylor
Iused to care so much about money but living on an island with Danya has taught me that there’s more to life than buying new clothes and purses.
I hardly ever think about what my life was like in the United States. Consumerism doesn’t fit who I am anymore. I’m far more content wandering around the garden, picking berries and reading books in the afternoon sun.
In the six months we’ve been here, things have slowed down, and I finally realized that becoming a mother has far more purpose to me than day-drinking and shopping. I think that the baby has done more good for me than anything else ever could. I know they say not to try to fix your problems by having a baby, but I really feel that I’ve become a totally different person in the face of my quickly approaching birthing experience.
Maybe it’s the hormones. I guess I’ll know when our baby is finally born.
We found out just a week ago that it was going to be a boy. I was trying to wait until the last moment, but Danya wasn’t patient enough, and insisted on knowing.
He’s been jumping around the house since I started seeing a doctor and getting updates, begging to know how things are going. At this point, it feels like he knows more about what’s going on inside my body than I do.
I find it charming, but he’s definitely more anxious since my pregnancy began. The bigger my belly has gotten, the more energetic he’s become, and now he’s practically jumping instead of walking everywhere we go.
I look toward the house, thinking him into existence and watching him open the door and step outside. He waves at me from the other side of the garden, beckoning me toward him.
And, like a moth to the silver light of the moon, I’m drawn to him.
He’s smiling, but his smile fades as I approach him. “Hey, a little bit of news for you,” he says, his eyebrows creased together in a tight frown.
I fear the worst.
Ever since the attack on the island, I’ve had dreams about members of The Red Council sneaking into the house and kidnapping me in my sleep. It’s a mixture of what happened when my father had me taken to Russia, and the awful knowledge that The Red Council may still be out there, plotting and planning to have us all killed.
Of course, Danya says he’s taking care of them, but I haven’t heard a word about it since the day they first landed on our island. It’s like everyone vanished.
Maybe that was all of them.
As I waddle up to Danya, he smiles at me, and I know the news can’t be that bad. When Danya is genuinely concerned about something, he won’t smile for anything. He’s like a big block of iron, permanently molded into a scowl.
