Chapter 46 Kir
KIR
“I will burn your kingdom down if you try to conquer me and mine”
— “Kingdom Come” by The Civil Wars
I feel reborn.
It’s been four days since the baptism in the rain, and I feel like a new fucking man.
Words like “peace,” “happiness,” “contentment”—I used to raise my nose and scoff at that shit.
If those concepts were even real, which I highly doubted, they were never meant for people like me.
The Lazarevs were cursed; I knew that, my father knew that, and my mother learned it the hard way.
Turns out I was wrong. They’re at my fingertips. Those fingertips aren’t clean by any stretch of the imagination, but my little fox lets me touch her with them anyway.
It’s Saturday morning now. I’m sprawled across the couch in my penthouse with my phone balanced on my chest. Outside the windows, the East River is gunmetal gray under a low December sky, and a tugboat is puffing its way toward the harbor.
Normally, I’d say this week-long storm is a fitting reflection of my internal state.
Not today.
Today, I’m texting Jillian Pierce like a lovesick fucking teenager. I don’t even have the decency to be embarrassed about it.
LITTLE FOX
Tell me something nice. I need to purge the image of Doug eating that rotisserie chicken with his bare hands from my head
Surely it wasn’t that bad.
He was wearing a bib, for fuck’s sake.
I respect a man who comes prepared.
Spoken like someone who once broke into my apartment with a backpack full of zip ties and duct tape.
You say that as if you don’t like being tied up.
She sends an emoji of a monkey covering its eyes in embarrassment.
Sue me.
What are you wearing?
It’s 9 A.M. on a Saturday, Kir. I’m wearing some very ratty pajamas
So not a bib?
I can almost hear her laughing on her end of the text thread, two miles downtown.
No, you horny bastard, not a bib.
Pity. I had a nice mental image going. I’ll pivot to imagining everything you’re not wearing underneath the gray NYU shirt.
How did you know I was— Oh, wait. Camera. You sick fuck.
I turned the camera off.
Since when?!
Since you started putting on shows for it. Took all the fun out of spying.
You’re impossible.
I’d rather be that than safe. Safe bores you.
(un)fortunately, “safe” has never been an option with you. The best I can hope for is “probably won’t kill me today.”
Today, I can guarantee your safety.
As for tomorrow?
Tomorrow is tomorrow.
Swoon. Be still, my heart.
She starts typing again, but while I’m waiting for the three bubbles to disappear, the intercom buzzes. I ignore it, because nobody I want to talk to would be using the intercom right now. The list of people I care to see is one person long, and I’m texting her as we speak.
But then, to my irritation, it buzzes again. Then a third time, a fifth, a tenth, all rapid-fire. Someone knows I’m home and ignoring them, so they’re leaning on the buzzer.
I tap the speaker. “What.”
“Open the door, asshole. It’s freezing out here.”
It’s Mat.
I buzz him up and unlock the door, then flop back on the couch. Jillian’s next text came while I was at the door.
By the way, you should turn the camera back on later today. I was planning a thing.
My dick stiffens immediately.
That’s a lovely thought, but hold it. Something came up.
Is that code for “I have to go do crimes”?
Not today. Just a pest at my door that needs exterminating.
The elevator dings in the hall. Mat lets himself in without knocking and pauses in the doorway to survey me with a critical eye.
He’s wearing a black peacoat over a black turtleneck, his dark hair damp from the rain, and he’s carrying two paper cups of coffee from the Turkish place on Second Avenue.
He sets one cup on the counter, peels off his coat, and drops onto the armchair across from me with a breathy, melancholic sigh that suggests he wants me to ask how he’s doing. I don’t.
“Your little stunt at Sleep No More was unnecessary,” I inform him.
Mat sips his coffee. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Mat.”
“Kir.”
“Did you really think cornering Jillian and whispering vague threats in her ear would spook her enough to make her run? I don’t know who should be more insulted, her or me.”
He scowls. “She needed to hear it.”
“She needed to hear it from me. On my terms. Not from some masked stranger grabbing her in the dark—she’s had enough of that for one lifetime.”
“I was trying to—”
“I know what you were trying to do. And I’m telling you it wasn’t your call to make.” I sit up, swinging my legs off the couch. “Stay away from her.”
