25. Eleanor
25
Eleanor
Am I the only one who deserves to live in spite of what I stumbled into?
Wesley told me to go wild when I placed the auxiliary grocery order and wouldn’t let me pay him back. But going wild is exactly what I don’t want to be accused of when spending someone else’s money. And not having to count pennies feels like a luxury I can’t trust. So, I tried to be reasonable—only add what we needed. Butter, white wine vinegar, shallots, that kind of thing.
Only to find that Wesley must have added one of every kind of junk food in the store after I left the office.
“You don’t know how hard it’s been,” he says at the look I give him as he gathers all his contraband into his arms. “I’m a growing boy and Dimitri won’t let me have crisps!”
I snort at that. A growing boy? That, there, is a man grown. “Want me to try to make, like, a gourmet nacho cheese corn chip?”
With a gentle shake of his head, he tears open the bag of the real thing. “As much as I appreciate the offer, just let me have my refined sugar and preservatives.”
“Fine, but if he finds out and he thinks it’s my fault because I’m the one that wanted to place the order, I’m going to rat you out so fast…”
He squints, then hands me a Dorito with a grave expression, “For your silence.”
I take it with a laugh. Nothing crunches or turns your fingers orange quite like the real thing.
Once the groceries are put away, I check the time on the oven’s clock and decide to start on my surprise for Dimitri. I’d noticed for the past couple of days that he’s been leaving the house to relieve Mac’s watch duty at about 6 PM, and I know I need to give myself extra time when trying something for the first time. So, I get started.
The recipe preamble states that pelmeni are a classic Russian comfort dish. There’s not much subtlety to the ingredients—ground meat, grated onion, salt, flour, butter—they’re just simple things that taste good together. It feels wrong not to add a little something that I know will elevate it, though. So, I tweak a few things—I sauté the onions first, add nutmeg for depth, and grate in some lemon zest.
Assembling the Russian dumplings is easy, if time-consuming. It’s a lot like when I was on pasta duty, that year Chef Robert decided to serve house-made tortellini for restaurant week. The afternoon’s hours fly by with the repetitive work and I make a shit ton of pelmeni—they fill several bags that go straight into the freezer with a little prayer that he likes them.
I prepare a few servings’ worth and pack them into containers, finishing just before he comes into the kitchen. He’s in all black, even his beanie that covers his buzz cut. He has a black duffel that he sets on the island while he reaches into the fridge.
“Hey Dimitri,” I greet him, trying to be cool from my position at the stove. It’s stew for dinner tonight and it really doesn’t need constant stirring, but I’m nervous.
He nods at me; what I know now to be his version of a greeting.
“So, Mac told me that you took the night shift so we can have time together in the evenings. That was really sweet,” I say.
He grunts, more an acknowledgment that I spoke than a response to it.
I swallow. Time to go in for the kill… “Well, to show you my thanks, I made you something to bring with you tonight, in case you get hungry.” I turn and grab one of the containers from the counter. I hold out the Tupperware for him, trying not to let my face show the mixture of pride—they turned out good, for a first attempt—and anxious curiosity because he’s Russian and he actually knows what it should taste like.
“What is it?” he asks, somehow managing to be both dismissive and suspicious.
“Pelmeni. Am I saying that right? ”
“Pelmeni?” he repeats, blinking. He takes the rectangular container and peels back the lid to give it a good sniff.
My breath is literally baited. “You’ll have to let me know if they’re right, or what I can do better next time. I’ve never tried to make them before, but I thought that you might like a taste of home—if you even like pelmeni, that is… oh, damn, I probably should have asked—”
He’s not even listening. He picks up a dumpling in his fingers, turns it around to examine it, and pops the whole thing into his mouth. Then, his eyes widen.
“Are they okay?”
“Where did you learn to make pelmeni?” he asks.
My breath whooshes out in relief. He didn’t exactly say he likes them, but his tone is one of pleasant surprise. “The internet. The recipe I found swore they were authentic.”
