Chapter 15 Kir
KIR
“I can’t drown my demons / They know how to swim”
— “Can You Feel My Heart” by Bring Me the Horizon
The fire escape rattles under my boots as I drop the last few feet to the alley. My knees absorb the impact and I stay in a crouch for a second, forehead against the cold metal railing, breathing.
I pull the mask off and stuff it in my pocket. The night air whips my face and I just stand there in the alley between two dumpsters, smelling garbage, rain, and the faint trace of her still clinging to my skin.
I fucked her.
I fucked the woman my father told me to kill.
I start walking with no destination in mind. I need movement, any kind, any direction, because if I stand still, I’ll have to sit with what just happened, and I am not ready for that. My legs carry me east, toward the river, toward nothing in particular.
My father wants her dead. That’s the job.
It’s pretty fucking black and white. Lukas Lazarev pointed at Jillian Pierce and said, Get rid of her.
But instead of putting a bullet in her or a knife across her throat or any of the dozen clean methods I was taught before I could legally drive, I put her on her kitchen floor and fucked her until neither of us could see straight.
What a solution that was.
As I cross Amsterdam, a taxi honks at me when I step into traffic without looking. I don’t flinch. It knows better than to hit me. Besides, why would it even bother? What’s the point of killing a man who’s already dead inside?
The math is getting worse by the hour. Every day she’s alive is a day Lukas’s patience thins. If it’s Afon crawling through Jillian’s window instead of me, then this whole charade is fucked. Afon won’t give her a choice. He won’t stop when she says stop.
I’ve stood in rooms where the walls needed repainting after Afon was done with them. It’s not a pretty sight. At the mere thought of him doing that to Jillian, my stomach turns. I stop walking, bend over, put my hands on my knees, and try not to throw up.
Even now, I can still feel her, the grip of her body around me. The mewl she made when I pushed inside her for the first time… It sounded like a lock turning open after years of rust.
And then she crawled to the wall, curled up, and shook. The look on her face…
I straighten up and keep walking. I am my father’s son. That’s what everyone says. A weapon. A tool. Some blunt object that follows orders and doesn’t ask questions and absolutely, under no circumstances, develops feelings for the target.
I have failed on every count.
My phone vibrates in my pocket. I already know who it is before I pull it out. There’s only one person who texts me at three in the morning, and he doesn’t do it to ask how my day went.
LUKAS LAZAREV
Is it done yet?
I stop walking. I’m on some block I don’t recognize, somewhere between Amsterdam and the river, standing under a busted streetlight that keeps flickering on and off.
I look back the way I came. I can’t see Jillian’s building from here, but I know which direction it is, and I know which window is hers.
It’ll be dark now. She might still be sitting on that kitchen floor.
Or maybe she’s in the shower, scrubbing either the wall or her skin, the way people do when they’re trying to wash off something that isn’t dirt.
Or she might be asleep. Lights on, probably. I can hardly blame her.
I look down at my father’s text again. The options are pretty straightforward.
I can tell him the truth: No, Dad, it’s not done.
I fucked her on her kitchen floor, and now, I’m wandering the streets of the city like a stray dog because I can’t go home and I can’t go back to her and I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing anymore.
Yeah, that would go over well.
Or I could lie. Again. Buy myself another day, maybe two, before the leash gets shorter and Afon gets the call.
I type with my thumb.
She wasn’t home. Will have to try again tomorrow.
It will be handled.
I read it back. It sounds plausible enough. Targets aren’t always where you expect them to be. It happens. Even Lukas would accept that, however grudgingly.
The reply comes almost immediately.
LUKAS LAZAREV
It better be.