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I’ve just finished pureeing my raspberries with syrup, sugar, and lemon juice, and am pressing the mixture through a fine mesh sieve into a bowl when the front door slams open and Luka stomps into the kitchen. As soon as I see him, I drop the sieve and rush around the island.
“Are you okay?”
He is covered in blood. It is soaked into his shirt, splattered up his arms, and drenching his pants. I reach out to him, ready to search him for any cuts or wounds. I’ve never been comfortable around blood or the injured, but I’d stitch him up myself if it meant saving his life.
Luka brushes me away without touching me and moves to the sink. He turns on the faucet and sticks his bloody knife beneath the stream. That is when I realize the blood isn’t his.
Wordlessly, he cleans his knife, washes his hands, and tugs his t-shirt over his head. The muscles of his back—tinged with the blood that soaked through his shirt—ripple beneath his skin, and I look away before I can grow flushed by the mere sight of him.
Then, he balls up his shirt and leaves. I hear him pound up the stairs, and then a few minutes later, he bounds back down the stairs and out once again through the front door. I still haven’t moved.
I stand, frozen and shaken, in the kitchen until the timer for the cakes go off. After what I’ve just seen, it feels stupid to be making a three-layer chocolate cake, but I’ve come too far to let it burn now. So, I pull the cakes out, level them with a kitchen knife, and soak them with the raspberry coulis. Then, I stack them, spreading thick dollops of chocolate buttercream in between each layer.
Luka has been taking on more work since our falling out. He leaves early in the morning and doesn’t come back until late in the evening. When he does, he is covered in blood. I’m too afraid to ask specifically what he is doing, but I know it has to have something to do with the Irish mob. It is why my connection to the Irish gunrunner, is such a big deal. Luka and his father think my failed engagement to a member of the Irish mob is the reason some of the Volkov soldiers were killed at our wedding. They think I somehow plotted the attack and am trying to destroy them from the inside. So, they are holding me prisoner and killing the Irish mob one by one.
Even with that horrible thought in my head, I just want Luka to be safe.
When I’m finished with the cake, I can’t even consider eating a slice. My stomach is a ball of nerves, wondering what Luka is doing and whether he’ll be home tonight. I want to leave the mansion and go look for him, but my tracker bracelet would tip him off immediately, and I don’t want to incur his wrath for leaving.
I lean against the counter and tug on the gold band. It is strong, definitely fortified with another kind of metal. When I first arrived in the mansion, I tested out various methods of breaking it from my wrist with no success. I gave up the pursuit pretty quickly, but now that Luka hates me and is feeling murderous, perhaps I should take up the pastime again. I may find myself needing to make a quick escape sooner rather than later.
Still, not wanting to go upstairs to my room, I walk into the sitting room and sit on the couch. The same couch where Luka and I came after our first date. The same couch where we kissed for the first time.
I know he won’t want to see me when and if he comes home, but after seeing him covered in blood, I can’t imagine falling asleep before I’m certain he is safe. That my husband is okay. So, I sit in the same spot where Luka sat the night of our first kiss and tuck my legs up underneath me. I wait for what feels like hours. My eyes grow heavy, and I do my best to keep them open, but eventually, all of my sleepless nights catch up with me, and I fall asleep.
* * *
Isee Cal Higgs, standing in the kitchen of The Floating Crown. He looks exactly like I remember him. His face is pale and doughy, and he is kneading dough for bread. I watch his technique, the way he rolls the ball to one side and then the other, switching hands with each pass. I always under-knead, so I study his movements, hoping to learn from him. As I’m watching, however, I begin to notice his fingernails going black. I don’t say anything because I know he’ll be annoyed with me for interrupting him, but the longer I stare, the darker they get. Then, the color begins to spread to his fingers and his wrists. Like vines climbing a chimney, the color wraps up his hands until it looks like he is wearing elbow-length navy-blue gloves with his chef’s apron.
“Cal, what is wrong with your hands?” I ask, walking around the counter so I’m standing in front of him.
He looks up, and his eyes are milky. I stumble backwards, startled.
Cal opens his mouth to respond, but blood pours out.
I try to scream, but I can’t make any sound, and then there is an arm around my shoulders. I turn, expecting to see Luka, but it is Samuel Notarianni, my father’s top advisor.
“We need to get you out of here,” he says, grabbing my shoulders and pushing me towards the back doors that lead to the alley behind the restaurant. I follow him, desperate to get away from Cal Higgs and whatever was happening to him. But when we walk through the back doors, we don’t walk into the alley behind the restaurant, but into a parking lot outside of a church.
People dressed in black swirl around us, heading to their cars, and Samuel points to his car in the far corner of the lot.
“Do you want a ride?” he asks.
I start to walk with him, but halfway across the lot, he pulls ahead of me and a bus drives between us, blocking him from my view. When the doors open, I step inside without hesitation.
There is no driver or passengers. I’m alone on the bus, and every seat is taken by small black boxes with wires coming out of the sides and small display windows. I know immediately they are bombs. Rows and rows of bombs, wired and ready.
“What are you doing here?”
I turn around to find Luka standing in the center aisle, one arm resting casually on the back of the driver’s seat, the other held over his head, gripping one of the plastic straps that hang from the ceiling. He is effortlessly handsome, the sun shining from behind him, casting him in a golden glow like a halo.
“Why do you have all these bombs?” I ask, stepping forward to grab his hand.
Luka wraps his fingers around mine, warm and soft, and then presses a kiss to my forehead. I’m enveloped in the cedar smell of him, and I take a deep breath. “I don’t use bombs, baby.”
“Since when do you call me ‘baby’?” I tease, pulling back to look up at his face. “And why don’t you use bombs?”
“I prefer more intimate acts of murder,” he says, just as something outside explodes, rocking the bus from side to side. He pulls me against his chest, the warmth of him leaking into my body and warming me from the inside out. I bury my head in his chest, content. “I prefer more intimate acts in everything I do.”