“My babushka made the best,” he says vehemently. Then, he looks down and selects another and takes a bite. “These are… different. Not bad. For an American, you did well.”
I warm with the praise, however slight it is. It feels like a lot, though, considering the most I’ve gotten out of him so far is a weird appreciation for how sharp I keep my knives. “I know, fat girl who can cook. What a revelation, huh?”
Dimitri chews thoughtfully. “I understand this is a thing you say to criticize yourself. But in my family, we say that large women make good food and good lovers.” He looks down at the half-eaten dumpling. “These are good pelmeni.”
There’s nothing remotely sexual in his tone, nothing but a factual assessment. Still, I feel my face heat at the frankness of his speech. It didn’t even occur to me I was being critical; people usually respond well to self-deprecation and witty observations. I was really just trying to win him over with humor, since he hasn’t seemed like my biggest fan. It’s my knee-jerk reaction.
“I’m glad you like them.”
“I will take the other,” he says, holding out his hand expectantly and looking at the second box sitting on the counter.
A thrill of pride spikes through me, and I rush to hand it to him. “There’s a bunch in the freezer, too. If you want more, just let me know and I’ll prepare them! ”
He nods as he puts the containers into his bag. He adds a few bottles of water and, after a sidelong look my way, takes one of the other prepared meals. “Thank you,” he says curtly, and leaves.
I’m going to ride the high of that win for the rest of the night.
It’s a couple of hours until Mac walks back through the front door. I’ve been learning his routine over the past few days. Dimitri leaves at 6, Mac gets back at 8 and he always comes to greet me first. Then he changes into sweats, works out, showers, we eat dinner, then we go have completely mind-blowing sex for, like, two hours. My response to that front door is basically Pavlovian, now. The door clicks closed at 8 PM and I get wet.
But realistically, this is the last night of that. It’s Saturday. I know whatever is going to happen is supposed to go down tomorrow night. After it’s over, I’ll be able to go home.
My heart sinks.
Wes takes his stew into his office, like usual, so it’s just me and Mac at the table. I’m quiet and Mac notices, but I don’t really work up the courage to say anything about it until he’s going back for seconds and I’m picking at the last couple of carrots and potatoes in my bowl. “Can I… Is it okay for me to ask you stuff about your work?” I say uncertainly.
“’Course you can ask. I’ll tell you whatever I can.”
“You’re going somewhere further away, and you were doing surveillance alone before and now Dimitri’s helping… I assume something changed. Is it just that whatever’s going to happen is so soon?”
He sits back, looking thoughtful. “You know, for someone who really doesn’t have any details, you’ve picked up a lot just by observing.”
“It’s not hard to notice comings and goings—I’m here all the time,” I say. I try not to smile because, though it feels like praise, it’s fundamentally about that thing we’ve been ignoring. The looming, abrupt conclusion to this honeymoon phase. “You don’t have to tell me anything, if you don’t want to or you can’t—”
“No, it’s not that. You just haven’t asked. But, if you want to know, I’ll tell you. Simple as that. I’m just trying to figure out how far back to go to give you the context you need. ”
I smile a little at the implicit trust. For my part, I was pretty intentionally staying out of it. Asking feels like opening a door that can’t be closed—I’ll know about the lives about to end, the danger Mac is about to face, the consequences of it going wrong. It’s a lot of pressure for me, and I’m not even really involved.
“I want to know,” I decide.
He nods. “The three of us have been working together for a few years now. There’s someone we report to, we call him the General. He’s sort of our behind-the-scenes guy, he sends us the info on the job and takes a cut when we get the payout. We don’t take every job—I mentioned before that we like to do our own research and make sure these guys are as bad as they seem.”
“Do you ever get jobs that are kids or women?”
He cuts me a look. “Sometimes.”
“Do you take them?”
“The ‘kid’ was 17, but he was into some real heavy shit—wanted by the Italians for stealing from the Don and fucking his wife. We tried scaring him straight, told him to disappear. He didn’t, and someone else took the hit. No kids since.”
“And women?”
