Chapter 49 Kir
KIR
“I will burn for you / Feel pain for you / I will twist the knife and bleed my aching heart”
I’ve been listening for the motherfucker all night.
But right at the crucial moment, I’d almost forgotten.
I got too absorbed in the shit that was only ever meant to be a decoy.
Candles, chicken and wine, the easy pleasures of Jillian’s company…
All the things that have slowly but surely lured me way out into deep waters, psychologically speaking.
Far past the boundaries of where I was supposed to stop a long fucking time ago.
The blackout was my doing in the first place.
I severed the main breaker in the basement utility closet before I ever slipped into her apartment.
A building without power is a building without cameras, or lights, or alarms. It’s an invitation, a sitting duck that practically screams, Quack quack, come slay me to a would-be murderer.
That was very intentional. I wanted Lukas’s mercenary to feel comfortable. That way, he’d waltz right up to Jillian’s door thinking he had the advantage.
I wanted to be the last thing he saw when he realized he never stood a chance.
So the blackout was real, yes. But somewhere along the way, the rest of it became real, too.
When she started talking about the things that fucking rapist did to her that robbed her of the sanctity of the one place that was always supposed to be sacred and safe to her—her own body, her own mind—I saw red, and all thoughts of the logistics of my evening and the assassination prevention projection were instantly set aside.
Another man’s hands on her… Shoving her down onto a dank mattress… A lone gray sock her as her only companion…
There aren’t words for what I’d do to that bastard.
I’d fillet him. I’d carve every inch of skin from his body.
I’d embrace my family’s heritage of violence just to make him hurt, and hurt, and hurt some more.
Maybe one day, I’ll get the chance to do exactly that.
He can’t have run far. Not far enough to hide from me, at least.
Part of my mind went down that rabbit hole.
The rest of me, every other neuron I have, was across that table with her, trying to lend her strength she shouldn’t have to lean on, because it never should have happened to her in the first place.
The whole time she spoke, I sat riveted, thinking again and again, This woman is braver than I will ever be.
I got lost in that. In this surge of feeling for her that has no name and knows no end.
If the scrape had come thirty seconds earlier, while I was still holding her hand across the table with my pulse roaring in my ears and revenge murder fantasies playing on a loop behind my eyes, I might have been slow.
A quarter-second slow. That’s all it takes in this life.
But I heard it, thank fuck. The scrape of a boot sole on the hallway tile, followed by the faintest metallic click of a suppressor being threaded onto a barrel. Amateurish sounds, really. A professional would have been quieter. Lukas hired cheap, which tells me Lukas is getting desperate.
That’s good. I’ll get to him next.
First, I dismantle his hired killer.
Once Jillian is in the bathroom, I check that the safety is off on my gun. Then I creep across the living room on silent feet, flatten myself against the wall beside the front door, breathing through my mouth, and start counting heartbeats.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
He comes through on six, fast, intended to surprise and stun whoever might be inside.
The door explodes inward and the man rushes the threshold low, suppressed pistol sweeping left where the kitchen table is, where Jillian was sitting thirty seconds ago until I told her to go hide.
He’s compact, maybe five-ten, wearing all black with a balaclava pulled down.
His form is decent. Elbows tucked, muzzle discipline, kept his entry quick and decisive.
But he’s scanning the wrong direction, because he expected to find a woman alone.
He found me instead.
I grab his suppressor with my left hand and wrench the barrel toward the ceiling.
His shot goes into the plaster above the doorframe, a muffled thwap that sends a puff of white dust raining down on both of us.
Before he can adjust, I drive the butt of my Makarov into the bridge of his nose.
Cartilage crunches. He staggers. I rip the gun out of his grip and toss it behind me down the hall.
He recovers faster than I expected. Credit where it’s due, I suppose, though it won’t save him in the end.
He throws a short elbow that catches me across the mouth, splitting the inside of my cheek against my teeth.
I feel blood burst on my tongue. He follows it with a knee aimed at my groin that I barely turn in time to catch on the muscle of my thigh.
Fine. We’ll do it this way.
I drop my own gun. I want my bare fucking hands for this.
I slip his next reckless punch, grab his wrist, twist his arm behind his back, and slam him chest-first into the hallway wall.
A framed photo of the Manhattan skyline crashes to the floor.
He bucks and tries to headbutt me, smacking the back of his skull against my chin hard enough to make my teeth clack together.
I answer by driving his face into the wall once, twice, and on the second impact, I feel bone give way under the plaster.
Fuck, that feels good. I can’t get my hands on Jillian’s rapist—not yet, at least—so this piece of shit will have to act as an involuntary stand-in for now. Beating his face to a fucking pulp is a hot and savage pleasure.
This is for her, I think grimly. My father thought he could touch her. He was wrong, but I am not yet close enough to pay the price, so you get to bear his pain instead. You get this, and this, and this.
On every this, I break another one of his fingers. They snap like matchsticks. So fucking easy. I barely have to try.
By the third mangled finger, all the fight is gone from him. He drops to his knees. Blood is pouring from his nose and a gash across his forehead where the drywall split his skin open. He’s done and he knows it. The eyes are huge and afraid as the end of his pitiful life hurtles closer.
I crouch down, grab a fistful of the balaclava, and yank it off. Underneath is a face I don’t recognize. Blond-haired, beard stubbled. Forgettable. Just some hapless contractor Lukas found and pointed at the woman I love.
“Who sent you?” I ask, even though I already know. I want to hear the name from his mouth.
His bloodied lip wobbles as drool and snot dribble down onto Jillian’s hardwood. “Lazarev.”
“Which one?”
His eyes find mine. Whatever he sees there, it tells him everything. “The old man,” he rasps.
I nod. “That’s what I thought. Well, this Lazarev is here to tell you that your services are no longer required.” I stoop down to snatch his silenced pistol off the floor.
He opens his mouth to scream, but he gets no further than “N—!” before a bullet in his brain stem snuffs out all that’s left of him.
The body crumples sideways onto Jillian’s hallway floor. One leg twitches. Then nothing.
I stand over him, breathing hard, the suppressed pistol still warm in my hand. Blood is soaking through the front of my shirt. It’s his, not mine, though I can taste my own where he split the inside of my cheek.
“… Kir?”
Jillian’s voice comes floating through the bathroom door, small and steady, but perhaps a bit less afraid than she might’ve been otherwise. I like to think that that’s my doing. That I made her feel safe, despite the chaos storm swirling all around her.
I don’t answer her right away, though.
I’m looking at my hands. They’re more like my father’s hands than I ever realized before.
The same broad knuckles, the same long fingers.
Scars and tattoos like his. As for what’s on the inside…
Well, I always swore it was the polar opposite of Lukas Lazarev.
I’m not so sure anymore, though. Ten minutes ago, my little fox sat across from me and told me what a violent man did to her.
How he pinned her down and took something that wasn’t his to take.
How her brain left her body to survive it.
How she spent five years struggling simply to exist inside her own skin again.
And then, in the very next room, I became exactly that.
A violent man with blood on his hands and a body at his feet.
Maybe Lukas was right about me. Maybe I am his son, through and through.
But as long as it’s for her sake…
… maybe that’s okay.