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“God, I don’t even know where to start.”
“The beginning is usually a good place.”
“Right. The beginning. So… Czar.”
“Czar,” I repeated, the name ringing a bell, but in a distant sort of way. “Czar Petcova?” I repeated.
“I’d been nineteen. And I had no idea what he was into.”
“So, an ex,” I said, surprised at the surge of jealousy that moved through me. It was insane. I mean, I’d always known that Nyx had a past. So did I.
“Yeah. He dealt heroin. That’s what he went away for.”
“He do that to you?” I asked, jaw getting tight.
“He’s in prison. Let me circle back.”
“Okay.”
“Czar went away. I tried to move on. But letters showed up. And flowers. And then any guy I tried to date ended up suffering some sort of tragedy. Car accident. Mugging. Break-in. That sort of thing. But pretty nasty. The message seemed pretty clear to me.”
“No one could touch you but him,” I concluded.
“Exactly. The thing is, he didn’t… no. Wait. Okay. So I tried to get away for a while, but someone always found me. So I moved back and just… made some life adjustments.”
Christ.
That kind of explained her rules, didn’t it?
“That’s why we only fuck outside of town,” I concluded.
“Yep,” she agreed, nodding as she let out a deep sigh. “Anyway, everything was just… status quo. Until a couple of weeks ago. A package arrived at my door. Signed by Czar.”
“What was it?” I asked, feeling dread start to swell in my system.
“Four bricks of heroin. Asking me to hold onto it for a while. And I did something really, really fucking stupid.”
“What did you do?”
“I stashed it. Somewhere I thought was safe, but I wasn’t thinking straight. And then another package showed up and I went to put the new bricks with the old ones, and…”
“And the first ones were gone,” I concluded.
And, yeah, that was a massive fucking problem, wasn’t it? I’d never been in the drug business, but I knew enough to know that bricks of heroin, depending on various factors, could easily clear a hundred grand each.
If Nyx was in the hole for that kind of money, I could see why she was freaking out.
“Did they ask for the drugs back? Is that why you got attacked?”
“The thing is… no,” she said, finally glancing over at me. “I went home and my door was open. Stupidly, I went in. Thinking it was just a break-in or something. Everyone knows where I work and that there is a lot of cash involved in that, y’know?” she said, sighing. “But as soon as I walked in, I knew it was about the drugs. They’d even gutted my couch. And as I was noticing that, someone came out of nowhere and attacked me,” she said, waving at her face.
“How bad was it?” I asked. I mean, I had eyes. I could see that it wasn’t good. The bruises were nasty. There were ten stitches up by her hairline. That was a lot of damage. But other things could be hurt too. And, well, other unthinkable shit could have been done as well.
“I think I was lucky actually,” she said, shaking her head. “I think he just wanted to get away without me seeing him.”
“Which might imply you’d recognize him.”
“Yeah, I was starting to think that too. But who? I mean… I don’t think any of Czar’s people that I used to know are still around here.”