He sits back and laces his fingers over his lower abdomen. “Yes, I’ve killed women. One who helped her husband sell other women in human trafficking rings. A group of women stealing infants from poorer countries and selling them in the US. The head of the board of a pharmaceutical company who was responsible for covering up dumping practices that poisoned the drinking water in an entire city—it killed 43 people.”
I cover my mouth in horror. There are so many fucking terrible people in the world.
“Women are capable of atrocities. It’s not as… frequent or obvious as it sometimes is with men, but I don’t have some strict moral code that says no women at all, if that’s what you were hoping to hear.”
I chew on my lip. It isn’t what I wanted to hear, but it’s also self-consistent enough with the moral code he’d mentioned before that it makes sense at least. “If I can live with the other killing, I suppose I can live with that,” I say. “So, this General gets you the jobs, you decide if you’re going to do it. Then what? ”
“Then we take them out. In this case, Rossi has men under him that would just assume control of the operation if he disappears, so we need to make sure we take care of them, too. And since there’s a shipment of weapons already here in the country, we want to try to avoid those falling into the wrong hands.”
I nod, looking down at my stew. I roll a carrot from one side to the other. “What would have happened if I hadn’t interrupted you that night?”
“I never would have… um…” the uncharacteristic way he flounders for words makes me cock my head in surprise, but he recovers a second later, “I wouldn’t have fumbled the shot. Rossi was on his way to the warehouse, but he was warned—the guy I missed had time to call or text him that they were under attack. If it had all gone to plan, we would have gotten Rossi, his inner circle and the weapons shipment at once.”
I wince. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not. It’s why you’re here now, and I’m a selfish enough bastard that I like that outcome too much to regret what happened to get here.”
I feel my face heating and curse how easily I blush. But the fact that Mac is willing to damn the consequences just to know me? Yeah, I’m fucking swooning. “For what it’s worth, I don’t regret it either.”
He smiles. “It’s worth a hell of a lot to me,” he says softly, then inhales, preparing for the next part of the story. “They moved their shipment out of the warehouse to a storage unit on the other side of town. I was watching the unit in the hopes that Rossi would show eventually, but he never did. So, we had to pivot. We’ve been keeping watch at his house to try to get eyes on him—so far, no luck. He’s slippery.”
“And what’s happening tomorrow night?”
“Rossi sold the weapons, so the contents of that unit are going to change hands at midnight tomorrow night. We’re still hoping he’ll show for the sale.”
“And then what? Everyone there dies?”
Mac nods.
I chew my lip. “That’s the part where you lose me.”
He tilts his head, an unspoken question.
“I get that Rossi is going to die, and based on what you told me about him I don’t think I’ll be too torn up about it. But can you tell me for sure that everyone else deserves it, too? You did your due diligence, like you said, and everyone who will be there tomorrow night fits into that same bad-guy box?”
“Most people there will either see the money exchange hands or move boxes full of illegal guns and explosives. They’re not really innocent to the situation.”
“What if someone else is there, just accessing their unit and they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or, what if someone gets dropped off by a driver, and he’s just some guy who works for a ride share app to make ends meet so he can support his family?”
He has the good grace to look uncomfortable when he says, “Leaving witnesses is… not how we normally do things.”
I push away my bowl and sit back in my chair to look him hard in the eye. “I’d never think to tell you how to do what you do. All I’m saying is, if you’d made the same decision that night, I wouldn’t be here right now. Am I the only one who deserves to live in spite of what I stumbled into?”
He sits with that, and doesn’t reply. But it was mostly rhetorical, anyway.
When I move to start upstairs, I pause in the doorway with my hand outstretched. He smiles at me and motions to the sink. “You go ahead; I’m going to do the dishes. I’ll be up in a little bit. Don’t start without me. Actually, wait, do. Just don’t come without me.”
I laugh and head to the bedroom. As I go, I replay our conversation and I’m left with nothing but nervous apprehension—for the bystanders, for him.
For the danger he’s in.
For the danger he is .