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I’ll be there in fifteen.
My latest text read, and I clicked it back off when I felt her presence.
Quietly, her footfalls tumbled one after another and her silhouette neared the bed.
I lay down. She dropped her towel and slipped next to me. She didn’t move closer or utter a word. I slid the cover over her body before staring at the globes of faded light above with one hand behind my head.
Waiting.
Fifteen minutes, Arlo had promised.
Katia struggled to get comfortable, but if she lay still instead of fighting the pill she’d taken to do its job, sleep would claim her.
She turned in my direction, and I knew what was coming next. Almost anticipating it.
Katia’s hand seeking out my body.
I didn’t tense, I accepted it in the darkness for the short few minutes I would allow it.
“Lucca?” her sweet Italian accent called me.
“Hm…”
“If I asked you for something, would you see it through?” The Italian rolled off her lips.
Her eyes were closed, her breathing steady, and her cracked lip faced the shadows.
I pondered over her question and removed my gaze from her face, at whatIhad done.
And while Katia could ask for many things, I knew after staring into her vacant irises and blood-covered body that this promise wouldn’t be easy to see through.
Even then, I warned in our tongue. “Yes, so be careful what you ask of me next.”
She moved closer to me, placing her head against my side.
Groggily, her Italian wrestled slumber as it uttered, “Good. Because I don’t just want Borelli dead. I want California to fall.”
While Katia slipped into stupor, I lay still in the silence, moving pieces in my head, working my mind in riddles of destruction. Loopholes that could swift through minuscule windows but caused madness—hysteria.
And I was a master of it.
But for now, I had one loose end to handle. And after taking one last look at her sleeping body, I abandoned her warmth and dressed in all black.
Wex and Vino sat attentive. I opened the door and gestured for them to go to her, then closed the door behind them.
I had things to see through.
I tookeach step eagerly down the trail to the abandoned warehouse, itching to get my hands dirty. Thirsty for red. My demon was loose, and my soul was gone. All I wanted was punishment.
Clouds rolled over the moon and the night hid me in its darkness. Dew spread through the still canal, rolling in a thick blanket of malice, matching the cruel thoughts in my head.
Leaving the eerie silence behind, I stepped inside the wet and rusted metal building.
Old fishing nets and broken boat parts scattered throughout the building on the cracked floor. The smell of motor oil and gasoline lingered even after years of vacancy. The only thing that stood out was the concrete block room at the end we’d built.
Arlo, Viktor, and Ilias quieted down as they heard my heavy footsteps near. They were waiting by the closed door that trapped the future dead.
They all stood, alert.