Mat sighs again and lifts both hands in surrender. “Fine. Message received. But that’s not what I came here to—”
“Frankly, man, I don’t give a fuck why you came here. Not if it has anything to do with that subject.” I clear my throat. “What I want to know is, where do we stand on the board of directors?”
Mat’s posture morphs in a millisecond. He wears that lawyer mask well, this old friend of mine. Sometimes, I almost forget he has the same violent blood in his veins that I do. “I’ve got five of nine locked,” he tells me. “You, obviously. Plus Lambert, Fernandez, Carillo, and McCormick.”
“That’s one short of a two-thirds majority.”
“I’m aware of that, thank you.” He taps his thumb against his coffee cup.
“The remaining four are your father, Mays, Blanchard, and Solomon. Safe to say your father votes against the motion to make him look like an incompetent asshole. Mays is Lukas’s man down to the marrow—he’s a surefire no.
Blanchard is a weather vane; she’ll vote with whoever she thinks is winning five minutes before the motion reaches the floor. Which leaves Solomon.”
“And where does Solomon stand?”
Mat grimaces. “Solomon is nervous. He doesn’t like the optics of a son deposing his father.
Old-school loyalty bullshit, and he’s as old-school as they come.
But he also doesn’t like what he’s been hearing about Astoria, and he really doesn’t like the idea of a New York Times investigation landing while his name is still on the letterhead.
I’m working on him. But it’ll be close.”
“The vote is in two days,” I remind him. “There’s ‘close’ and then there’s ‘close.’”
“Do I look like I need that fucking explained to me?” he snarls. “For God’s sake, you selfish asshole, I’m doing this shit for you even though I swore I wanted nothing to do with it. Gratitude wouldn’t be so out of place.”
“Spare me the bitching,” I grunt. “You wouldn’t know what to do with a fucking ‘thank you’ anyway.”
He’s still grumbling, though. “Wouldn’t kill you to acknowledge the hard work, goddammit.”
Mat drains half his coffee in one pull, and when he sets the cup down, I notice his hand isn’t quite steady. That’s new. I don’t like it.
“I talked to Afon last night,” he says ominously.
That makes me sit up straight. Mat doesn’t speak to his uncle unless he absolutely has to.
Not since the night he cut ties with the family business and struck out on his own.
Which means whatever dragged him back to Afon’s orbit was bad enough to override every principle he’s spent the last decade constructing.
“On purpose?” I ask, still unsure.
“He called me.” Mat’s jaw tightens. “And before you say anything—yes, I know. I know what I said. I know what I said I wanted. But you need to hear this.”
I wait.
“Your father contracted someone to kill Jillian.”
“I know.”
Mat blinks. “You know?”
“Afon told me. Last week, after the thing in Brooklyn.”
“Then why the fuck are you sitting here instead of—” He stops himself, pinches the bridge of his nose, and recalibrates.
“Kir, man, listen to me very fucking carefully. This isn’t a threat anymore.
This shit is literally in motion. Lukas has moved past the part where he trusts you to handle it.
Someone else has the contract. The window where you could’ve gotten in front of this—”
“Is closed,” I finish.
“Firmly,” Mat reiterates. “Which means you are operating on borrowed time that just got a whole lot shorter.”
A sickening feeling is starting to inch up my throat. “How much shorter?”
“I don’t know the full scope of details,” he warns with a spread of his hands. “I just know that, as of midnight last night, the kill contract had been published, and Lukas’s new guy is out on the prowl.”
Fuck.
That’s all I need to hear. I’m leaping off the couch, scooping my keys off the foyer table and shrugging into my jacket. Mat moves fast for a lawyer. He’s between me and the door before I’ve reached it. “Don’t do what I think you’re about to do,” he advises.
“Move,” I grunt.
“Kir, if you put yourself in the line of fire, this killer can and will shoot right fucking through you to get to her. Don’t be a goddamn—”
I grab his shoulder, twist, and judo flip him neatly and efficiently onto his back on the floor. He lands with a groan and a wheeze. Once upon a time, he never would’ve let me manhandle him so easy, but life as a lawyer is making him a little slow and a little soft.
I leave him lying there, spluttering, as I charge out into the world.
This mercenary motherfucker wants to shoot through me to get to Jillian? Let him try.
I dare him to fucking try.